Christmas terror attack 'highly likely'

The Sunday Telegraph ^ | December 10, 2006 | Matthew Moore

[MadIvan]

An attempted terrorist attack in Britain over the Christmas period is "highly likely", the Home Secretary said today.

John Reid said that around 30 conspiracies were under preparation, and the current threat level was "very high indeed".

He told GMTV Sunday that he did not think it an attack was inevitable, but that "the terrorists only have to get through once, as they did on July 7, for us to see the terrible carnage that it causes".

"Our security services have to be successful on every occasion to prevent that happening," he said.

"I try to walk the tightrope between being truthful and honest about the threat to the public but, on the other hand, to say we are doing everything possible to combat it and to try to keep our lifestyle as near as possible to the British way of life."

The Home Secretary added that he thought the battle against Islamic terrorism was likely to last longer than a generation.

Mr Reid's comments echo statements made by last month by Tony Blair and Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, about the rising threat posed by Muslim fundamentalist terrorists. Mr Blair warned that Britain faced a "long and deep struggle" to defeat al-Qa'eda.

The official terror assessment, posted on the Government's Intelligence website, currently rates the threat as "severe" - the second highest level.

"We ought to be very grateful to the people in the security services who work night and day to try to protect us," Mr Reid said.

"We can never guarantee that we will get 100 per cent success but we do get 100 per cent effort from the security services."

[napscoordinator]

That is anti-American. lol.

[Hatteras]

If the color red is "Very High" what color is "Very High Indeed!"?

[Kenton]

But what about a holiday terror attack? I hope the Muslims are sensitive to all cultures during this season.

Considering that they get especially blood-thirsty during their own holy month, Ramadan, I don't expect any respect for our holidays from them.

[newcats]

Festivus is a made-up holiday from "Seinfeld"

All "holidays" are made up. Just some are more recently made up than others.
Do you believe that Jesus was born on 12/25/00?

[rogator]

Thank you.
I have never seen such a thing and it's hard to believe this kind of stuff goes on.
I can't help but wonder why folks continue to patronize these establishments.
I would feel like picketing them.
There should be a law.

[WashingtonSource]

Just kill them.

[WashingtonSource]

All holidays may be made up, but there's no doubt that all the celebrating that's been going on every December is about Christmas and has been for hundreds and hundreds of years. There would be no national holiday on December 25 if we were not a Christian nation celebrating Christmas. All the other celebrations are just being blown up to be a distraction from the Big Event.

[newcats]

All the other celebrations are just being blown up to be a distraction from the Big Event.

Even Hanukkah?

[Joan Kerrey]

I'm afraid it will take something on the scale of a nuclear attack on London to rouse the populace

I'm convinced that you're right but even then there will be those who will continue to blame the policies of the West. And while some of the populace will be roused others will look for accommodation and appeasement. It's 1938 all over again when getting a promise of peace on paper will convince people they are safe. "Peace in our times" said Neville Chamberlain after negotiating with Hitler in 1938 and holding up the non-aggression pact proudly.

[Joan Kerrey]

Nope, no attack comming anytime soon, except perhaps lone crazies

-----

And there are more than enough of those in the millions I think.

[finnigan2]

"I'm afraid it will take something on the scale of a nuclear attack on London to rouse the populace"
"I'm convinced that you're right but even then there will be those who will continue to blame the policies of the West."

- I agree. Please see my second post at #117 sent to UKrepublican for my further remarks on this topic. UK's heart seems to be in the right place but I'm afraid he seems to be in the minority and also in denial about the true state of affairs when it comes to Britain's slow descent into demographic suicide.
Just in my neighborhood in the past two years we have had three families emigrate from London where they were all police officers. They all got jobs with the police force here and one of them even left his job as Sargent to start all over as a constable here.
These people are somewhat unique in that they dealt with the situation there up close and every day, they saw the way the wind was blowing and decided to get out before conditions worsened, even if it meant a loss in income.

[WV Mountain Mama]

I believe there to be a huge difference between a religious celebration and a "holiday" made up by a writer for a sitcom.

