Tim Sumner

Aviation Security, Islamofascists, War on Terror

Germany foils terror against U.S.

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Germans foil terror plot against German airport and U.S. airbase

AP reports via the Washington Times:

Three militants from an Islamic group linked to al Qaeda were planning “imminent” bomb attacks against Americans in Germany when an elite anti-terrorist unit raided their small-town hide-out after months of intense surveillance, officials said yesterday.

The men — two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen who prosecutors said shared a “profound hatred of U.S. citizens” — purportedly obtained military-style detonators and enough chemicals to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London in 2005.

Frankfurt International Airport and the nearby U.S. Ramstein Air Base reportedly were the suspects’ primary targets.

Prosecutors indicated police defused the danger earlier in the six-month investigation by stealthily substituting a harmless chemical for the raw bomb material amassed by the suspects. They said police moved in Tuesday when the suspected plotters seemed ready to try to make bombs.

Coming less than a week before the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it was the second consecutive day that European authorities announced they had thwarted a major attack. Danish officials said Tuesday they had broken up a bomb plot by arresting six Danish citizens and two other residents with links to senior al Qaeda terrorists.

Prosecutors said the three men arrested in Germany underwent training at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union and had formed a German cell of the al Qaeda-influenced group. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is thought to be hiding in Pakistan.
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Officials said that during the first part of this year, the men acquired 12 containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution, which can be combined with other material to make explosives — as did the four London suicide bombers who blew up three subway cars and a bus on July 7, 2005.
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Three of the four suicide pilots involved in the September 11 attacks had lived and studied in Hamburg, Germany.

This morning, the New York Daily News had this to say about the latest plot:

And now understand why the NYPD must maintain robust intelligence-gathering without civil-liberties nitpicking. And why the U.S. must be able to eavesdrop on suspect telephone and Internet communications abroad as well as between foreign countries and here without the time-consuming need to obtain a warrant. Lives depend on maintaining the strongest defenses and the utmost vigilance.

Iraq, Political wind

A look at where Iraq is headed by Ralph Peters:

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Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters is in Iraq and writes a column for the New York Post. He offers this, this morning:

Let’s go back to a few fundamental questions, before considering what the future may hold:

Is Iraq worth it? Yes. Whether or not it was worth it in 2003 (and I still believe it was), it’s certainly worth the fight now. By our enemies’ choice, Iraq became the central battleground between civilization and terror, between good and evil — despite the left’s denial that the latter exists.

Can Iraq become the model democracy of which we dreamed? No. But it can evolve as a state that treats its citizens with reasonable fairness, hears their voices — and rejects both terror and aggression. In the context of the Middle East, that’s still a big win.

What really happens if we leave sooner, rather than later? None of us knows with certainty. Nor do the Iraqis. But they believe that sectarian violence would explode and that a largely defeated al Qaeda in Iraq would gain a new lease on life.

What happens to the region if we quit Iraq? Iran wins.

SO where are we now, at the beginning of September 2007, with Washington already prejudging and prespinning what our military commander in Iraq will report in a few weeks?

Given the strategic bravado and operational inconsistency — the battlefield fecklessness — of the Bush administration in the past, it’s essential to avoid gushing optimism. But, based upon what I saw, from the dust of Anbar Province to the streets of Baghdad, during Infantry patrols and in interviews with generals I trust, I believe that sober optimism is in order.

Here is the rest of what he wrote.