Terror alert-AL-QAEDA has turned its terror sights to the sea, .....

[54anickel]

Terror alert :AL-QAEDA has turned its terror sights to the sea, targeting luxury cruise liners in a major expansion of its "jihad" against Western interests.

Here we go again, be afraid, be very afraid :eyes: All these "thwarted" attacks.

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1258&storyid=694716

And top of the terrornetwork's list of ocean-bound targets is the new $1.3 billion British ship Queen Mary 2.

The threat to QM2 comes as a British MP revealed yesterday that two Islamic suicide pilots had been arrested in Saudi Arabia in the past two weeks. They allegedly were preparing to crash a pair of light aircraft into a packed British Airways passenger jet on takeoff.


And Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said terrorists had planned to attack the Vatican with a hijacked plane on Christmas Day.


QM2 owner Cunard confirmed it had received a terrorist threat against its maiden voyage in the new year. Concerns Al-Qaeda had opened up a new front in its terror campaign emerged when a US spy plane discovered scores of acoustic sea mines had disappeared from a high-security naval base in North Korea.


US intelligence services believe the mines may be on board an armada of 28 terror ships that Osama bin Laden's organisation has assembled in the past year.

[mbperrin]

1. Gee, maybe it's good to live in the sands of West Texas...

but wait! Holy shit! They may try to steal our sand!!!! Damn them!

[mouse7]

2. Bwa Ha Ha Ha That Tom DeLay putz... have I gotta boat for you

You wanta park a cruise ship off NYC for the RNC, go for it!

[November 2004]

3. I've been reading a lot

of these making fun of thwarted terrorist plot stories lately.

One thing to please keep in mind: if it hadn't been for an incredible Canada/USA border guard at the end of 1999 (trying to pull off a Y2K surprise of his own), a terrorist driving a car with a trunk full of deadly explosives would have gotten into the US and used them, according to him, in Los Angeles.

I understand all the dubiousness because of Asscraft and Ridge and our color-coded appointed states of fear...but, sometimes these things are real.

My verified example was during the Clinton administration; so perhaps Bush just feeds this with his constant 'breaking news'. However, I have a feeling we owe an awful lot to that woman border agent near the BC/Wash crossing...

[mbperrin]

7. How about these REAL and ONGOING killers of Americans

that we read little about?

Drunk drivers kill nearly 50,000 a year - that's 17 WTCs EVERY year.

Side effects of tobacco kill 365,000 per year - that's 120 WTCs EVERY year.

11,000 Americans are killed by gun violence every year - that's 3 WTCs every year.

But since doing anything about any of these would cost CORPORATE AMERICA money, fuhgedaboudit!

Plus, it would be hard.

So turn on the orange light and honk! That's easy, and Lord knows that the country that invented microwave popcorn is not too fond of doing things the hard way.

[November 2004]

18. You are correct, however,

you are also off the point.

Are you so jaded that you can't realize that all can be true?

Yes, drunk drivers
Yes, tobacco
Yes, guns


But, also what if the terrorist with the trunk full of explosives had gotten through? That means nothing to you? BTW, that was long before the color-coded alert system installed by BushCo.

[leesa]

19. So you are going to live your life cowering in fear and bombing

all Muslim countries to put an end to the remote chance of "terrorism". I would bet that 99,9% of terrorism done to us has been staged by us or one of our "allies" in the war against Muslims.
Your government is trying to con you and you are letting them. Yes, a bomb might get through because billions of people in the world despise us for stealing their resources and bombing their families and friends. How about if we stop doing those things, then the "terrorists" will go home.

[November 2004]

25. Your response is so off the mark

and so off what I had posted, that I can hardly respond.

If you think what you wrote is true, there is nothing I could possibly have to say to you that you wouldn't twist and respond to with more venom.

So, I'll let your disrespectful, non-response post just stand.

[54anickel]

21. You may be missing the point here November,

The example you gave is true, but it was not played up to instill fear into the public. The border guards did their jobs, as to be expected. A fine job at that.
Was the plot advertised all over the headlines prior to it happening?
What is the point of having all this stuff in the headlines other than to install fear in the public?
Letting the public know they should take due care as they go about thier lives is one thing. Constantly scaring them with stories of thing they could not have done anything about is another.
They should do their job, do it professionally and quietly. That's it, we should expect nothing more or less.

[November 2004]

22. Yes, "apples and oranges":

But do you remember the tremendous hype about Y2K?

The border guard herself admitted she almost let the car go by even so. In an interview, she said it was pure intuition that caused her to pull the car over.

That is too close for my comfort.

Clearly, this point interrupted the flow of this discussion and for that I am truly sorry.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

24. No, intuition is what makes good, effective law enforcement

not technology, not government fiat, not fear.

intuition.

