Body scanners would have missed the "underwear bomb", so of course Homeland Insecurity will buy thousands of them. To meet an imaginary threat, we have imaginary protection. That is the grim truth behind "aviation security" in the 21st century.
* In May, the British government withdrew its student visa for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian who had studied at University College, London, and placed him on a watch list, barring him from re-entering the country.
* In August, US intelligence agencies learned of Al Qaeda discussions of an operation against a US target to be organized from Yemen, using a "Nigerian."
* On November 19, the father of Abdulmutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, visited the US embassy in Abuja and told State Department and CIA personnel that his son had fallen under the influence of radical Islamists, gone to join them in Yemen, and broken off contact with his family.
* Based on the father's report, State Department and CIA officer sat the embassy informed Washington on November 20 and a security file was opened on Abdulmutallab at the National Counter-Terrorism Center, the main Washington clearinghouse for terrorism information.
* On December 16, Abdulmutallab visited a ticket office in Ghana and paid $2,831 in cash for a ticket on a Northwest Airlines flight from Lagos through Amsterdam to Detroit, landing on Christmas Day.
* On December 25, Abdulmutallab boarded the flight in Amsterdam with only a carry-on bag for a trans-Atlantic journey ending in Detroit. Following standard procedure, the US Department of Homeland Security was notified at least an hour before departure that he was a passenger on the flight.
The claim that US intelligence agencies were unable to detect the bomb plot, despite so many warnings months in advance, is simply not credible.
The official discussion repeats the same rhetorical trope employed to cover up the role of US intelligence agencies before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001... that they failed to "connect the dots." This metaphor suggests a highly abstruse process in which many small details, each seemingly innocent in itself, are correlated through sophisticated analysis by experts familiar with the patterns of terrorist operations.
No such operation was required to detect the Northwest Airlines bomb plot. The facts listed above were a series of fire alarms, each sufficient in itself to give the alert. To stop Abdulmuttalab from boarding the US-bound jetliner was a routine police matter, one that would ordinarily be executed without difficulty by the government of any middle-sized country, let alone by the most powerful military/intelligence apparatus on the planet.
If the Nigerian was allowed to board the jet in Amsterdam, it was because at some level within the US military/intelligence apparatus, the decision was made to allow him to do so.
The real failure to "connect the dots" is the refusal to draw any conclusions from the inaction of the US/Israeli intelligence.
- Who made the decision not to act?
- Why did they make this decision?
- Was the intention that the would-be bomber succeed or fail?
- Was it a deliberate attempt to undermine the Obama administration? Was it a deliberate attempt to provide a pretext for further US military action in the Middle East?
- Why isn't there an investigation into ICTS, the Israeli owned security company that's supposed to protect passengers at airports from such events?
- How did a sand-monkey with an explosive used since WWI bypass a $75 billion dollar high-security fortification, and why do we never hear about these breaches of security at Israel airports? According to Israeli leaders, many would like to wipe their country off the face of the map, so it's not as if there isn't a motive against the state.
In the world's major intelligence agencies - the Russian FSB, the British MI-5, the French SGDN, China's Second Intelligence Department - these are the questions that are being asked, along with a further question: Is the Obama administration in control of its own national security department? These agencies undoubtedly dismiss the official US account of the abortive Christmas Day bombing for what it is: disinformation generated to delude American public opinion.
If these legitimate concerns are ruled out in advance, as is the case now in the American media, the result must inevitably be a whitewash, as with the official "investigations" into the 9/11 attacks.
Typical in this respect is the editorial published Saturday in the New York Times, under the headline, "Why Didn't They See It?" The editorial swallows whole the claim of a failure on the part of the intelligence and homeland security bureaucracy to put together the information about Abdulmutallab.
"No doubt sorting through heaps of information and determining what is urgent or even worthy of follow-up is daunting," the Times commented. "Still, it is incredible, and frightening, that the government cannot do at least as good a job at swiftly updating and correlating information as Google."
Actually, it is literally "incredible," i.e., not credible. And it is doubtful that even the editors of the Times believe it, although they are constrained from saying so by the informal but virtually complete self-censorship of the American capitalist media.
There have also been reports that the father supplied US representatives with the number of his son's Nigerian passport, which was communicated to the National Counter-Terrorism Center. However, neither the State Department nor the NCTC checked whether the younger Abdulmutallab had a valid US visa-a fact readily determined from internal US government databases - or made any effort to rescind it.
US officials had warning a month ahead of time about the specific target of attack.
Time magazine, citing a "source close to the family" of the bomber, wrote that "it was an alleged threat to blow up an American plane that apparently alarmed his parents and supposedly resulted in his father going to warn the US embassy."
Newsweek magazine reported that the Saudi counter-terrorism chief, Muhammad bin Nayaf, gave a briefing to Brennan in the White House sometime last fall about the specific technique used by the Northwest bomber, concealing PETN explosive in his undergarments, which was used in a failed Al Qaeda attempt to assassinate bin Nayaf himself.
As in the case of the 9/11 attacks, no confidence can be placed in any agency of the US government or in the American media to provide an honest or probing account of what has taken place. This fact testifies to the continued erosion of democratic rights in the United States, and the enormous danger this represents to the American people and the people of the world.
Noam Chomsky has stated that the US is ruled by a "Fascism Lite" form of government. That regime is slowly turning into something more closely resembling true Fascism as described by Mussolini. It's the elites ultimate goal -- create a Fascist oligarchy that controls almost all aspects of every beings’ life.
click for full story Body Scanners a Danger to Health
There could be other complications as well...
click for full story ISRAEL SECURITY RESPONSIBLE FOR ALLOWING TERRORIST ACTS INCLUDING 9/11
