India Train Bombings: Did WH Use Advance Knowledge to Scare NYC?

Last week I predicted that the administration was setting up another media pony show for early this week in order to create a smokescreen for several important election stories (RFK Jrs whistleblower lawsuit against E-voting machine companies among other stories). So far the stories the administration has given us have been relatively small time and have included 1. Late Friday afternoon-leak the arrest last April of a bunch of guys in Lebanon who THOUGHT about bombing tunnels in NYC, 2. Release the identities of the soldiers who committed rape and murder in Iraq after belatedly arresting them 7-10, 3. Congress anounces war on internet gambling (??? where did that one come from).

Now, story number four has appeared and it is much worse:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202920,00.html

link: "New York City tightened its transit security Tuesday as the result of the deadly bombings of Mumbai's commuter rail network."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/11/AR2006071100330.html

"Home Minister Patil told reporters that authorities had information that an attack was coming, according to the Associated Press, but that the "place and time was not known.""

It is the "we saw it coming" that intrigues me. If India knew that it was going to happen, then US intelligence saw it coming too. That means that the leak on Friday was part of as plan to scare the pants off New Yorkers, by saying "Oh, these guys were gonna blow you up", then a few days later let them see some people actually get blown up. Plus, with the recent stories about how Al Qaeda seems to come through for Bush in his hour of need, one has to wonder if it is just a coincidence that when Americans stop being scared of terrorists, terrorists go blow up something else.

Anyway, whether they initiated it or not, the WH knew that this was coming and it was scheduled to be part of the week's line up. And they decided to make sure that New Yorkers would be able to feel the fear of their brothers and sisters in India a little bit more than they might have otherwise.

Call me a tin foil hat crazy if you want. I prefer to call it a thinking cap.

We KNOW who the terrorists are and they sure ain't in the ME.

Would you assume that what Indian intelligence and police agencies know about developments in their own country would be known to U.S. intelligence agencies?

It does not seem particularly likely to me. India has been dealing with attacks from Islamic groups of some scale for many years now, and they are part of a long war, simmering at various heats since since the '47 Partition, with Pakistan, over the question of Kasnmir. U.S. intelligence agencies have very little knowledge or expertise regarding this matter. The Indians would gain nothing by sharing information with us, and intelligence agencies no more give away information for no gain than misers scatter money about the neighborhood.

therefore we have to assume that the US knows more about international terrorist threat plans than anyone else in the world. And since the US and India are allies, if the US uncovered a plot they would share the info with India, and if India uncovered a plot, they would ask the US if they had any info that would help them determine the exact time and place so the could prevent the attack. At least, this is what civilized nations would do if they were allied in defending themselves against terror.

U.S. intelligence agencies have almost no translation capacity able to decipher the communications of militants operating from the old Northwest Frontier. Indian intelligence knows perfectly well our agencies could contribute nothing of importance to their own knowledge of a matter like this, and there would be no particular reason to consult with them. Claims the U.S. and India are hand in glove allies are rather over-blown; we are also allies with Pakistan, and it is not possible to be very good allies with both those places at the same time....

And that the US would not notify India if it found out about a terrorist threat to that country because it might jeopardize US-Pakistani relations? I dont think so. Pakistan already denied any involvement in the bombing and India already said that this is part of the world wide muslim terror war that the US is fighting.

We are absolutely dependent on the cooperation of Pakistan for operations in Afghanistan, and for even the pretence of operations against jihadi elemts in that country, which is their main stronghold. Our only source of information on an impending action by militants focused on Kashmir would be the Pakistani secret service, and they would know about it because they control these militant organizations and direct their operations. They would be reluctant to squeal on themselves. Denials by Pakistan's government of involvemnet in any action by these organizations are a matter of form, and the ocassion for genial guffaws all around: people would be very disappointed if they were not made, but take them about as seriously as Santa Claus. It is a point of Indian policy to attempt to tie its long-running conflict over Kashmir to the "global war on extremism", as the current official formulation goes, and as a matter of fact, it is deeply tied into it, but as it is focused to the east and poses no harm to the U.S. and Europe, the Indian government has had little success in doing so, since our view is that fanatics aiming themselves against India are fanatics who might otherwise be aiming thermselves towards us, and so their focus on India counts as a good thing. The Indians hope making such an identification will break us from Pakistan, their real author, but this will not happen, because we need even the smidgin of real assistance we get from Musharref more than we do anything India can provide.

consult with US intelligence on this one." If I were the NYT, I would want to know the answer to this question, since the NYT went out of its way on Saturday to print a story calling into question the administration's motive for leaking on Friday the arrests in April of the guys in Lebanon.

