The Strategy for Countering International Terrorism: unconvincing
So, the Home Office released its Strategy for Countering International Terrorism yesterday. There are one or two things in it that catch the eye. I liked this for example…
Contemporary terrorist organisations aspire to use chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons. Changing technology and the theft and smuggling of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) materials make this aspiration more realistic than it may have been in the recent past.
More realistic. Not more likely. Not more imminent. More realistic. Is that a tacit admission that we’ve been fed a load of scaremongering bollocks in the last eight years?
Needless to say, as is the case with all these things, this new document doesn’t offer any real proof that this isn’t another load of scaremongering bollocks.
For instance, the document says…
By 2003 Al Qa‘ida had developed a device to produce hydrogen cyanide gas, intended for use in crowded urban spaces.
…and cites this BBC news story as the evidence. ‘The plan was allegedly found on one of the computers’ found when an al Qaeda cell was arrested in Bahrain. The only example of the device making it off the virtual drawing board was when the CIA built a model of it for George Bush.
Mr Bush and his aides were left guessing at the reasons why [Osama Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-]Zawahiri allegedly cancelled the plan.
Count the allegedlys in that story.
On on it goes. ‘In 2004 Al Qa‘ida associated cells in the UK considered the use of radiological devices’. Ah, yes, this would be Dhiren Barot (that link is the Home Office paper’s evidence). The police did not find ‘any evidence that materials had been acquired to carry out the plans’.
The materials Barot needed to carry out his plan? Ten thousand smoke detectors. We all laughed at that plan at the time. Why should we take it any more seriously now it’s in a footnote of a New Labour ’strategy’?
And that’s just two links from the Strategy for Countering International Terrorism I stumbled across and spent half an hour blogging. There’s many more. Are they all so thin? Are they all so unconvincing? Has the government learned nothing since they let Alastair Campbell copy and paste stuff he’d found on the internet so his boss could bomb another country? Seemingly not.
Posted on March 25th, 2009 at 8:32am under Eye Catching Initiatives, New Labour, T.W.A.T., The home front
| Related posts... • good omens • Sidney Blumenthal: Democracy was only an afterthought • Let’s have a heated debate |
• Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe |
|
|
|
• 13 Comments |
It would look better if the called it the Strategy for Halting International Terrorism.
They obviously did not get the memo at Downing Street; it is now the
Overseas Contingency Operation
The govt’s doublethink went into overdrive this morning on the Today programme. Listeners were told giving grandparents financial assistance via tax credits for looking after the grandkids during a recession when parents couldn’t afford daycare was interfering in the family and a “step too far”, yet in the next segment, demanding access to details of who has contact with whom on facebook/bebo/myspace was an important strand in the fight against terror and not snooping on the innocent with the presumption this fishing exercise may find some guilty terrorists.
If terrorists had caused a fraction of damage the financial crisis & the greedy, unregulated bankers/corrupt politicians have, would we have not bombed shit out of them by now, or a least partaken in a bit of waterboarding rather than select committee show trials with no legal teeth?
The idea of someone creating a radiation hazard by collecting thousands of smoke detectors is plainly ridiculous scaremongering. I mean, honestly. Smoke detectors. How unlikely.
Oh, wait.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
Well, it’s blatantly ludicrous that London is going to come under attack with radiological weapons. What, do we think someone’s going to be going round dropping polonium in people’s teacups or something? Ha ha ha!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litvinenko
So you’re saying it’s not out of the question that there’s an al Qaeda cell somewhere in the UK building a fast breeder reactor?
And you’re saying it’s not out of the question that al Qaeda have a functioning particle accelerator or nuclear reactor able to produce Polonium-210 in sufficient quantities?
The problem is, you might be right. The problem is that we’ve been fed so much crap over the last 12 years that many people aren’t prepared to take any of this at face value. Whose failing is that? With their links to third and fourth party sources, parts of this strategy read like extended blog posts.
1000 times background radiation?
I was probably getting a bigger dose while I lived in my granite built house in Aberdeen!
Barot’s plan wasn’t to build a fast breeder nuclear reactor though; it was if possible to obtain industrial gauges, extract the americium from them and then um, stick them in a Coke can and stick that to an explosive device. All this was to be done with no scientific knowledge whatsoever with also no funding, as it seems al-Qaida were not very impressed with his plans. Barot himself admitted all this was likely to do was cause disruption and panic.
We’re going to be safe in this country, thanks to the prescient actions of the Goonvernment.
After all, they’re creating a 60,000-strong volunteer force – the Tactical Warfare Anti-Terror Squad – to keep us all safe. They’re even having three hours training!
D
Yeah but, these people aren’t in charge of anything are they?
Are they?
*run to the hills*
Aspirational terrorists?
“Well, we’ve got these RPGs and some C-5 but we hope to trade up to a uranium bomb and Ahmed knows this chemistry graduate who said he could whip up some Sarin for us if we slip him a few bob and my porn collection.”
“…the CIA built a model of it for George Bush.”
A pity they didn’t leave him in the room with it and switch it on.
I enjoyed the admission from the government that breaking up Al Qa’ida has actually increased the threat. I believe a political cartoonist many years ago did a picture of a hydra having its head cut off only to produce 9 more so they can’t say they didn’t get warned.
“More realistic” than “totally unrealistic” is still not necessarily especially realistic. I suspect that lat night’s finale of BS:G was more realistic than some loon’s “aspiration” to make a dirty bomb.
Bring on the bombs… as long as it’s at SW1A 0AA about midday on a Wednesday.
Fear not, we will be safe, our thoughtful government like a loving mother will cosset us with 60,000 members of the Tactical Warfare Anti-Terror Squad, and Jacqi “Jackboots” will have her very own Twitter Troops.
I do wonder why anyone cares about a “dirty bomb”, chiefly because the economics of terrorism are so clear. Think of the effort you need to put in to acquire nuclear material (and it’s a lot – this is shown by the utter lack of attacks compared to all the porn about them), or to prepare nerve gas or germs, and the extra complexity (i.e. risk of getting caught) and the problems of handling serious chems, germs or emitters…then think how much chaos you could cause with good old fashioned explosives for the same money. Keep it simple, stupid.
In which case, awareness training for lots and lots of security guards etc is actually very sensible. Being aware of suspect packages, people mysteriously wanting to buy truckloads of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, and the like saved quite a lot of lives during the Troubles, and it’s really cheap compared to pretty much any other anti-terrorist precaution.
Come to think of it, most dirty bomb scenarios I’ve read involve so little actual danger from radiation, as opposed to TEH PANIC, that if it wasn’t for the government worrying about it and setting up radiation detectors, nobody would ever notice, care, or panic.