The Command Post - Op-Ed - Europe Is Not Prepared

July 27, 2004

Europe Is Not Prepared

The more details come out of the investigation into the Madrid bombings of March 11 of this year, the more I am beginning to get the feeling that I'm walking around with a big target pinned to my back, while the government seems to be calling 'over here!' to our enemies. The first stages of paranoia? Mmm, maybe. I'll try and explain, then you tell me if I'm sliding.

When Italian police arrested Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed in Milan, considered to be one of the masterminds behind the Madrid attacks, they had been tapping his phone conversations for three months. The wealth of information about the planning and motivation of the attacks, is just starting to come out now. Yesterday, Spanish newspaper El Mundo (link in Spanish, local copy kept here)
published new details from the transcripts of Rabei Osman, aka 'Muhammad the Egyptian', in which at the end he mentions a weapon they devised, which looks like a blow dryer and would cause convulsions and high fever (translated, emphasis mine):

Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, aka 'Muhammad the Egyptian', considered to be the brain behind the terrorist attacks of March 11, and arrested in Italy, said that "Madrid is a lesson to Europe, they need to break with the US" and praised the head of the Spanish government, Rodríguez Zapatero, "for valuing Arabs"
'The Egyptian' also called for a large-scale attack in Italy like in Madrid, he assured that Berlusconi is "a dictator" and that his government "will have the same ending as that of Aznar", for following "the American dog", as he referred to George Bush.

[...]

"Madrid is a lesson to Europe, which must understand that they need to break with the Americans. The Berlusconi government is following the same methods as the dog (referring to Bush) and I hope that God will eliminate this government of Berlusconi because it's dictatorial and a destroyer of Islam. We hope that God will give them [Berlusconi government -ed.] a disaster, and that so Italy will have a disaster", stated 'the Egyptian'.

[...]

They're slaves, now that the dog (Bush) comes [this was on the day of President Bush's visit to Rome -ed.] they put all these controls in place which serve nothing, if we want to strike, we can. It's Berlusconi's fault, who is a great dictator", states the terrorist. 'The Egyptian' adds that according to him, all countries that follow the US "will have the same fate as Aznar".

He underlines that after the Madrid attacks, which caused 192 victims, "all the Arabs and all the Spanish went onto the streets, calling Aznar a murderer".

Continuing his conversation, 'the Egyptian' has words of praise for the president of the Spanish government, stating that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero "inmediately understood the importance of the Arabs, and his rise to power has opened a dialogue".

He attacks Berlusconi again, and they are talking about if what happened in Madrid would take place in Italy, the blame would be on Berlusconi, "whoever follows this dog (Bush) will hurt himself".

On the same day, but later, 'the Egyptian' returns to talk with his friends and he talks with them about a weapon, "in the shape of a hair dryer", which "causes a lot of damage to your health".
He adds that when this weapon, of which more details are lacking, starts to blow hot air, "it heats the temperature a couple of degrees, the body will start to suffer convulsions and it weakens [the target -ed.]and the (body) temperature starts to rise".

My first instinct says Ricin, don't know why, but it may also be Anthrax, but that tends to take longer to cause effect. I'm not a toxin expert here, but Ricin in powdered form, distributed by blow dryers? Now, this is bad enough, but look at this recent Reuters report about the same terrorist. During his stay in Paris, he was directing the cell(s) in Madrid by phone, masking his calls by hacking into a local bank's phone switch:

Prosecutors this month began a probe into a flurry of calls to Spain and Morocco from a bank in the Val-de-Marne area.
The calls increased significantly in the days before the attack and stopped a few hours before the bombs ripped through a series of commuter trains on March 11, killing 191 people, according to the daily newspaper Le Parisien.

Police have established that the calls were made by "phreaking" -- a practice similar to hacking that bypasses the charging system.
The paper said Rabei Osman Ahmed es-Sayed, alias Mohamed the Egyptian, a suspect in the attacks who was arrested in Milan in June, spent several months in Val-de-Marne last year.

I tried this myself for a while, back in the eighties, but never got it to work, it is hard to do, even though the average techie will snuff at it. This is an enemy using low-end means in a counter-counter terrorist fashion, which absolutely worked.

There's one tidbit of information more I wanted to share. This week it came to light in the local press here, that a second car was used to bring the terrorists to the train stations. It was detected in June, three months after the attacks. On the first day they found a minivan, with detonators and tapes with coranic verses. This time, the police were alerted by the rental company Hertz, who recovered a stolen car from the same spot where they found the minivan, and while cleaning it, they came across a box with clothes, and again tapes. DNA testing proved two persons had been in touch with the items, one a presumed cell leader who blew himself and six other terrorists up, when their hideout was stormed in a suburb of Madrid (they started tearing down the building yesterday), and the other one, well his DNA was found in the other car, but he remains at large.

