Speculation on terrorism plots in Euro-land
According to news reports, there’s nothing but “chatter” (I swear I’ve had that word defined for me so many times in the past ten years I could scream. I’m sure the American public can hold that word in their head for two consecutive newscasts). But apparently the “chatter” is voluminous. CBS News has some videos of the prospective perps with their mugs scrambled for the camera;
The French arrested some guy who was calling in bomb threats in Paris according to the Associated Press;
On Monday, French police arrested a 53-year-old man suspected of links to a bomb threats including one Friday at a Paris railway hub, an official with knowledge of the investigation said on condition of anonymity. The suspect, who was not identified, was detained southwest of the capital for possible links to a phone-in threat at the Saint-Lazare train station.
French authorities recorded nine bomb alerts in the capital in September, including two at the Eiffel Tower – a threefold increase from a year earlier. No explosives were found.
Probably to slow the response time of the police when there’s a real bomb. Or to determine the response time to set fuses. When I was in Paris twenty five years ago, the tour guide told us that 10 bombs went off in Paris every day – I don’t know if that was true, but even one bomb every day was too many. I remember metal detectors at department stores. So the French are pretty accustomed to this stuff, I suppose. Probably better than Americans, anyway.
We have a tendency to forget about stuff that doesn’t happen in our state or our town and enough time has passed.
When I lived in Aschaffenburg (near Frankfort), as the senior resident in our Army family housing unit, I had to run a guard roster (of course, with no equipment or weapons) around our building (the building was outside the gate of the nearest Kasserne) after Baader Meinhoff killed an airman, drove his car onto the airbase and blew it up in the PX parking lot. Even something that close didn’t affect people enough to be diligent guarding the building.
AP says;
Security officials say terrorists may be plotting attacks in Europe with assault weapons on public places, similar to the deadly 2008 shooting spree in Mumbai, India. European officials have provided no details about specific targets.
That’d be flashy, but ABC says that’s not how they think it will go down;
One scenario authorities fear is a repeat of the 1985 attack on the Rome and Vienna airports, when Palestinian extremists threw grenades and opened fire on travelers waiting at ticket counters injuring 140 and killing 19, including a small child.
That sounds about like al Qaeda’s speed. A group of people who are most likely unarmed in a confined, enclosed space with no place to go once the shooting starts. High probability of kids getting gunned down. That sounds like those cowards. Of course, it’s unlikely that they’ll hit the US or target Americans so near to the elections. al Qaeda has their man in the White House and Congress is filled with cowards…why would they want to screw that up?
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
Yeah, those brave warriors of Islam, attacking defenseless people and children. Seems the times change, but the playbook remains the same. And before Joey or anyone thinks I’m lumping all Muslims together, I’m not. But, I’ve yet to hear a whole lot of condemnation from Imam Rauf, or any other “leading” Muslim.
As I said elsewhere; if the tangos are any good, they have a secondary set of targets if the primary targets are being too closely guarded, so this could still go full FUBAR. Of course, themedia is only concentrating on the supposed known targets.
There’s an old expression that rattling a sabre makes noise, but drawing it does not. It’s when there’s NO chatter that I would really start to get nervous.
Oh, and on my first trip to London I noticed there were no trash cans, mailboxes, etc., out on the street. Took a moment to realize why.
My biggest fear is that they pull a Chechnia type School massacre..(GOD forbid).
We’ve been reporting on the European threat, along with its updates as well.
On the one hand, I’m beginning to wonder if the TSA types didn’t jump the gun on a plot nowhere near fruition and the other realizing how easy it would be to execute the plot with few logistics needed.
Let’s face it, you, me, and TSO could plan such an event, and outfit it in days, the recruits would be easy with the resources of AQ, and frankly they don’t have to be all that good. The difference is that we don’t want to murder a bunch of people. Consider the recent Discovery Channel attack. Now think about if he had had help.
The terrorists only have to get it right once. The good guys have to be perfect. We’ve got to take them out in their lairs.
Sorta off topic, but wth. You brought up an old memory from our years in Germany. We were at Rhein Main when that car bomb went off. My mom worked in the basement of the building across from the bomb. I remember being in housing at the sitters house and getting knocked off the couch by the blast. My mom came home with tar marks on her uniform from bits of the melted tires raining down on her as she and others ran to the scene attempting to help anyone hurt. I vivdly remember the deep crater left in the ground. I also remember that the usual 5 min wait to get into the base each morning (we lived off-post in Klein Gerau the entire 4 yrs) became a 15 min wait as just about every other car was searched/inspected. This went on for the last couple of years as they never lowered the threat level before we left.
Tankerswife; I also remember that several months later, a woman got out of her car in the Rhein Mein PX parking lot and then ran off. Someone reported it and, unable to locate the woman, the SPs took her car out on the tarmac with a forklift and blew up the car. Turns out that she was just in a hurry to spend her money.
LOL…I remember that too. My parents were laughing it up…until my dad, who happened to work at ATOC was tasked with doing the FOD walk for several days.
We didn’t have anything like that down in Augsburg. Daddy was at the Field Station in the early 70s, on Flak with 326th ASA from ’78 to ’82, then back at the Field Station fall of ’86 until July ’90. I remember bombings at the Oktoberfest (yeah, we didn’t go when that was happening), bomb threats at the high school, gate guards using those mirrors to check the underside of the car, a bomb threat at the main PX (the one summer I had a job there, think that would have been ’88). I remember that Americans were being kidnapped and taken to the Middle East (Terry Anderson, anyone?). We were in Germany during the ’72 Munich Olympics, too. Your average American can’t wrap their minds around things like that…