'Plot' to kill Tony Blair thwarted

BRITISH anti-terror authorities have foiled a suspected al-Qaeda plot to assassinate Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Police swooped on two Lithuanian asylum seekers believed to be spying on Mr Blair's home in his constituency in England's north.

The men were caught with hi-tech surveillance equipment less than a kilometre from Mr Blair's countryside home.

Sources said the pair raised alarm bells because they displayed the characteristics of al-Qaeda spying behaviour.

Using a stolen car fitted with false number plates, they filmed roads and traffic surrounding their alleged target and were carrying a highly-detailed map of the country area of Trimdon in County Durham.

"To dismiss these as nothing more than a couple of wandering foreigners out to see the British countryside is stretching it a bit," a security source told Britain's Daily Express newspaper.

Intelligence officials are reportedly working on the theory that the men had been hired by intermediaries to keep higher-ranking members of the terror cell at arms length.

"This is classic al-Qaeda behaviour, a textbook example of one way the terrorists would gather information about a possible target," the security source said.

"Video equipment like that wasn't normally the kind of gear you'd expect a hard-up asylum seeker to be carrying about.."

After their arrest, the Lithuanians were deported. Police said they were satisfied no security issues were involved.

Meanwhile, security for Mr Blair was stepped up yesterday for his meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi after an Islamic terror group declared Italy its top target.

The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade, which admitted responsibility for the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in March, said Mr Berlusconi would "pay with his head" for failing to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq.

The group put out a statement on the Internet on Sunday after a deadline it set for Italy to withdraw from Iraq expired. It called on terrorist cells to hit "all targets in Italy".

Italian security forces were on high alert yesterday, noting that Mr Blair's visit to Mr Berlusconi's private villa in Sardinia presented a prime target for terrorists.

Italy's Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu played down the terror threat, suggesting it had not affected the arrangements for Mr Blair's visit.

"My point is (sorry it wasn't clear), once we win and leave, then what? In Germany and Japan after WW2, we had to occupy even though we had confidence that the better instincts of those societies would eventually take over."

I'm trying to make a larger point to you: occupation isn't the only solution.

Occupation is our *preferred* solution, but it isn't our only option.

If you view our military in terms of how many nations we can forcibly occupy, you'll quickly discover that our military is stretched thin.

But that's a false picture.

We don't have to occupy a conquered nation. We don't have to let any subjugated leaders live free from imprisonment in any conquered country, and we can *always* reconquer any nation that acts up again after we've left.

In other words, we can view the military situation from the perspective of how many nations can we successfully "invade and conquer", rather than "invade and occupy".

And from that perspective, we aren't stretched thin at all. Our military can roll through nation after nation. Technically, no one can stop us from coming and going.

So while the traditional view that we must occupy every nation that we conquer is certainly our *preferred* solution, we aren't limited to that theory of operations alone.

There is another option. We can invade, conquer, leave, and re-invade if necessary. This option isn't preferred because it is the bloodier option. It is heavy-handed.

But that doesn't mean that it is improbable or non-feasible.

Ergo, if we need to conquer more nations, we can do so by applying the above theory of "invade, leave, and re-invade if needed" instead of the more traditional "invade once and occupy forever" theory.

If we need to be heavy-handed, we can technically seize and control the resources that go to and from any conquered nation, exacting an extortion on their populations to force some level of civilized compliance upon their leadership when we leave. We can control all of their population and supply movements on the seas and in the air. We can fence in entire cities and control all movement, building, and progress...if need be. Exerting control can be done without a physical occupation, too. If we want world shipping to follow our daily approval, then we *can* enforce that without an occupation. Ditto for air travel, trains, barges, and buses. We can shut down and control all TV, radio, internet, and most "national" newspapers without an occupation.

None of these heavy-handed measures are preferred, of course. But you can't say that we are stretched thin when you consider what we *can* do without further occupations. We can shut global travel, communications, and movement off, confining everyone inside their own borders, save for a small amount of foot traffic, if the situation were so dire as to demand such measures.

We can invade and conquer or obliterate *any* patch of ground and own *every* cubic foot of the world's oceans. We can control all airwaves and wire communications between borders. We can control all cross-border movement save for some foot traffic, all without further occupations.

So we can not consider "occupations" to be mandatory. Occupations are preferred and humane, but that's not mandatory.

5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

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