New Terrorist Plot, Same as the Old Plot

Crossposted on Dailykos and Truth2Power

The recent revelations of an advanced plot to use http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060811/ap_on_re_eu/britain_terror_plot">liquid bombs to destroy planes flying into the United States from Europe have thrown the White House and Airlines into a veritable tizzy.

New rules forbidding passengers to bring drink and gels have been instituted. But shouldn't these types of precautions have already been put in place long ago considering the fact that this plot is nearly identitical to previous plane bombing plans from the Phillipines in 1995 and Chechnya in 2004?

Yesterday I rushed to call in to Randi Rhodes after first hearing about the British Plot, now I have details.

The Airline Bombing Plot was originally hatched by Ramzi Yousef (the original WTC Bomber) in collaboration with Khallid Shiek Mohammad (Mastermind of 9-11) in Manilla and known as Project Bojinka. ( When I spoke with Randi on the air I had mentioned Mohommad Atta as being involved, but that was incorrect - I was thinking of Yousef. We also briefly discussed the Millenium Bomb Plot to destroy LAX)

From Phillipine Headline News;

The use of hijacked commercial planes to attack key structures in the US was hatched in the Philippines by the men of Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden in 1994.

The plane attack, code named Project Bojinka, was hatched by Bin Laden's men Ramzie Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan, who were convicted in the US for the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.

Under Project Bojinka, Bin LadenÕs group would hijack US-bound commercial aircraft from the Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore and crash them into key structures in the US.

The authorities learned of Project Bojinka from diskettes that were seized along with bomb paraphernalia from suspected terrorists during a raid on their hideout on Jan. 7, 1995.

Murad, among the suspects arrested by local law enforcers, admitted during questioning that they had been frequenting the Philippines to establish a cell for their group. He also told US and Philippine authorities that he had been taking flying lessons in the country in preparation for the attacks they were planning on the headquarters of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters and Central Intelligence Agency. Murad was subsequently extradited to the US along with Yousef, who was caught in Pakistan, and Khan, who was arrested in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Let me repeat that this information came from 1995 - eleven years ago.

Wikipedia on Project Bojinka.

The next plan would have involved at least five Al-Qaeda operatives, including Yousef, Khan, Shah and two more unknown operatives. Starting on January 21, 1995 and ending on January 22, 1995, they would set the bombs on 11 United States-bound airliners that had stopovers all around East Asia and Southeast Asia. All of the flights had two legs. The bombs would be planted inside life jackets under seats on the first leg, when each bomber would disembark. He would then board one or two more flights and repeat. After all of the bombers planted bombs on all of the flights, each man would then catch flights to Lahore, Pakistan. The men never needed U.S. visas, as they only would have stayed on the planes on their first legs in Asia.

The bombs would have been timed before the operatives stepped off the planes. The aircraft would have blown up over the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea almost simultaneously. If this plan worked, several thousand would have perished, and air travel would have been shut down worldwide for days, if not weeks. The U.S. government estimated the prospective death toll to be about 4,000 if the plot had been executed.

Common household items were to be used, with explosives hidden inside innocuous objects.

The "Mark II" "microbombs" had Casio digital watches as the timers, stabilizers that looked like cotton wool balls, and an undetectable nitroglycerin as the explosive. Other ingredients included glycerin, nitrate, sulfuric acid, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene, silver azide (silver trinitride), and liquid acetone. Two 9-volt batteries in each bomb were used as a power source. The batteries would be connected to light bulb filaments that would detonate the bomb.

This plot had several iterations, would have been massive and according to the 9-11 report some of the complexity of it daunted even Bin Laden. On page 154 of the report.

KSM describes a gradiose original plan: a total of ten aircraft to be hijacked, nine of which would crash into targets on both coasts -- they included those eventually hit on September 11th plus CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants and the tallest buildings in California <"Liberty/Library" Tower anyone?> and the state of Washington.

There is every indication that 9 years later, this plan was actually put into place over the skies of Russia.

In 2004 two planes were almost simultaneously destroyed over Chechnya. Volga-AviaExpress Flight 1303 and Siberia Airlines Flight 1047 both crashed on August 24. 89 persons were killed including two Chechnian women - roomates - who appear to have been cause of the crashes. The Russian reaction was swift.

President Vladimir Putin immediately ordered the Federal Security Service (FSB) to investigate the crashes. By August 28, the FSB had found traces of the explosive hexogen in the remains of both planes. Itar-Tass news agency reported on August 30, 2004, "without a shadow of a doubt", the FSB security service said that "both airplanes were blown up as a result of a terrorist attack".

A previously unknown group called the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility; the truth of those claims remains uncertain. The Islambouli Brigades have also claimed that five of their members were on each plane; experts are skeptical about the possibility of (and the need for) so many terrorists on board.

And the destruction of these two planes was just the beginning of much broader and violent attacks in Chechnya.

On August 31, 2004 a bomb killed 10 at a Moscow subway station, and then the Beslan hostage crisis began on September 1, 2004 which would leave over 335 people dead, many of them children.

