-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 2, 2007 8:40:23 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Keith Olbermann on London's "Terrorist Attack"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19549636/
Countdown, with Keith Olbermann
June 29, 2007
The London bomb scare. A car discovered overnight in Piccadilly
Circus, filled with canisters of propane and gasoline and nails,
possibly to be detonated by a remote device, possibly a second
vehicle connected to it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If the device had detonated, there could have
been significant injury or loss of life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: How did they find it? Did a detainee crack? Did an
illegal wiretap hit paydirt?
No -- an ambulance crew helping a guy who fell down in a nightclub
saw smoke coming out of the car.
<snip>
OLBERMANN: The Bush administration‘s twin mantras for war in
Iraq, that we need to go outside the Constitution to interrupt
terrorism, and that we need to fight terrorists there so they do
not follow us here, turned on their twin heads early this morning
by a chance discovery in London, not by an interrogation unit, but
by an ambulance crew attending to an injured man near Piccadilly
Circus, noticing what appeared to be smoke come from a Mercedes
parked outside a nightclub, what we now know to have been an
explosive or combustible device that had failed to detonate.
Our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN, the details of the plot,
whatever they were, still emerging at this hour, a second car
inspected by authorities because it had been illegally parked, so
they towed it, both vehicles said to have contained inflammable
materials, what we know in just the first car to have been several
propane gas canisters described as patio gas canisters, nails, and
around 50 gallons of gasoline, officials saying that the cell phone
that was part of the first car bomb, if it was a bomb, had received
two incoming phone calls.
It failed to initiate any explosions before police managed to
disable it. The cars, parked within blocks of each other in the
heart of London‘s theater district, at the height of the summer
tourist season, the timing, 36 hours after a new prime minister had
taken office, a week before the anniversary of the July 7 subway
bombings there.
Let‘s turn now to Larry Johnson, former CIA officer, was a deputy
director of the State Department‘s Office of Counterterrorism under
the first President Bush.
Larry, thanks again for some of your time tonight.
LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER CIA OFFICER: Good evening, Keith.
OLBERMANN: The mechanics of this, you got dozens of surveillance
cameras blanketing this area, might be the most-photographed area
in the world, as the cars are parked. There‘s 50 gallons of gas in
the first car, camper-sized canisters of propane, meaning they‘re
used by campers, and some nails. What happens if you actually
manage to spark this device?
JOHNSON: It‘s going to do a lot of damage to the interior of the
Mercedes, but it‘s NOT the kind of car bomb or truck bomb we see
going off in Iraq.
I mean, what‘s really striking about this, Keith, is, today you had
two non-bombs in London, and we had at least five bombs in Baghdad,
in which U.S. soldiers were killed in one of those. So it‘s sort
of out of proportion. This was an incendiary [device], NOT a high
explosive.
OLBERMANN: I‘ve read and heard nothing in any of the coverage
here, nothing in these news conferences, about a detonating device
apart from a cell phone. What was supposed to cause this thing to
blow up? Because if we can put together car bombs with half a tank
of gas and some propane and an old cell phone, then every drunken
Hollywood starlet is a potential car bomber, isn‘t she?
JOHNSON: Right. Well, I think the fuel, the petrol, the 50
gallons, if you set that on fire, that fire can spark an explosion
in a propane tank. But I‘ve seen those go off, and when they go
off, it‘s an enormous boom. It splits the tank. But you‘re not
going to get fragments and projectiles like a hand grenade going
off. So you wouldn‘t want to be in the car when it happened, but,
you know, if somebody was within, you know, 20, 30 feet of it, they
would have ear damage, but not much more.
OLBERMANN: So we‘re not talking about shrapnel, then?
JOHNSON: Correct. This is not a shrapnel-causing device. And
clearly, the folks who put this together, you know, we‘re looking
at yuppie terrorists, at a minimum. They can afford a Mercedes,
but they couldn‘t afford enough money to get a decent class in how
to make a bomb that would actually go off. Thank God.
OLBERMANN: What alarms you about this, other than the media‘s
nodding-head doll coverage of this?
JOHNSON: Well, I think the other thing that alarms me about it is
that we‘re so ho-hum when we have this body count piling up every
day in Baghdad, where daily there are bombs, car bombs, truck bombs
going off, and everyone is like, Well, OK, you just get used to
it. And you have a non-event in London, and we‘re going to battle
quarters and beginning to give the old hairy eyeball to every
Muslim, when it‘s not even clear yet that -- You know, all we know
is that these were people who could afford a Mercedes. That‘s the
extent of what we know about this so far.
OLBERMANN: The practical stuff that maybe should be worrisome,
obviously, there are terrorists, there are people who want to do
horrific things. No question about any of that. But the idea that
we need to fight the terrorists in Iraq, got to fight them there so
they don‘t follow us here, whatever this was in London today, they
were already presumably there -- unless this was the graduating al
Qaeda bomb squad class, which apparently needs remedial work. I
mean, does that logic about fighting them there instead of here
even hold together slightly tonight?
JOHNSON: No, not at all. In fact, what we know is that the U.S.
conflict over there, U.S. involvement over there, is aggravating
the problem, not calming it. So I think what we need to do is
continue to rely upon good intelligence, good police work, but
ultimately, you know, neighbors watching out for each other.
OLBERMANN: Where, besides you, are the skeptics who know what
they‘re talking about in this? Is there a problem with expertise
on television about terrorism that nine out of 10 guys who come on
TV have a vested interest in there being terrorism, otherwise their
counterterrorism companies wouldn‘t exist any more?
JOHNSON: Keith, we saw about three years ago Gen. Richard Myers,
the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, say that the threat of
terrorism was the greatest threat we‘ve faced in this country in
the United States since the Civil War. And what we know factually
is that fewer than 50,000 people, not just Americans, but all
people worldwide, have died from international terrorism since
1968. We lose 50 million people plus in World War II, and we have
someone like General Myers saying that this is the greatest threat?
It‘s a threat, but we need to put it in its proper perspective and
go back and remember the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It‘s
the fear. If we allow the fear to conquer us, and allow the fear
to drive us to do things like allow Guantanamos, like allow
torture, then we ourselves become victims to that very thing which
we say we‘re trying to fight.
And that‘s—you know, I think big deep breaths, remain calm, and
let‘s stop with some of the alarmist behavior.
OLBERMANN: Larry Johnson, former CIA officer, former
counterterrorism officer. Great thanks, Larry. We appreciate it.
JOHNSON: Thank you, Keith.
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