I’m Missing Something Here

I am obviously terminally dim for I’m missing something here:

What, exactly, does this achieve?

Anti-terrorism police are confident they have the key men involved
in custody – one of them suffering from 90 per cent burns after
smashing a Jeep, packed with petrol and gas canisters, into the
terminal at Glasgow.

1) Everyone is in custody already.

2) What use is a sub-machine gun? Is he goingto open fire on someone driving erratically near an airport? If so, aren’t false positives more likely than not? If not, why have him?

Max Hastings is also sceptical:

Pity anyone who must catch a plane or visit Wimbledon today, or
indeed for many days to come. Following Friday’s London bombs and
Saturday’s attack at Glasgow airport, security checks have intensified
dramatically. Everybody engaged in what is now a vast industry wants to
be seen to be trying harder.

It is another matter, of course,
whether all the conspicuous activity that follows a terrorist incident
adds a jot to public safety, to compensate for the huge economic cost
it imposes. Most security precautions represent a charade. It is
probably a politically necessary charade – we will explore that issue
in a moment. But we should be sceptical about its practical value.

Gesture
security attained its nadir in February five years ago, with the
deployment of armoured vehicles at Heathrow. It was possible to accept
that the security service and police possessed plausible intelligence
that terrorists were preparing to attack an aircraft with a missile. It
was impossible, however, to believe light tanks could play a useful
part in preventing such an action. Aircraft landing or taking off are
within comfortable range of a missile fired from well outside any
airport perimeter. Even if an obliging member of al-Qaida knelt with
his launcher beside a runway, it is unlikely he could best be
frustrated by a 30mm cannon fired from the turret of a Scorpion.

21 responses

JuliaM

July 2, 2007

“…If not, why have him?”
For ‘reassurance’. Just like those tanks outside Heathrow a few years back.

IanCroydon

July 2, 2007

Have you not thought that by having heavily armed guards at the airport the terrorists are reduced to risky capers like driving burning cars into the outer buildings ?
I’m sure a gang of handgun and grenade armed fanatics would have a much better effect otherwise.

Rupert Fiennes

July 2, 2007

Come on now Tim, don’t you remember the Vienna airport shootings back in 1986 I believe? Secondly, if you’re willing to to tackle someone on fire and carrying a gas cylinder, you’re a braver man than me.
BTW, the best “last line of defense” for a vehicle based suicide bomber is usually something fairly hefty, like a 50 cal machine gun. 30mm cannon mounted on a “tank” (actually a light recce tank) would seem to be fairly appropriate.
Rupert

Andrew Ian Dodge

July 2, 2007

Yeah, small tanks would work well against a speeding explosive ladened car. SMG probably would not do much.

Mark Wadsworth

July 2, 2007

The words “stable”, “door”, “horse” and “bolted” spring to mind. Pathetic.

IanCroydon

July 2, 2007

Aircraft landing or taking off are within comfortable range of a missile fired from well outside any airport perimeter.
Even if an obliging member of al-Qaida knelt with his launcher beside a runway, …
Lets assume he’s referring to a compact launcher like a Stinger missile, and not some giant SAM that needs it own mobile firing platform, which might be a bit difficult to park.
Seeing as most modern Stinger type units can comfortably target aircraft in excess of 10,000′ altitude, which wont be until a few miles after take off, why enter or wait outside an airport, especially one surrounded by tanks and machine gun armed militia ?
Any home brewed anti-aircraft missile is unlikely to be compact and will require a mobile launcher that might be a be tad obvious. Aside from the fact that a guided missile is an incredibly complex piece of machinery that is unlikely to be constructed by morons who can’t even get a gas cannister to explode.
It was possible to accept that the security service and police possessed plausible intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack an aircraft with a missile.
I’ll call bullshit on this one, probably like the police did.

Tim Newman

July 2, 2007

Even if an obliging member of al-Qaida knelt with his launcher beside a runway, it is unlikely he could best be frustrated by a 30mm cannon fired from the turret of a Scorpion.
Hastings is a clot. The Scorpion light tank is mounted with the L23A1 76mm gun. It’s sister vehicle, the Scimitar, is the one with the 30mm fast-firing L21 RARDEN cannon.
I knew this because I once drove a Scimitar as an army cadet, and I thought the RARDEN cannon made it look cooler than the Scorpion.

