Posted on 08/10/2006 3:00:54 AM PDT by HAL9000
Police statement on airline bombing plot
LONDON (Reuters) - Following is the full text of a statement issued by London Deputy Commissioner, Paul Stephenson on Thursday morning:
"We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder.
The Commissioner has been fully briefed and he is at New Scotland Yard today. He and I want to pay tribute to officers from the Met's Anti-Terrorist Branch and the security services for the work they have undertaken to disrupt these activities.
We believe that the terrorists' aim was to smuggle explosives onto airplanes in hand luggage and to detonate these in flight.
We also believe that the intended targets were flights from the UK to the USA.
Overnight we have arrested 21 people. The majority of those arrests have been in London but we have also made arrests in Thames Valley and Birmingham. We are currently searching a number of addresses.
We are grateful to our colleagues in other force areas for their support.
As the operation got under way we spoke to community leaders to make them aware that a major anti-terrorist operation was taking place but without giving specific details about locations. This extensive dialogue will continue throughout the operation.
We would like to reassure the public that this operation was carried out with public safety upper most in our minds. This is a major operation, which will inevitably be lengthy and complex. The UK is now at the highest possible level of alert.
We will consider the threat in its wider sense and take whatever action is necessary to protect people in London and throughout the country.
Measures have already been put in place to restrict hand luggage taken onto aircraft. This will inevitably cause significant delay and we ask people to remain calm, patient and vigilant at this very difficult time.
Put simply this was a plot to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale."
Bump that to the rafters, ohioWfan.
You know, the thought just occurred to me, symbolic of the world in which we now live...Rush was saying yesterday, "Some major news story always seems to happen when I go on vacation. I wonder what it will be this time."
Well...
I try to see the good in people - really do - but WTH??? Why in the world would they think our president would want to blow up our own people? How did they get so deranged?
Do you suppose that "certain"people will now get the message that we(western civilization)are in a fight for our very lives?
The mass murder would not, however, have been nearly as massive as that already committed by Saddam Hussein, who the Democrats think Bush was wrong to take out of action.
"FOXNews just said the suspects arrested are British Muslim males of Pakastani origin.."
I'm sure their funding came from Iran.
Every time we find they fund a group we should bomb them and say "Don't do it again". The next bomb we drop say, "I told you not to do it again".
After we have dropped about 50 bombs they will get the message.
I see nothing else that would help.
I didn't even think about that, but Rush talked about that yesterday.
Well, the airplanes typically used on trans-Atlantic flights can carry anywhere from 200 to 400 depending on type. If there were 10+ flights involved, there's your "unimaginable scale."
}:-)4
Get all foreign exchange students out of this country. There is no reason that they can't use their own High Schools and Universities. Start restricting visitation visas for everyone wanting to visit this country. I don't need to take vacations outside this country because America has plenty to see already and I'm sure these foreigners have plenty to see in their country so they can just stay there.
Ping to Snugs......
Thanks for the update.
I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you.
Sleepers.
You weren't kidding with the barf alert!
Reading that, and realizing just how WILLFULLY STUPID the DUmmies are, makes me physically ill.
It is like they belong to a cult of the willfully stupid and there is basically NOTHING one can do to make them face reality!
Do Lutheran ninjas use sharpened lutefisk throwing stars?
}:-)4
I turned the sprinklers on him.
We don't know. We have theorized that they had some sort of heat control or other chip that could control a spark. I don't know the brand or if they were hand-held, battery-operated ones. I do know it was a specific brand and the ME men specified they needed 15 of them before they "returned to Michigan."
Besides the cynical sorts we see posting on FR, the people who work in the stores involved were afraid to report if they had to identify themselves becasue they feared some sort of bad reaction from their employer. After being brought up to speed on the previously published reports of large phone buys, they realized this was something that might be important.
If you have ever spoken to an FBI agent, you know they just say "Thank you". Even in person, they give nothing away.
Maybe one of our FReepers would have some idea on the hair dryers. You cannot believe how much I wanted to ask someone over on the Terror Matrix thread, but I just felt this should not be publicized immediately.
"Do you suppose that "certain"people will now get the message that we(western civilization)are in a fight for our very lives?"
Oh yes, they get the message loud and clear.
Why, it's for the children........
I have said, over and over again since 9/11/01, that all citizens and subjects of Islamic countries who cannot PROVE that they are doing work here of vital national security interest should be interned and then deported.
It was true then, it's true now, and it will be true tomorrow.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.