I just came across this story, which was published in the Sunday Times, the Sunday edition of the Times of London, one of Britain’s major newspapers. It describes a rather bizarre scenario in which Al Qaeda in Iraq, with help from Iran, naturally, intends to carry out a large scale terrorist attack against Britain — maybe:
AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.
Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.
Well I think it’s given that Al Qaeda in Iraq hasn’t developed any nuclear weapons, nor is their a shred of credible evidence that Iran has either. And, of course, the fact that Al Qaeda, in whatever manifestation, is a Sunni movement and organization which is opposed to the Shi’a sect of Islam followed in Iran, is also another reason to doubt the validity of the reporter’s story. Iran has supported Shi’ite militias and terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, but no one has ever found a serious link between the Iranian regime and any Al Qaeda groups. Nonetheless, this story was featured in a major British newspaper. What evidence does it cite to support the claim of a pending large scale “Hiroshima-Nagasaki” attack?
(cont.)
Apparently, it’s all based on a secret MI-5 report which has been leaked to the Times by unidentified sources
The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.
There is no evidence of a formal relationship between Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, and the Shi’ite regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, but experts suggest that Iran’s leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organisation’s activities.
The intelligence report also makes it clear that senior Al-Qaeda figures in the region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain.
Note the careful qualifications in the text quoted above. There’s no evidence of a “formal relationship” between Al Qaeda and Iran, but nonetheless experts say Iran may be “turning a blind eye” to Al Qaeda in Iraq’s activities. That surely suggests — not a whole hell of a lot, at least to me. It’s pure innuendo passed of as intelligence from “informed sources.”
A meaningless statement to be sure, but a useful one to anyone wishing to tie the actions of Al Qaeda terrorists to Iran’s government. It raises the phantom of an Iranian shadow power behind the scenes, directing and enabling terrorist plots against Britain and other western targets, without producing a single fact that connects Iran to Al Qaeda plans or activities. The sort of thing Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld engaged in frequently to link the 911 plotters to Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq War.
Read a bit further and basis for this so-called “Hiroshima-Nagasaki” type terrorist attack gets thinner and thinner:
The report was compiled by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) – based at MI5’s London headquarters – and provides a quarterly review of the international terror threat to Britain. It draws a distinction between Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s core leadership, who are thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and affiliated organisations elsewhere.
The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI’s Kurdish network in Iran planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target.
“A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki’ and will ‘shake the Roman throne’. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.”
The report says there is “no indication” this attack would specifically target Britain, “although we are aware that AQI . . . networks are active in the UK”.
Analysts believe the reference to Hiroshima and Naga-saki, where more than 200,000 people died in nuclear attacks on Japan at the end of the second world war, is unlikely to be a literal boast.
“It could be just a reference to a huge explosion,” said a counter-terrorist source. “They [Al-Qaeda] have got to do something soon that is radical otherwise they start losing credibility.” […]
Details of a separate plot to attack Britain, “ideally” before Blair steps down this summer, were contained in a letter written by Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd and senior Al-Qaeda commander.
According to the JTAC document, Hadi “stressed the need to take care to ensure that the attack was successful and on a large scale”. The plan was to be relayed to an Iran-based Al-Qaeda facilitator.
So the MI5 report itself downplays the likelihood that such a large scale mass death attack, where hundreds of thousands of people are killed, can be carried out by Al Qaeda, and states its probably just a boast. It also says there is “no indication” that Britain is a target of any such plot. Yet, you’d never know that from reading the first part of the Sunday Time’s article, would you?
And note the references to another scheme where the Kurds, Al Qaeda and Iran are all allegedly working together in harmony on a plot to kill thousands of Britons before Tony Blair steps down from office this summer. It’s starting to sound like a conspiracy theory hatched by Rube Goldberg on a bad acid trip. I just don’t find this credible in the least, though I’m certain it will be lapped up by those who are impressionable, gullible and more than willing to suspend their belief because they so badly want it to be true: i.e., the denizens of the Right Wingnut-o-sphere.
So the question becomes, is it a real, if highly improbable true story, or just another part of the Pentagon’s disinformation campaign against the American and British publics? I favor the latter, myself.
Usually they use the Telegraph, a right wing newspaper in Britain, to push these types of stores into the mainstream media, but in this instance they managed to sneak one of their bullshit “Terrorist alert! Be prepared to die!” narratives into the Times of London. I wonder if the fact that Robert Murdoch owns and publishes the Times has anything to do with that, don’t you?
Pentagon Disinformation Campaign