And now the politicians are calling each other names, because the government decided to keep this under wraps until this week. Recall if you will the whole setup by the Socialists directly after the attacks, inmediately spreading rumors that Aznar's government was lying, (leading exactly to all these Spaniards flooding the streets calling for Aznar's head, to the joy of the terrorists we now know). The PP is fuming that they were forced to inmediately make everything public right after the first attack, while the Socialists are now claiming that they didn't want to harm the ongoing investigation.

I said it right after the attacks, the real-time reporting of progress, by the Interior minister and heads of police, directly endangered the investigation itself, but the PP government felt itself cornered, defending against rumor mongering to which there really was no defense.

Meanwhile, there are intelligent and tech-savvy terrorist cells and at least one plotter of the Madrid attacks out there, and they're working on some Doomsday Weapon.

So, am I being paranoid?

first published at Southern Watch.

Posted By V-Man at July 27, 2004 08:16 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Well, I think you are being a little paranoid.

Wonder what the distribution scheme for the hair dryers is? How many have they manufactured. Seems like if it's less than ten thousand, it's a pretty ineffectual way of doing things.

Posted by: DWC at July 27, 2004 08:54 AM

Yeah -- you're being paranoid.

But Europe is about as "prepared" for this stuff as is anyone else.

That's the advantage to Terrism. It's supposed to try things that its targets don't expect. Otherwise, it wouldn't be terrism at all.

Europe needs Tom Ridge for a while. Have a few press conferences, issue a few color-coded alerts, note that the warnings and alerts aren't based on any Real information -- like that.

Folks will feel Lots better. Or not.

Posted by: Don at July 27, 2004 10:41 AM

More proof that the terrorists are rooting for the Dems, because the dems want "nuance" and appeasement.

Note how one country showing weakness is causing more attacks on other countries. Has the new Spanish government made Italy more or less safe Don?

Posted by: Brian at July 27, 2004 10:57 AM

Nations have Interests.

Spain's interest is not Italy. They learned that from us.

Italy understands that.

Not a terribly difficult concept.

Posted by: Don at July 27, 2004 11:03 AM

Hm, so I'm paranoid. What to do next? Oh wait. BIN LADEN LIIIIIIIEEEEEEEED!!!!!!

I'm off to the WorldNet Daily or LewRockwell.com I suppose, lol.

Posted by: V-Man at July 27, 2004 11:23 AM

Spain's interest is safety. Italy's interest is safety. Spain's actions make Italy unsafe.
Is Spain Italy's ally?

Not a difficult concept, is it Don?

Lets try another one.

Terrorists attack the US.
The US hunts and kills terrorists.
The US destroys states that help terrorists.
Fewer terrorists and fewer state sponsors makes Italy and the US safer. Is the US Italy's ally?

You blame the US for teaching nations to act in their own interests. That is garbage. Europe has been playing that game since before Columbus sailed the ocean.

You ignore the real question. How do countries combat terrorism? Do you fight together against terrorists and the states that sponsor them? Or do you sell out your unsuspecting allies in the middle of the fight to cut a deal with groups that see your continued exsistance a sin against their god?

That isn't a "terribly difficult" question for you, is it Don?

Posted by: Brian at July 27, 2004 11:28 AM

Brian,

Yes, it is a VERY DIFFICULT question for Don.

I have seen hundreds of clueless idiots like him on the hill in the last 10 years.

A lot of them are now congregated in Boston.

Posted by: leaddog2 at July 27, 2004 12:09 PM

Brian:

The safety of Spaniards is Spain's interest.

The safety of Italians is Italy's interest.

The safety of Filipinos is The Phillipines interest.

The safety of Australians is Oz's interest.

That's how national sovereignty works. Otherwise the whole concept of Nation would make little sense at all. I suspect Machiavelli explained it best earliest, though his was hardly the first nation to notice the practice.

But you misspeak to say that I "blame" the US for any other nation's interest or actions. I don't -- and haven't. You might consider applying to Faux News as a writer. If anything, precisely the opposite is what you should infer from the discussion to this point.

Nations combat Terrism as they best see fit. We didn't invade Northern Ireland to protect the Pommies from IRA terrism. In fact, a bunch of our folks supported the IRA in its activities over the years. We didn't bother to crack down on those activities here either -- and those go back nearly 90 years! We didn't invade Rwanda -- a course of actions I thought was OK. We didn't invade East Timor, we haven't invaded Sri Lanka -- the list is both long and utterly unimportant.

We pay attention to Terrism when it affects us. Not someone else.

