David Warren: Bush in London (An article to disseminate to all your friends)

Fritz Kraemer died recently. What has this got to do with President Bush's visit to London? Let me explain.

The monocle-wearing Prof. Kraemer, a curious survival of Wilhelmine Germany, and an accomplished scholar of international law, political philosophy, and history, died of kidney failure at age 95 in Washington on Sept. 8, as I just learned. It could be argued that his was the clearest mind behind the American prosecution of the Cold War against Soviet Communism. From a small office in the Pentagon, he taught a generation of U.S. officers not only the principles of geostrategic warfare; but the reasons why it must be fought and won.

Kraemer grasped that it takes more than superior man- and firepower to defeat an enemy that is ideologically driven; that geostrategic contests are determined as much by irrational and immaterial factors. He grasped that the great weakness of the United States and the West, after the defeat of Nazism, was identical with the great weakness of Germany that had allowed the rise of Hitler. In each case, it is the existence of an intellectual elite who think about abstractions instead of realities, and whose instinct to appease a mortal enemy is founded in a lazy, cowardly, and conceited moral relativism. Kraemer was father to the phrase, "provocative weakness" — in two words, the reason why the West is under attack today from such terror networks as Al Qaeda.

The man himself was a miracle of nature. He was of one piece. In the Germany of his early manhood, in the 1930s, he launched himself physically and fearlessly into demonstrations by both Brownshirts and Reds, as a streetfighting army of one.

He merits a full hagiography — I invite readers to Google-search the obituaries — but my purpose today is to juxtapose him with Henry Kissinger, whose intellectual mentor Kraemer was. Kraemer disowned his protégé in the détente era of the 1970s. He believed Mr. Kissinger guilty of spineless concessions to the political and intellectual zeitgeist. Kraemer was a man who believed in fighting for the truth, regardless of consequences; and of fighting with no option of surrender or even compromise with evil. He was no "mere conservative".

Donald Rumsfeld is his true protégé in the U.S. government today, and to a lesser extent President Bush. These are men who realize the U.S., and all free peoples, have a mortal enemy in ideological Islamism, and that it must be defeated rather than accommodated. This has made them deeply unpopular with the intelligentsia of our time, and especially with that half-educated reflection of it in the mass media. Europe and Canada are much farther gone down the rat-hole to surrender, but the U.S. itself also teeters.

EXTREME SECURITY FOR BUSH’S VISIT TO LONDON
by
Gordon Thomas

Downing Street and the White House regard a “real and present danger” is a terrorist attack during President George Bush’s state visit to London this week.

Hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters are expected to demonstrate in London and across the country against Bush. Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted this week that the visit has serious problems in terms of security.

“We are examining the possibility of a suicide bomber using a biological weapon,” confirmed a senior member of the American security task force that has arrived in London.

Experts in countering biological warfare from Porton Down, Britain’s bio-warfare defence establishment on Salisbury Plain, will be in London. They will be stationed at the Ministry of Defence during the Bush visit.

GCHQ, Britain’s “invisible eye in the sky” at Cheltenham will focus its thousands of computers and listening devices to pick up “a whisper in the wind” of any threat to the President.

At Menwith Hill in the north of England, where America’s National Security Agency has its European facility, ECHELON, NSA’s most sensitive and still ultra-secret surveillance system will be specially programmed to keep track of any threat to Bush.

The global electronic network is of truly astounding proportions. It links satellites to a series of high-speed parallel computers.
The system enables every electronic communication in the world to be intercepted – in real time.
Searching for key words, ECHELON can identify and segregate 500,000 “messages of interest” a SECOND.
By the end of the week, hundreds of US secret service men, FBI agents and anti-terrorist teams from the CIA will be in London.

Joining them will be every available officer from MI5 and MI6. All police leave has been cancelled. Surveillance will be intensified on all suspected Islamic Fundamentalists.

With them will come CIA chief, George Tenet, and FBI director, Robert Muller, who will accompany the President.
Both plan to pay special attention to the activities of Abu Hamza al-Masri. The one-eyed cleric spreads his extreme Islamic Fundamentalism outside the Finsbury Park mosque in north London which he is barred from entering.

The American intelligence chiefs will repeat again their demands that Hamza should be extradited to the United States to face terrorist charges.
The issue is likely to be discussed in talks between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Bush.

Documents discovered in Denver, Colorado, on how to poison a city’s water supply have been traced back to the Sheikh by the FBI.
But the threat to Bush has triggered a turf war between Britain’s security services and the platoons of Americans.
MI5 and the Special Branch feel there is a danger that the Washington security policy of “you do it OUR way” is counter-productive.
They point to the fact that the FBI want to conduct a finger tip search of the President’s suite in Buckingham Palace where he will stay during his three day visit.

“If the Queen went to stay in the White House, we wouldn’t expect to run a metal detector over her guest suite,” said an MI5 source.
This coming weekend, the US security team will check the ancient sewers under Whitehall where a terrorist could place a bomb. The sewers serve Buckingham Palace where the President and Mrs Bush will stay.
After the search, all manhole covers will be sealed – as they are in all American cities prior to a Presidential visit.
Security men will also first check all the food the President will be served.

“The plate containing his own meal will be selected at the last moment from several identical plates before it is served to the President,” confirmed a US security man.
Original plans for the President to ride in a horse drawn coach down the Mall to Buckingham Palace have been scrapped.
Instead, Bush’s custom-made limousine will take him everywhere in public.
The car’s defences have added 2,000 pounds to its original weight. An armoured internal partition and windshield have been integrated into the body shell. The doors and roof are similarly protected.

The titanium-ceramic armour has been tested to withstand a 155 millimetre shell airbursting overhead, or a five pound mine detonating under the chassis. All the windows are proofed against 50-calibre armour piercing bullets.

Built into the passenger compartment is an oxygen mask and fire suppression system, a global positioning indicator accurate to within one foot and a jam-resistant miniature communications switchboard which can connect the President to the Pentagon or the White House.
A touch button facility can also link him to Air Force One. Programmed into the switchboard for his London visit will be all the key security numbers he will need – plus the Queen’s direct line.

In the event of the limousine’s tyres being shot out, the car is able to maintain a speed of 60 mph on the steel rims of its wheels.
The CIA trained chauffeur has passed the most demanding driving course in the world. By his right knee, within instant reach, is a compartment containing a pump action shotgun.

“Short of driving in a tank, the President is the most protected person in public on earth,” Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld has said.
His personal phalanx of bodyguards have been given special Home Office permission to carry hand guns at all times. Usually, the protection detail of a foreign dignitary must check in their guns on arrival in Britain.

Gordon Thomas is a writer on intelligence - his many books include :
Gideon's Spies_The Secret History of Mossad
Robert Maxwell - Israel's Superspy
Seeds of Fire - China and the Story Behind the Attack on America

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