[Churchillspirit]

Now I'm really curious.

How do you keep cream; mushrooms and pecan pie fresh for over two weeks?

Your menu sounds delicious by the way.

[roaddog727]

Mushrooms are canned.

Cream lasts forever (two weeks in this case).

Pecan Pie gets made day of feast - all ingredients are non-perishable more/less except eggs, but fall into the 2 week life expectancy realm (and anyway, the spiced rum will kill any bacteria.

Thanks.

I've been cooking in the kitchen since age 8. I thoroughly enjoy it, but would HATE to do it professionally.

[Churchillspirit]

Looks like you are on top of things in the kitchen.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

[roaddog727]

"Looks like you are on top of things in the kitchen." < Oh Yeah> Merry Christmas to you and yours. :-)

[UKrepublican]

I strongly disagree with them and am in an extreme minority in that I strongly support president bush.

"I have read articles where Blair has promised a British withdrawal from fighting the war on terror as early as next year"

Those articles are massively basless. He has promised nothing of the kind.

"My problem with Blair is that while he may talk the talk, he can't walk the walk - especially on the domestic front whereas Australia's Howard has led by example. Blair is a typical nanny state wuss, wedded to the socialist "multi culti" dream of "why can't we all just get along". He's the wrong man for the job and worse still, whoever replaces him will be even more so."

I respectfully disagree.

I could reel off massive achievements of his, although I'm sure you wouldn't be interested. Blair is not a socialists socialist in that his agenda has been anything but which is why he is so massively unpopular in his party.

[Joan Kerrey]

decided to get out before conditions worsened, even if it meant a loss in income.

Smart of them. Income shouldn't be a concern when one's life is at stake. I'm sure we're going to be seeing more isolated acts of terror in the near future and when strong enough the boldness will continue with gangs learning that they can get away with it unless the tide turns. If I were a police officer I certainly wouldn't work in Paris or London.

[finnigan2]

I can see your argument but must agree with my favorite journalist, Mark Steyn, in his recent comments on Mr. Blair contained in a column he wrote for the Western Standard.
If I may quote a part of his column at some length, he wrote:
"Tony Blair, it seems to me, will go down as a tragic figure. Unlike Jean Chrétien, who was almost eerily unmoved in the wake of 9/11 and unmoveable in the months afterward, the British prime minister grasped immediately the bigger picture and outlined it better than President Bush. He still does. But the citizens of the United Kingdom never accepted it as their war, and they still don't. Even after the July 7th bombings. Historians will be baffled by Blair, a man who thinks nothing of diagnosing the ills of distant continents but is rendered inarticulate and incoherent when it comes to a strategy for the home front. To read Londonistan, Melanie Phillips' superb analysis on the jihad's gaming of Britain, is to realize that the country is increasingly a more sophisticated version of Afghanistan, Lebanon or Somalia--a husk of a nation in which darker forces have set up shop, and in which establishment complacency, hard-left multiculturalism and an ever more Europeanized bureaucracy have made it all but impossible for the state to rouse itself. Britannia has demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq that she can still just about summon the "war will" on the battlefield. On the broader cultural front, where this war in the end will be won, there's little evidence of any kind of will. When one considers the impunity with which the country's incendiary imams incite treason, it requires a perverse genius on the part of Tony Blair to have found the political courage to fight an unpopular war on a distant shore but not the political courage to wage it closer to home where it would have commanded far more support. That's the sad lesson of the July 7th bombings: the British government has a strategy for southern Iraq but not southern England.
Britain's language, culture, legal system and political tradition have been the greatest single force for good in shaping the modern world. But discarding its own inheritance and yoking its future to a Eutopian pseudo-federation has left it constitutionally (in every sense) incapable of resisting the depredations of more motivated forces. Unless things change in a big way, there won't always be an England."

Admittedly, it's a lengthy extract, but it's an assessment that I doubt you might see coming from any home grown source. Perhaps it might at least provide some food for thought and a new perspective.