[November 2004]

30. Explains why it was a woman then! LOL

:hi:

:toast:

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

48. Sure does. I have long said women are WAY under-represented

in law enforcement.
There is too much macho shit from the street cop days.

[54anickel]

35. Ah, the Y2K hype. Yes, very good for my segment of the economy,

we sold more computers and software upgrades that year than any other. Not to mention contracts to pour over old code replace 99 with 9999 variables. So much of it non-mission critical hardware and apps.
The hype certainly had it's desired effects along with side-effects such as hording batteries, food, MREs, generators, etc.

By the way, welcome to DU :hi:

[Zhade]

43. Live your life in fear, and you allow the terrorists to win.

I acknowledge the "Millennium Bomb" plot to destroy LAX. I live in Los Angeles, and my friend's uncle works for an airline there. It concerned me when I heard of it that a terrorist could potentially strike as easily as that.

However, I moved on. I don't constantly go over what could have happened, working myself into a hysteria of fearful "what ifs".

I can't stop a terrorist by being afraid all the time. The world will never be a fully safe place. My sincere suggestion: stop giving others, be they terrorists or the Bush administration, so much power over you by letting them scare you.

[TankLV]

26. Don't you find it the least bit curious that whenever a scandal breaks in

bunkerboy's mis-administration, or it's about to come out that his polls are tanking fast, that we ALWAYS have some sort of "security alert"?

Not just once or a couple times, but EVERY SINGLE TIME?!!

Clinton went about protecting us ALL quietly and diligently, with no undue attention to HIMSELF, with our existing liberties intact and a fraction of the cost & the same departments.

Bunker-boy is just the opposite of this.

Talk about wag the dog.

[November 2004]

31. No need to be curious

I understand



I really shouldn't have interjected the isolated case...

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

23. Don't forget alcohol in general and it's toll

and drunk drivers don't kill all 50k, that is ALL traffic fatalities, and it has not been that high in a while, but... I know what you mean, and am on the same page.

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. So since Tom Ridge has taken over HS

Has he gotten anything right yet?

Keep in mind that Clinton still relyed upon the FBI and CIA for intelligence. Ridge chooses to rely on other sources and often ignores the FBI and CIA.

[mikehiggins]

17. No doubt, but two of the three most successful bombings in the US

used fuel oil and fertilizer. That would be the Oklahoma bombing and the first WTC bombing.

And I firmly believe that if the clowns in the Bush administration had been doing their jobs, the World Trade Center might still be standing.

So if I seem skeptical of these announcements its because BushCO has already proved it lacks the ability or the desire to do their jobs the right way.

[reprobate]

28. Mike, the * administration DID their jobs. So the WTC fell down.

Not the jobs that the people hired them to do. I refer to the jobs that the paleocons had planned all along. Read the PNAC documents and see that "a new american pearl harbor" was just the beginning. It was necessary to gather the support to invade iraq, which was their plan since 1999.

LIHOP or MIHOP, call it what you will.

I call it TREASON.

[foreigncorrespondent]

49. But, why would you want...

...to play into fear?

I mean, yeah these terror threats scare the crap out of me, for the simple reason, my partner, and many wonderful friends I have, live in the United States, and I do worry about their safety. But I certainly don't believe in playing into the Bush* regime of fear.

And it is interesting to note that while on Clintons watch, the would be terrorist attack was foiled, but not on Bush*s watch.

[oneighty]

4. Sea Mines disappeared?

Sane people keep high explosives in bunkers (Magazines) well protected from the elements and eyes in the sky.

180

[truthisfreedom]

5. are we to assume that they were able to move live mines underwater?

i thought that these types of things were supposed to blow up when you move them?

[oneighty]

11. Explosive Ordnance

is quite safe to move. It does not become "Active" until a number of arming devices are properly activated.

180

[pinto]

6. re:Patrick Mercer, MP, et al and the British Defence Industry (story link)

http://www.naspir.org/members/emma_mayhew/brothers_in_arms.doc

[54anickel]

8. If the intelligence was able to find that Al-Q amassed 28 terror ships in

the past year, why didn't we just blow them up?
This type of "stuff" always just gets me P-Oed.

Oh look, OBL has taken to collecting ships. Let's keep track of how many. I wonder what he's up to? Gee, we'll never know what his plans for them are if we blow them up....let's wait and see.
:eyes:

[worldgonekrazy]

37. Ships can be disguised

I read a really interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly a few months ago (September's issue perhaps) about how the open seas are basically lawless. Terrorists and modern day pirates (yes, they do exist) can hijack or acquire ships through other methods and then re-paint them, re-name them, stick on some flag from an obscure country, and voila--you have no idea who actually owns the ship.