Bob B

July 2, 2007

From this, it seems that there’s a special and urgent dimension about the need for sending out fresh and conspicuous signals for a Transatlantic audience concerning Britain’s commitment to stay the course in the War against Terrorism.
“Although the new Prime Minister emphasises his belief in the importance of Britain’s relationship with President Bush and the US, he has also delivered what one Pentagon source described yesterday as ‘some conflicting signals’.
“The same source said that ‘eyebrows had been raised’ over the decision to give a senior ministerial job at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to Lord Malloch-Brown, the former Deputy UN Secretary-General, who has attacked Mr Bush’s ‘megaphone diplomacy’ and America’s attitude to multilateralism.
“John Bolton, the former US Ambassador at the UN, with whom Lord Malloch-Brown clashed repeatedly, has already described the appointment as an ‘inauspicious’ beginning to the new Government.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2013359.ece
The writing is plainly there on the wall. Remember that Jack Straw, when Foreign Secretary, said military action against Iran was “inconceivable” and shortly thereafter ceased to be Foreign Secretary.

Roger Thornhill

July 2, 2007

As JuliaM says. People like the idea that if some carpet-munching muppet did try anything, they might get to see them taken out.

sanbikinoraion

July 2, 2007

On the SMG: it was a while ago that I was told this by a policeman cousin of mine, but the police at airports don’t actually carry “sub-machine guns” in the conventional sense. What he’s carrying looks very much like an MP5-A3, but isn’t quite. They are highly-accurate semi-automatic weapons with a good scope. The MP5 was chosen as a platform because it fires from a closed bolt, thus meaning that the weight of the gun doesn’t shift between pulling the trigger and the first bullet coming out.
The idea is that when you’re in an area with lots of civilians, you really don’t want to miss, and if you do, you don’t want to be spraying a few tens of rounds about the place.
No idea whether the UK police still carry these semi-autos in preference to fully automatic SMGs – I suspect that they do.

Monty

The Glasgow attackers were equipped with containers full of petrol, and there are some reports they were trying to throw them into the passenger terminal.
Perhaps there is quite a lot to be said for shooting the petrol bomb, while the bomber is still holding it.

Bob B

July 2, 2007

Going by interviews on the BBC, several passers-by jumped the would-be petrol bomber at Glasgow Airport who was waving a lit Molotov Cocktail about prior to throwing it.
There seem to be no shortage of either security people willing to intervene for a bit of impromptu bomb defusing, no matter whether it might detonate meanwhile, or of passers-by who will take on terrorists there and then regardless.
No wonder they say that whatever else we Brits are good at war.

Opinionated

July 2, 2007

Well Bob, I suppose this means that earlier reports that this was a suicide bombing were wrong. All wrong. Otherwise, why would he have had a petrol bomb ready, if he thought he was going to be blown to pieces in a car filled with propane gas cylinders?
As for the have-a-go hero nature of passers-by, this is merely a by-product of years of indoctrination and propaganda by I/Ops, to encourage people to regard Muslims as the enemy, or, failing this, simply some kind of threat. Once this has been achieved, there is public support for economically-motivated military attacks on foreign countries such as Iraq or Iran.
This is not a matter of who is best at war. It’s a matter of having respect for human life and compassion for others. It’s a matter of moral intelligence.
The link supplied by ukliberty is interesting.
“The feeling of (and wish for) safety can actually increase the real risk.”

