Islamic extremists got their asses kicked in Somalia from the Ethiopians and now al-Qaeda has decided to behead people in Britain.
ISLAMIC terror cells in Britain have been instructed to carry out a series of kidnappings and beheadings of the kind allegedly planned by the nine terrorist suspects arrested in Birmingham last week.
The “strategic” assassination instruction was issued by Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan and Iraq to dozens of their followers in this country. It was uncovered by MI5 last autumn, senior security sources say.
As a result police are on standby for multiple attempts by terrorists to kidnap and then behead people across Britain. MI5 is conducting a counter-terrorism surveillance operation to prevent such an attack.
The alleged attempt to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier or soldiers in Birmingham was just the first of a series of planned attacks, security sources say.
The revelation explains the recent deployment of a permanent SAS unit to London. The unit has been placed on 24-hour standby to respond to a terrorist attack in the capital. It would aim to carry out a hostage rescue mission within minutes of being alerted.
Britain is preparing for it all as shown here.
The intelligence services fear that Britain could be subject to a Beslan-style siege, with multiple hostages forced to plead for their lives on camera.
Whitehall sources have said that the threat is considered so credible that MI5, the police and the SAS have conducted at least two mock counter-terrorism exercises to work out how to deal with such an eventuality.
The last exercise, shortly before Christmas, took place at an RAF base near Chester. Five police forces were involved in an operation that envisaged an international conference being stormed by terrorists, who then held a group of children hostage in a creche wired with explosives.
Operation Northern Synergy saw a number of police chiefs assume the Gold Command - ultimate responsibility for co-ordinating the response. The commanders liaised with the government's Cobra committee, which is activated during times of national crisis. In the scenario the terrorists were equipped with mobile phones and a satellite uplink that allowed them to beam pictures of the hostages on to television screens. The operation ended with a decision to send in the SAS.
'This scenario is something that is very much on the radar screen,' said one counter-terrorism source. 'We have envisaged a British Beslan for several years.' Beslan in south-west Russia was the scene of a horrific siege when on 1 September, 2004, 1,200 schoolchildren and adults were taken hostage by Muslim terrorists. The siege resulted in the security services storming the school and the deaths of 344 of the hostages.
Read the rest.....
Of course the Muslims in Britain are much like the Democratic FAR FAR left in America and accuse the government of fabricating the threat.
Police raided three more addresses in Birmingham yesterday as they continued to question nine men over their involvement in the alleged plot to kidnap and behead a serving British Muslim soldier.
[...]
The continuing police presence is causing major unrest in the Muslim community, particularly at Alum Rock, scene of four raids.
Yesterday, Dr Mohammed Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham Central mosque and one of the city's most senior Muslims, said members of his faith were being persecuted by the Government and compared the current political climate to Nazi Germany.
Mr Naseem, who will address a public rally this afternoon, used Friday prayers to accuse Tony Blair of "persecuting" Muslims to justify counter-terrorist legislation.
He said: "They have invented this perception of a threat. To justify that, they have to maintain incidents to prove something is going on. There is dismay and people feel they are being persecuted unjustly.
"There is no reason for that. If there is a reason, the process should be open and for everybody to see what is happening."
He said Muslims were being used to set up a "police state" and "dictatorship", adding: "They need some excuse to seize that control and they are using Muslims for that. Just look what happened in Germany — Hitler was an elected leader. He started to persecute Jews and the same is happening to Muslims today. We are being used as a political pawn. I am seeing this as the view held by non-Muslims.
al-Qaeda cells are dangerous, there is no doubt about it but since their huge attacks meant as statements have been foiled because intelligence has gotten better, they now are going to the "local" attacks which requires far less planning and makes quite a statement in itself.
As we saw with Zarqawi in Iraq, beheading people and providing the video online was poplular and certainly made allof us shake our heads in disgust, but it DOES make a statement for them.
To me the statement says: We need to kill al-Qaeda, where ever we find them because they are sick, twisted terrorists that MUST BE STOPPED.
I DO understand the Muslim accusing the government, after all it worked SO well here in America when the Democrats made those same statements about Bush when Zarqawi beheaded Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley.....it was all Bush's fault.
That line got old yet some still try to use it.
People need to understand these people are sick men that do not care about dying as long as they can take as many innocent people down with them and quit using Bush as the poster child for blame.... I suppose all the terrorists attacks before 9/11 are Bush's fault also.