BTW this actually is a real threat. If somebody were to bring one of these ships into a U.S. port with a nuke or a dirty bomb...it would be disasterous.

[54anickel]

41. See post #34

[GregW]

9. I know just what we need!

A freaking MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD!

That will stop those pesky terror boats, right?

</sarcasm>

[mbperrin]

13. AND a base on the moon!

Right?

[MikeGalos]

15. Well

at least a moon base could be used for something useful after the Bush regime is gone. Can't say that about particle beam satellites.

[Gore1FL]

50. And a tax cvut

How else can we pay for national defense without emptying the treasury?

[hippiechick]

36. Not to mention those subversive, armed. terra-ist donkeys ....

The Missile Defense Shield would certainly save countless 'Murkan shoppers from those evil DMD's (Donkeys of Mass Destruction) ....

:hippie:

[Mikimouse]

10. Just one more way of preventing the murkins from finding out

that the large part of the terror alerts is constructed for political purposes and nothing else. My response to this newest bacth of BS is:boring:

[aquart]

12. 28 terror ships?

What does a "terror ship" look like? Does it have oars? Where does it go? Does it blow up at sea? When it spots an oil tanker? A luxury cruise ship?

At what point am I supposed to feel fear?

What the bloody hell is an "acoustic sea mine" and who was the genius who thought they were a good idea to invent?

[oneighty]

20. Acoustic mine

firing mechanism detects sound waves in the water such as the noise of a ships propellers, engine noise and so on. When the "noise" is of proper frequency, duration and intensity it will detonate the explosives. One type of acoustic mine is self propelled and can leave its mooring device and chase the ship much like a torpedo.

Clever people those ordnance designers.

180

[worldgonekrazy]

38. A lot of them are old freighters

Some of them have been decommisioned by their original owners and sold to a secondary owner. Others have been hijacked over the years and were never found.

[mikehiggins]

16. Are these the same ships carrying Saddams missing WMD's?

This is real nutso stuff. Mines may be missing from North Korea and AQ may have assembled a "fleet" of ships and they are going to use the mines to sink the QM2? Why not mine the Straits of Hormuz and disrupt the shipments of oil out of the Gulf? What would have a more disastrous impact on the west than a couple of blown up and burning super tankers halting the flow of oil, especially in this winter?

How much more dramatic a strike could you imagine?

So while we're looking for AQ's magical mystery fleet, a couple of cigarette boats could bring down our economy.

Thank God Bush had the foresight to invade Iraq instead of hunting down OBL and the gang.

[Mika]

27. Mines have homing devices and zero-in?

From the lead link, (bold mine)

US intelligence services believe the mines may be on board an armada of 28 terror ships that Osama bin Laden's organisation has assembled in the past year.

The mines are fitted with homing devices that allow them to zero-in on massive targets such as the 150,000-tonne QM2.

What kind of mine can "zero-in" with a homing device? Isn't that what a torpedo does?

[Robb]

29. Really expensive ones.

...that no terrorist would ever bother to use.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

32. Some mines are actually hybrids...

...they can be deployed just like a mine, but the active segment will detach and act just like a torpedo once the target is acquired.

Mine warfare is actually VERY sophisticated...some mines can actually calculate the tonnage of passing ships and explode once a ship with passes overhead with the correct or greater tonnage. Some mines will actually count the number of ships that sail overhead before exploding. Still others are made from materials that cannot be detected through conventional means.

[oneighty]

33. US Homing Mine

is (Was) a torpedo The "Captor" an Encapsulated Torpedo; Mk 46 Mod 4 acoustic homing lightweight torpedo.

Reference: Weapons That Wait (Mine warfare in the US Navy.) By Gregory K. Hartman with Scott C. Truver.

180

[54anickel]

34. Well, this may explain the reports of ELF and HAARP activity lately

Seems there is a massive search going on for those 28 ships....

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=429597§ion=news

Welsh port is terror target

snip>
And now the navies of at least four countries are involved in the biggest sea search since World War II.

They are trawling the oceans for up to 28 ships which the Pentagon's Global Command and Control System says are run by al Qaida operatives.

In the week that Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens urged the public to be vigilant to terrorist activity until the New Year, Neal Adams, a Houston-based off-shore security and anti-terrorism consultant, said that oil rigs and refineries are "attacks waiting to happen".

"There is a significant threat because oil is the lifeblood of the Western world," he added.