Bob B

July 2, 2007

“I suppose this means that earlier reports that this was a suicide bombing were wrong. All wrong.”
By the media reports, self-immolation on the part of the petrol bomber at Glasgow Airport does seem to have been part of the intention and only intervention on the part of passers-by prevented fulfilment.
However, the two London car bombs were evidently set up to be detonated by remote control via mobile phone calls so these were plainly not intended to be part of suicide missions.
Perhaps the most interesting recent background news about this for the present discussion here is that David Cameron has this evening named Pauline Neville-Jones to be the lead Conservative shadow speaker on security issues.
What makes that so interesting is that Pauline Neville-Jones did not come up through the political ranks but is a retired civil servant and at one time did a stint as chairman of the (famous) Joint Intelligence Committee. In recent months, she has chaired working parties for the Conservatives which have produced two influential reports on:
– Uniting the Country:
http://www.conservatives.com/pdf/unitingthecountry.pdf
– Security issues:
http://www.conservatives.com/pdf/interimsecurityissues.pdf
What with the interventions and failed bombs, the Police have been able to gather much forensic evidence and the recovered mobile phones have made it possible to trace phone contacts with other parties.

Bob B

July 2, 2007

“This is not a matter of who is best at war. It’s a matter of having respect for human life and compassion for others. It’s a matter of moral intelligence.”
Not much compassion on the part of al-Qaeda operatives when we consider the many hundreds of local casualties which resulted from the terrorist bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998.
What was that supposed to achieve?

JuliaM

July 2, 2007

“..this is merely a by-product of years of indoctrination and propaganda by I/Ops, to encourage people to regard Muslims as the enemy..”
Someone who just drove a flaming Jeep into an airport terminal, then got out waving a petrol bomb around, is the enemy.
I’m not going to worry too much about where/who he worships, either……

Bob B

July 2, 2007

“Someone who just drove a flaming Jeep into an airport terminal, then got out waving a petrol bomb around, is the enemy. I’m not going to worry too much about where/who he worships, either…… ”
Quite so. According to a report on the Financial Times website, posted late on Monday evening:
“The driver of the flaming car at Glasgow airport was named as Bilal Abdulla, who qualified in Baghdad as a doctor in 2004. He suffered severe burns in the attack and remained in a critical condition at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley – where he had been working. . . The manhunt continued for others connected to the plot. A person briefed on the investigation said that the number eventually arrested could double, and include more medical practitioners.”
This manifestation of a Doctor’s plot contributes an entirely unexpected dimension to our understanding of the concepts of human compassion and emotional intelligence but then, reportedly, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, a qualified surgeon, has long been both senior and influential in the al-Qaeda hierarchy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri

Opinionated

July 3, 2007

3 points:
Firstly: all of the information about this incident and other incidents of this nature come from intelligence and security sources, part of whose remit is to spread propaganda to encourage hostility towards the enemy (whoever that may be), and who have in the past been shown to have released info to the press which turned out to be so inaccurate that they were almost certainly lies (e.g. 45-minutes, WMD in Iraq). Anybody with any training or education in military or political science will be aware that war is merely an adjunct to and extension of policy.
Secondly: there is no moral justification whatsoever, for attacking other countries or killing vast numbers of civilians in them, or subjecting them to tortures, even if some deeply troubled individual from that country or ethnic group did indeed cause a terrorist attack somewhere.
Thirdly: the element of “security theatre” has been a prominent feature in this news and media campaign. There are ex-soldiers in cops’ uniform on the streets and around the airports with MP5s after the incident (as if terrorists would hit the same place twice in quick succession), and one of the culprits was shown for an extended period in a public place outside the airport, lying down and handcuffed. From that I can gather, the media, strictly and tightly controlled from Vauxhall House, has been the main target of this terrorist attack, and the increasing climate of fear and the regression into a barbaric age of no rights for serfs has been the main message.
With regard to the first point, I have doubts regarding the credibility of the stories in the media (which merely repeat what I/Ops tells them). My reasons for this are as follows:
1) The attacks seem timed to coincide with Gordon Brown’s appointment as PM. There appear to have been no overtures made to number 10 since his appointment, to withdraw from the military campaigns in the Middle East. Therefore, attacks such as these could only be conceived to harm the cause of the enemy, and not advance it in any way. I don’t understand why they would deliberately lock a new PM into fighting them, without trying for negotiations or diplomacy first. It seems completely insane.
2) There are conflicting accounts. Either they set out to kill themselves or they didn’t. If they put gas tanks in the cars, that means they intended to kill themselves. If they had petrol bombs or bottles filled with petrol at the ready, that suggests they were attempting to break into the area with their car, alive, to lob their bombs. They cannot have had both intentions to die and to survive at the same time. I just can’t figure out: what can they have been thinking? According to the official stories about this incident, at what point exactly did they plan to die? Surely they must have intended more than a bit of a firework display.
3) One of the culprits in custody is said to have suffered 90% burns (almost certainly an exaggeration encouraged by our ‘senior Whitehall officials’ to lend credence to the notion that the occupants of the vehicle intended to self-immolate and that therefore this was a terrorist attack). With more than 25% burns, you are almost certainly going to die.
4) Where are all the casualties? The level of incompetence of these people is incredible. If they were prepared enough to fill a big, expensive car with gas cylinders (or have a few petrol bombs, as the case may be today or whenever the story is changed) then why were they so ineffective? It smells fishy.
For these reasons, I am sceptical but remain open to consider more evidence about the case on its own merits.
Now, regarding the comments that have been made about the attackers’ religion, unfortunately this is a matter of crucial importance as reflected by the Prime Minister’s undertaking to attack the ideology, i.e. the interpretation of, Islam that gives rise to terrorist attacks. Advancing the cause of an alternative or even a completely revised Islamic theology may seem like none of our business (as non-Muslims) but this is by far the best way to combat terrorism that any civilians can do.