We do what We think best -- not what someone else thinks best. We defend out own actions on the basis of Our interests and Our citizens, and not on the basis of Someone Else from Somewhere Else. It's always worked that way, and I have just No problem with it whatsoever.

But likewise, to expect any other nation to act any differently is ridiculous on its face. No -- I do not expect that Spain will spend much time or bother worrying about Italians, any more than I expect Italians to spend any time worrying about Spain either.

So, let's review this again:

* Nations have Interests.
* One of their foremost interests is the lives of their own people.
* One of their interests is Not the lives of folks from other nations. It doesn't work that way for us; it doesn't work that way for anyone else.
* But each nation may make exceptions, if it belives those exceptions are in its own interest. It's difficult to know that they are, though.

As you say, that's how nations have worked for the past 500 years. It's how they are going to work for a while yet, I suspect.

Better get used to it. Nothing on the world stage has changed that behavioral pattern. Nothing is going to, either.

Posted by: Don at July 27, 2004 04:51 PM

LD2: One of these days, you'll doubtless have something Substantive to contribute.

Till that day.

Posted by: Don at July 27, 2004 04:53 PM

Don,

I already have and on the House floor as well.

You however, never will.

Posted by: leaddog2 at July 27, 2004 05:32 PM

Did the Americans think about the consequences for their allies when USA started to attack countries without any consensus? NO, the proof is the 3/11

But it is not a white/black problem. We could talk about preferences. Of course, the Americans, Australians, Spanish, Brits, French, Germans, etc are worried about an attack against the Italian people. But are quite more worried about a terrorist attack against their respective countries. If you have to make a choice, whatever the choice, you will think in the first place about what is the better for your country. After that, you can think about what is the best for your allies. This is how it works.

Apart from that, It seems amazing to me the importance that you concede to the Egyptian´s words. Actually, when I read a text in which the words of some terrorist are typed, I use to jump to the next part in the text without reading this garbage. It doesn�t really matter to me which are their opinions and conclusions. If you have into account their words, this is actually a victory for the terrorists. The terrorists must be killed, or arrested, in order to obtain as much information as possible. The only important things are their concrete plans to kill people. Their fantasies, whishes, deliriums�who cares about that.

And yes V-Man, you are getting paranoid, as the most American people. And this is another victory for the terrorists. Do you know what is the main preoccupation for the Spaniards, as recent opinion polls said? The unemployment. It is more probable to be an unemployed, to die in a traffic accident, to have a hearth attack, than to die in a terrorist attack. They play with our fear and our paranoia. Talking about me, they have failed. What about you?

Posted by: VinoTinto at July 27, 2004 07:40 PM

the whole idea about the European Union is exactly to make Italy's interest part of Spain's interest as well. Replace Italy and Spain for Texas and California, and you might think differently. Vino Tinto shows exactly the problem in Europe in dealing with terrorism, everybody going out and doing their own thing, uncoordinated (only now are they starting to look into that, but intelligence wise, there's a lot not being shared, mainly thanks to France and it's 'independent' stance, ie passing stuff onto the arabs. the 'paranoid' reference was part jokingly intended, you with USA Today or what? if the main preoccupation for Spanish people (probably one of those government controlled polling institutes) really is unemployment as you say, it just underscores my point, insofar that people are not aware of the terrorist threat, and their government is playing it down, because it does not fit their agenda. Spaniards are too accustomed to terrorism, thanks to the lack-luster battle (almost forty years!) against ETA, and in the case of the Madrid attacks of March 11, they are too much in the understanding that it was payback for their country's presence in Iraq, and not that Al Qaeda has a separate agenda for Spain itself. Again, helped by a government which on that premise won the elections.

Posted by: V-Man at July 28, 2004 05:19 AM

Sincerely, I am tired that many people link the illegal and unjust invasion in Iraq with the anti-terrorist war. The war in Afghanistan was a necessary invasion. The war in Iraq is a crime. The war in Iraq is not an anti-terrorist war, but a terrorist war itself. It seems logical to me the dissensions between the EU members, since the EU is an association, not a nation like the USA is.

The collaboration against terrorism between the EU countries is ok. The proof is that Italy and Spain governments are not agree abut the Iraq matter (Italian people and the Spanish people, are agree, since both peoples think that the war in Iraq is a big crime), but the Egyptian has been arrested in Italy, and probably will be extradited to Spain. Please, don�t mistake war in Iraq with war on terror.
This is a perversion itself.

V-Man, the problem of ETA is too complicated and too extensive to explain here. It has nothing to do with the Al Qaeda problem, are different terrorist strategies. I only say that you have not idea about it, so I will not take into account your comments about ETA.

Posted by: VinoTinto at July 31, 2004 08:29 AM