After the death of the children Russian President Vladimir Putin then began a security crackdown so broad and intense, even George W. Bush blanched. He's continued to chide Putin even to this very day, mentioning at the recent G8 conferences that Russian should be more Democratic and open - Y'know - like Iraq.

Now it may seem quite a stretch to presume that two independant bombings 9 years apart and in two distinctly different parts of the world are in fact connected -- but there are reasons for my mentioning them contained in the text of former Bin Ladin Desk Chief Michael Sheuer's book "Imperial Hubris" where he describes Afghanistan and Chechnya as the "two major Islamic Insurgencies" in the world as of 2004.

Bin Ladin has long expressed his support for the Chenchnian Insurgence against Russia, and although Sheuer surmisses that his support has not extended to "command and control" he has been in all likelyhood been able to provide them with guidance and materials. Whether or not he and/or al Qaeda were directly involved in the Russia Plane Bombing, it's key to note that the two year anniversary of that event is less than two weeks away. The staging of this new British plot so soon to that date is suspicious, and the value of a repeat of that attack on or near it's anniversay can not be denied as a powerful symbol of the Worldwide Jihad that Bin Laden craves.

The coordination of simultaneous attacks is an Al Qaeda signature - one that they employed in the original Bojinka plan as well as the East Africa Bombings of 1998. Scheuer on Bin Laden's long term goals.

He brilliantly focused his inciting rhetoric on the substantial international issues of most interest to Muslims, ones that play to his central goal of driving the United States from the Middle East and all of the Islamic World. Bin Laden's foreign policy goals, if they may be so termed, are six in number and easily stated.

First, the end of all U.S. aid to Israel, the elimination of the Jewish state, and in it's stead, the creation of an Islamic Palestinian State.

Second, the withdrawal of all U.S. and Western Military forces from the Arabian Peninsula-- a shift of most units from Saudi Arabia to Qatar fools no one Muslims and will not cut the mustard-- and all Muslim Territory.

Third, the end of all U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Forth, the end of U.S.support for, and acquiescense in, the oppression of Muslims by the Chinese, Russian, Indian, and other governments.

Fifth, restoration of full Muslim control over the Islamic world's energy resources and a return to market prices, ending the impoverishment of Muslims caused by oil prices set by Arab regimes to placate the West.

Sixth, the replacement of U.S.-protected Muslim regimes that do not govern according to Islam by regimes that do. For bin Laden, only Mullah Omar's (pre-U.S. invasion) Afghanistan met this criteria; othe Muslim regimes are dcandidates for annihilation.

Bin Laden does not plan to achieve these goals either through Military Might or through simple fear-mongering. His method is to inspire our own panic attack of militarism and runaway spending. He wishes that we destroy ourselves, destroy out own economy by overextending ourselves and collapsing as did the Soviet Union after years of fruitless and expensive war in Afghanistan.

If the U.S. were to collapse internally, we would no longer have the resources or ability to project our will into the Muslim World. We wouldn't be able to protect Israel - which would then face a very serious threat from the combined forces of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. We would be forced into a total retreat to deal with our own New Great Depression - leaving al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Sunni and Shiite's to battle over the Islam world and it's dwindling resources with our interferance.

Everything Bin Laden and Al Qaeda attempts are steps toward achieving these goals.

The key difference between the Clinton reaction when Project Bojinka was exposed and thwarted, not to mention the thwarting of the attempted bombing of LAX in 2000, and the attempted bombing of the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels is that Clinton change how the Government function (by opening the Bin Laden Desk for example, which Bush has recently decided t to shutdown). He didn't let these events significantly change our way of life or economy. He didn't exploit them as a chance to campaign and bang on the terrorist drum as President Bush has done.

This country is safer than it was prior to 9/11. We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously, we're still not completely safe, because there are people that still plot and people who want to harm us for what we believe in. It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America. And that is why we have given our officials the tools they need to protect our people.

As most of us know, many of the measures taken by this Administration have included kidnapping, , torture and other War Crimes. Bush sees this as an oppurtunity to continue to grab power whlle driving our deficit through the roof.

He's playing directly into Bin Laden's hands, slowly turning America into a paranoid police state, while giving himself high-fives for Britains success of using law enforcement to stop terrorists while our own FBI is chasing and entraping a bunch of clueless Florida dullards and own military is trapped in the endless boondoggle of Iraq. We're going to continue to lose the real War on Terror, the economic war, as long as each time Bin Laden spends $100,000 we spend $100 Billion.

And we should be afraid, very afraid - of exactly how Bush is going to give Osama exactly what he wants.

Vyan

we have an expert in the White House: Good old AWOL.

You can always depend on him to go AWOL when trouble is brewing...

But if you mention that to the average American, they probably think it's a children's song or comic book character.

Excellent post. Except I'm not afraid of anything bush does or plans to do. He's getting way too much rope in the so-called war on terror. And we all know about giving people enough rope, don't we.