[Rainbows]

39. Original linked Article ... Trinity of Terror ...

Anybody notice in the original the three main sources of terror with a bit of help from Saudi Arabia; The US-UK-Italy all now have reported these dastardly terror threats upon their homeland. Viewing the alignment of the UN in the Iraq debate, I wonder when Spain will join the tune and make it a quartet of questionable terror threats.

[jamesinca]

40. I thought it was Christmas

I also see a thread in here that Gen. Ridge, excuse me Tom Ridge is thinking New Years. I bet if they keep guessing they will eventually pick a winner, and then they will say how good they are. Not one of thses people said ABC news would bring in radioactive material, not one of these people said that college kid would get onto the airplanes some 6 times with box cutters. Not one of these experts predicted John Lee Malvo, not one of these people predicted mad cow disease. All of these things are threats to this nation and show it's vulnerability. Not one of these experts is mentioning the Bush administration cutting funding and resources 21 times for home land security. Not one of these experts is mentioning the difficulties they had finding the Texas state Dems in Oklahoma. A group of people that left the state in an airplane and checked into a hotel a few miles north of the state border. Imagine if they were really trying to hide!

[Rainbows]

42. Nice Post ...

in my county there is a problem providing for the under funded new deputies that are providing this extra need(?) security.

[FormerOstrich]

44. At least they could give us new fear instead of recycling...

last years material. I guess they are all vacationing in Crawford.

What next? Scuba-diver terrorists?

The Washington Post
12-31-2002

15 Freighters Believed to Be Linked To Al Qaeda; U.S. Fears Terrorists
at Sea; Tracking Ships Is Difficult
Byline: John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer
Section: A Section

U.S. intelligence officials have identified approximately 15 cargo freighters around the world that they believe are controlled by al Qaeda or could be used by the terrorist network to ferry operatives, bombs, money or commodities over the high seas, government officials said.

American spy agencies track some of the suspicious ships by satellites
or surveillance planes and with the help of allied navies or informants in overseas ports. But they have occasionally lost track of the vessels, which are continually given new fictitious names, repainted or re-registered using invented corporate owners, all while plying the oceans.

As they scramble to keep tabs on the largely unregulated and secretive
global maritime industry, U.S. officials have no end of worries about how nautical terrorists could attack U.S. or allied ports or vessels, officials said. They cite such scenarios as al Qaeda dispatching an explosives-packed speedboat to blow a hole in the hull of a luxury cruise ship sailing the Caribbean Sea or having terrorists posing as crewmen commandeer a freighter carrying dangerous chemicals and slam it into a harbor.

...more ....but this is from a paid subscription at www.elibrary.com. If you want the entire article e-library has trial subscriptions or check Washington Post archive.

on edit: changed html to [ instead of <

[FormerOstrich]

46. and let's not forget the year before that....

Terror fear on the high seas; ENGLISH CHANNEL: Cargo ship that sailed near Al-Qaeda sphere of influence intercepted before she can berth in London.(News)
Date: 12/22/2001; Publication: Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales); Author:

Byline: CHRIS JONES

ANTI-TERRORIST officers were still on board a cargo ship in the English Channel last night after it was intercepted yesterday in what Scotland Yard described as a major security operation.

Before picking up a cargo of sugar for Britain at Mauritius the ship had stopped in Djibouti, next to Somalia, which has been linked with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network.

Security sources said they were acting on intelligence that the vessel was carrying "terrorist material".

There was no specific intelligence that anthrax was involved.

No material has been found so far.

....more at www.elibrary.com (see above post)

[IndianaGreen]

45. Al-Qaeda trained terrorist sea gulls

They are looking for a subversive sea gull named Jonathan Livingston.

I don't believe any of the histerical CYA pronouncements from this regime anymore!

[peterh]

47. A report at Janes.com….

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid031204_1_n.shtml

Al-Qaeda influence spreads

A report issued by a United Nations monitoring group earlier this week warns that Al-Qaeda's ideology is spreading, raising fears of further terrorist attacks. It also highlights serious shortcomings in the international sanctions regime imposed in an attempt to cut off funding for the network.

These conclusions are not surprising; since the attacks of 11 September 2001, there have been at least 10 major incidents worldwide that have been attributed to Al-Qaeda or to groups with suspected links to Osama bin Laden's network. What is perhaps more worrying is the fact that, in the face of the US-led campaign against global terrorism, recruitment of militants appears to be increasing, with Iraq named specifically by the UN as a "fertile ground" for the group.

In effect, the UN report makes clear the uncomfortable fact that post-invasion Iraq is currently being used by Al-Qaeda and its supporters to recruit would-be terrorists willing to carry out attacks on the USA and its allies.



It should be rather interesting to see how the little twit is going to spin his way through the SOTU with regard to his massive failures in this area alone….the domestic side is whole other can of worms….