A Hat Trick in the War on Terror

Flopping Aces ^ | 09-10-09 | Rodney G. Graves

[Starman417]

Vindication of the effectiveness of Warfare over Lawfare, and a triumph for the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The ambivelent news is that The UK recently managed to convict a group of three terrorists for attempted terrorism:

Airline terror trial: The bomb plot to kill 10,000 people Three British Muslims have been convicted of planning a series of co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on transatlantic airliners, which could have killed up to 10,000 people. By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent Telegraph.co.uk

The al-Qaeda cell plotted to cause mass murder by detonating home-made liquid explosives on board at least seven passenger flights bound for the US and Canada. The plot had the potential to be three times as deadly as the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

The convictions followed Britain’s largest counter-terrorism operation and two criminal trials which, in total, cost an estimated £60million.

All three men convicted on Monday had been found guilty at an earlier trial last year of conspiracy to murder, but prosecutors said it was vital to secure a conviction on another charge of conspiring to blow up the aircraft in order to prove that the threat to air traffic was genuine.

How, you ask, is this ambivalent news? It took two trials.

Part of the reason is why lawfare (as apposed to war crimes tribunals) is a bad idea.

Western Courts of Law, being primarily concerned with their own citizens, make it very difficult to introduce secret evidence. From a civil liberties point of view, and with regards to one’s own citizens, this is a good thing.

War Crimes Tribunals, charged with enforcing the Customary Laws of Warfare, are more concerned with discouraging violations of the Customary Laws of Warfare and have no bars against secret evidence.

The key to the successful second prosecution of the three terrorists in this case were e-mails electronically intercepted by the National Security Agency. The NSA was, as a matter of policy and law, interested in frustrating the plans of the terrorists while preserving the source of that intelligence.

[Islaminaction]

That’s good, but if they do not address Islam itself in the UK, they are still going down.

[SeminoleSoldier]

Time for an Operation Treadstone type program (ala Jason Bourne) IMHO. There’s no substitute for putting your enemy into the dirt.