And if, as you say, India is not a particularly great ally of the US, there is no reason that India should not give a true answer to the question.

And more importantly, why should they answer it honestly? No one else does, and it would surely leave them feeling out of place at the party if they did.

It is quite likely the story about the Lebanon arrest was released with an eye towards political effect. But there is no particular reason to conclude from that there is the slightest connection with this event in India.

should answer truthfully, because they have no reason to lie to protect the Bush administration.

The way I see this going down, the US heard from some one---one of its moles in a muslim terror cell or India or another government--that terrorists are going to do another bombing. (They may not even know what country is targetted, but that comment from India about the Indian government having advance knowledge made me wonder...) They figure it will be around the anniversary of the London bombing so they plan their leak for last week, to create panic in the US, but no world bombing occurs, the NYT rains on their party by revealing that nothing ever came of the terrorists plans and the whole thing fizzles. Then, it turns out that the bombing is on an x-11 day instead, five days later. By this time, the crazy doctor in NYC who blew up his brownstone with natural gas is way more newsworthy than a bunch of Lebanese who thought about blowing up some tunnels in April.

This shows that even ministers of propaganda can have bad weeks.

Meanwhile, the stolen Mexican election story grows bigger by the day, and it was to keep the American people from paying attention to election theft that this whole media cycle was created.

The Lebanon angle was picked up and delivered mostly by tabloid papers in and around the NYC metro area. They've sold a ton of them on this silly ass story and furthered their friends down the street to sell the story on their networks.

The soldier's identities would not have been released before, because the military hoped the whole thing would blow over. Now that it hasn't, it's going to be a hellish time for their PR people and expect to see more people go down.

The internet gambling bill has been in the pipeline for months. We knew it was coming as did anyone who even managed to find their way onto a internet poker site. There have been grassroots actions against this bill for the last 3-4 months from the gambling community. It's not considered a major threat as the Senate has yet to take up the measure or even consider a similar bill.

It's a hard job, but it's important to keep up to date. None of these things are surprises, but it's easy to slip a bit behind in the news.

hit the front page around 7-10 because certain stories that would hurt the WH were coming down the pipeline. The stories were related to two trials and have not materialized (trials are fickle, you get a lot of delays ect.)*

This pattern gets played a lot. I did not make it up. I have seen it happen over and over in the last 6 years. Recently, when the RFK Jr story was scheduled to hit the newsstands, this pattern was used with a vengeance. You also saw this pattern over worked on the day the FERC released the news that Enron price gouged California (the US had just rushed the invasion of Iraq, even though it meant fabricating evidence of WMDs to justify a unilateral invasion that they now regret mightily) and the day the newspapers picked to release the info that Al Gore really won Florida (9-11, the day the WH just happened to know that terrorists planned to do some kind of attack on the US)

This WH buries the bad news under more news. It creates news and holds back news stories to use later and sets up FBI stings so it can make arrests when it needs them and times gaffes for when it needs to give the left wing something to bitch about that it not as bad as the really bad thing it wants the left wing to overlook.

If people have not noticed this pattern, then they have not being paying enough attention to the news for the past 6 years. I'll bet every real newseditor at every real newspaper has noticed, they just dont talk about it for fear of sounding political.

* Looks like the biggest lawsuit finally settled on Thursday for its filing. That is tomorrow. I wonder what kind of news we will get tomorrow.

http://www.truthbox.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=2

and the Israels get together BEFORE Israel decided to overreact to a border skirmish by declaring war on Lebanon or did the WH just take advantage of Israel's momentary lapse of reason?

Either way, we know what story will be headline news tomorrow, and it wont have anything to do with the four (count them four) law suits now scheduled to go off against E-vote manufacturers.

That Hezbollah is hand in glove with Rove's apparatus and the Diebold crew....