Bob B

July 3, 2007

Tuesday’s Indy has a useful summary of the latest state of play in: Terrorists v. The rest of us.
Terror plot hatched in British hospitals
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2730423.ece
Btw The Independent has consistently taken a thoroughly critical and sceptical stance regarding the justification for, and execution of the war in Iraq. Early on, it publicised the view of Dr Brian Jones, head of the branch in the Defence Intelligence Service tasked with assessing all incoming intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Dr Jones made it clear that he effectively disowned the unqualified claims about Iraq’s WMD made in the government’s dossier published on 24 September 2002 with a forward signed by Tony Blair:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2002/09/24/dossier.pdf
These quotes on the BBC website gives a short summary of Dr Jones’ assessment of Iraq’s WMD:
“Brian Jones, who managed scientists working at the Defence Intelligence Staff, told the inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly he feared assessments of the Iraqi threat were being ‘over-egged’ as the dossier was compiled.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3077830.stm
“Brian Jones, a top DIS official in the Defence Intelligence Staff, writes to his managers relaying the concerns. He is later only thanked for his input.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3466005.stm
The Guardian summarised a report in the Independent:
“Intelligence chiefs ignored warnings from their own leading experts that they could not be certain Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, a former intelligence official who gave crucial evidence to the Hutton inquiry claimed today.
“In comments likely to increase pressure on the government over the issue of weapons of mass destruction, Dr Brian Jones, a former branch head in the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), said that the most senior intelligence officials may have ‘misinterpreted’ key evidence on Iraq’s weapons programmes.
“Dr Jones laid out his claims in the Independent newspaper, which said he suggested that not a single defence intelligence expert backed Tony Blair’s most contentious claims on WMD, although there is no unequivocal proof of this.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1140665,00.html
I think that completely demolishes any sweeping claims to the effect that: (a) Britain’s intelligence services had or have a monolithic line on the Iraq war – or anything else, (b) the British media only publish the authorised official line and routinely do so without critical comment.
In case of residual doubts, Dr Jones’ reservations were reported at length together with a deeper account of the intelligence context in the Washington Post on 29 February 2004:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15697-2004Feb28?language=printer
Few of us who are aware of this background to the Iraq war and later circumstances concerning the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London underground on 5 July 2005 by the security services in the mistaken belief that he was a terrorist are likely to accept statements by the security services without due caution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes
Contrary to popular myth, the British “establishment” is notoriously leaky so awkward truths usually get out in the end:
“A civil servant and an MP’s researcher were today jailed for leaking a secret memo about a meeting on Iraq between Tony Blair and George Bush.”
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2076478,00.html

JuliaM

July 3, 2007

“..all of the information about this incident and other incidents of this nature come from intelligence and security sources, part of whose remit is to spread propaganda to encourage hostility towards the enemy…”
*sigh*
It never takes long for the swivel-eyed loons to start toting their conspiracy theories, does it….?

Tim Worstall

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