Al-Qaeda blueprint exposed (Found out before they got us!)

The Mercury ^ | December 29, 2003 | Ben English, Ian Gallagher and Jef Sommerfield

[HiJinx]

Ok...

[finnman69]

Hoping those sea mines dont end up in front of the QM2 as my folks are sailing on the maiden voyage.

[Guenevere]

I know air travelers are jumpy right now....myself included.

I wondered if you might shed more light on an incident that happened yesterday at the Houston Airport.

As our very fully loaded plane was in line for take-off....very close to engaging the engines....

...the captain came on and told us another plane had spotted a 'door' open around the fuel tank, and they would need someone to close it.

A few minutes later, he said they couldn't close it there, but would have to taxi back to the terminal.

After 20, 25 minutes of silence, we finally lined up again....(this time way in back of the pack)...and took off.

The airplane seemed to gain momentum, but leveled off shortly after....then proceeded to resume climbing.

Is this normal stuff.....or is my imagination runnning overtime?

[DoctorMichael]

"....acoustic sea-mines had disappeared from a naval base in North Korea...."

Stolen?

Sold?

On loan?

With Kim's knowledge? [...most likely].

[ASA Vet]

I'm not a pilot.

I suspect it was simply they didn't get it latched securely after
fueling so it popped open during taxi. They wouldn't be able to close it
and check for a functioning latch on the taxi line. Return to the terminal was prudent.

Bet some "fuel technician" caught hell.

[bk1000]

"I'm talking about people sharp enough to know how to dive."

Oh come on. I learned in a pool when I was 10. Granted, I'm
not going to the marianas trench, but as long as I exhale on the way up, I'm cool. If I'm just going to blow myself up along with my target how much training do I need?
(Not throwing off on experienced divers. Please don't flame)

[Guenevere]

#85...Bet you're right!

It didn't hinder us, as we were on our last leg home, but others might have had connecting flights to catch, and the delay was a good 30, 35 minutes total.

[SevenDaysInMay]

The QM2 and other cruisers should have more than adequate defensive guns and AA & AS missles on board. But they don't.

Cruise ships are fat sitting ducks baiting AQ with massive loss of life. A swarm of Kodiacs could roll one by openning up much of one side. Imagine AQ "Q-ships" attacking tankers and cruise ships.

A ship is just a very fancy anchor temporarily full of air and people.

Airliners on the ground are simply birds in the nest, holding tons of Jet-A and people.

Until our nations start behaving as though we really are at War, we will lose fom time to time thousands of innocents. If a successful dirty bomb, pox, or nuke goes off, expect simple martial law and finger pointing during TEOTWAWKI.

[Antoninus]

Both light planes had been crammed with explosives. And Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he had received reliable intelligence of a Christmas Day plan to assassinate the Pope and destroy the Vatican by flying a hijacked plane into it.

What is one to make of this, considering how reticent the Pope has been toward taking sides in the war on terror? My guess is that the Islamofascists think it's in their best interests to try to make this into an overt religious war even though it hasn't been to this point.

[vox humana]

Can't these journalists think a little before they dribble out inane feel good (or bad) pronouncements?

Please be advised that the words journalists and think are mutually exclusive terms. You should never use them together in the same sentence!

[spacewarp]

A few months before 9/11, I was in an airplane. We were prepping for flight. I was in the emergency exit aisle on the right side. The captain came on the overheads and welcomed us to the flight. I wasn't used to that during pre-flight. But, he said we'd be getting underway in a few. About two minutes later, we suddenly heard over the overheads as the stewardess raced to the front a mechanical voice saying "WARNING, WARNING. Fire, Right Engine. WARNING, WARN...". About 15-20 seconds later with all of us madly scrambling to see what was going on outside my window, the captain came back on the overheads. "Whoops. Sorry folks. Wrong button."

It was not a good flight.

[ASA Vet]

Speaking of "Whoops."

Reminds me of an old Air Force safety training film from back in the 60's.

A B-52 was on taxi.
The Copilot was in a sour gloomy mood (hints at family problems,) so was not paying full attention to his duties.
The Captain said to him, "Cheer Up."
The Copilot said, "Roger, gear up," and proceeded to bring the gear up.

That's not a real good policy during taxi. The damage to the B-52 cost several thousand dollars, but luckily no one was hurt.

[Spook86]

Just a few more details on our imagery capabilities on the Korean Peninsula. Depending on mission requirements, U-2s flying out of Osan AB (about 35 NM south of Seoul) can be fitted with optical systems (known as the H-camera), a synthetic apeture radar system (ASARS), and a signals intelligence collection package. On most missions, as I recall, the aircraft carries at least two of these packages.

Without going into a lot of details on system capabilities, let me say that the H-camera and ASARS can cover virtually all of North Korea from Pyongyang to the DMZ. If these mines disappeared from a DPRK naval base, they were probably observed at Nampo or Wonsan, North Korea's major naval facilities on the Yellow Sea and Sea of Japan, respectively.

But the story's still a little fuzzy, in a couple of respects. First, acoustical mines are relatively small, and wouldn't be observed on imagery unless they were placed outside a known storage facility, or observed in a distinctive shipping container associated with that type of weapon. Unique or distinctive shipping containers are often our first tip-off to the shipment of larger items, such as aircraft components, missile sections, etc. I was never an imagery analyst or a naval specialist, so I'll defer to anyone who knows more about the imagery signature of naval mines. However, it would be difficult to detect such a shipment unless the mines were in the open in large quantities, or (the other possibility) we got some other intelligence that cued the imagery systems to begin looking for the mines.

One more thought: if we can trace this shipment to one of bin Laden's boats, it needs to be boarded, searched and sunk immediately. It's also worth noting that another, troublesome, Middle Eastern country makes regular flights to North Korea to pick up weapons. I hope our intel folks are watching that country, to see if they made a pick-up for Osama and the boys.

[Humidston]

Bump for tomorrow.