Laughable.
Maybe if people actually understood the nature of our enemy and that they are spoonfed hatred,morning, noon and night, they would FINALLY understand how high the stakes are in the war on terror and why we can show NO weakness in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else the war leads us to.
If they do NOT start getting this basic concept.....it might be THEIR family that is affected the next time al-Qaeda attacks here in the US.
While everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to leave Iraq, it would do people well to remember that the 9/11 Commission Reports states that our "retreat" from Somalia when Bill Clinton was President "inspired" Bin Laden, just as it would do if we retreated in defeat from Iraq.
Though novel for its open endorsement of indiscriminate killing, Bin Ladin's 1998 declaration was only the latest in the long series of his public and private calls since 1992 that singled out the United States for attack.
In August 1996, Bin Ladin had issued his own self-styled fatwa calling on Muslims to drive American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia. The long, disjointed document condemned the Saudi monarchy for allowing the presence of an army of infidels in a land with the sites most sacred to Islam, and celebrated recent suicide bombings of American military facilities in the Kingdom. It praised the 1983 suicide bombing in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines, the 1992 bombing in Aden, and especially the 1993 firefight in Somalia after which the United States "left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you."
Bin Ladin said in his ABC interview that he and his followers had been preparing in Somalia for another long struggle, like that against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but "the United States rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace." Citing the Soviet army's withdrawal from Afghanistan as proof that a ragged army of dedicated Muslims could overcome a superpower, he told the interviewer: "We are certain that we shall-with the grace of Allah-prevail over the Americans." He went on to warn that "If the present injustice continues . . . , it will inevitably move the battle to American soil."
Plans to attack the United States were developed with unwavering single-mindedness throughout the 1990s. Bin Ladin saw himself as called "to follow in the footsteps of the Messenger and to communicate his message to all nations," and to serve as the rallying point and organizer of a new kind of war to destroy America and bring the world to Islam.
It also behooves us to remember it was John Murtha that was the primary mover behind getting Clinton to retreat from Somalia......
Sounding familiar right about now??????
From a speech Murtha gave on the floor of the House:
REMOVAL OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES FROM SOMALIA
House of Representatives - November 09, 1993
Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, let me just make a couple of points…
When I went to Somalia the first time, Mr. Speaker, my reservations remained the same. I told the new administration, when it came in, ‘We should get out of Somalia as quickly as possible,’ and in the middle of July I said, ‘Get our troops out because this could deteriorate into a very tragic situation.’…
The President has reassessed the situation…
Mr. Speaker, I would urge the Members to vote against the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Gilman] and give the President an opportunity to get the troops out in an orderly manner as quickly as prudently possible.
"Cut & Run" Murtha also picked an unfortunate example in citing Regan’s removal of the Marines from Beirut, since the 9/11 Commission points it out as the other source for jihadist inspiration:
In 1983 came Hezbollah’s massacre of the Marines in Beirut. President Reagan quickly withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon—a reversal later routinely cited by jihadists as evidence of U.S. weakness. A detailed investigation produced a list of new procedures that would become customary for forces deployed 97 abroad. They involved a number of defensive measures, including caution not only about strange cars and trucks but also about unknown aircraft overhead. “Force protection” became a significant claim on the time and resources of the Department of Defense.
A decade later, the military establishment had another experience that evoked both Desert One and the withdrawal from Beirut. The first President Bush had authorized the use of U.S. military forces to ensure humanitarian relief in war-torn Somalia. Tribal factions interfered with the supply missions. By the autumn of 1993, U.S. commanders concluded that the main source of trouble was a warlord, Mohammed Farrah Aidid. An Army special force launched a raid on Mogadishu to capture him. In the course of a long night, two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, 73 Americans were wounded, 18 were killed, and the world’s television screens showed images of an American corpse dragged through the streets by exultant Somalis. Under pressure from Congress, President Clinton soon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces. “Black Hawk down” joined “Desert One” as a symbol among Americans in uniform, code phrases used to evoke the risks of daring exploits without maximum preparation, overwhelming force, and a well-defined mission.
Are we,as a people, stupid enough to continue to repeat history, over and over and not learn anything????
It seems some of us are exactly that stupid.
Excellent reading over at Jules Crittenden's site.
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