How Many Terrorists Does One F-16 Get You?
Fred Kaplan tries to teach BushCo a lesson about cooperating with unsavory regimes by pointing out the central role Pakistan played in yesterday’s big terrorist bust.
There’s a broader lesson here, and it speaks to the Bushadministration’s present jam throughout the Middle East and in otherdanger zones. If the British had adopted the same policy toward dealingwith Pakistan that Bush has adopted toward dealing with, say, Syria orIran (namely, it’s an evil regime, and we don’t speak with evilregimes), then a lot of passenger planes would have shattered andspilled into the ocean, hundreds or thousands of people would havedied, and the world would have suddenly been plunged into very scaryterritory.
This is not one of Kaplan’s strongest articles. He makes an important point about our relationship with Syria and Iran, sure. But to play up BushCo’s short-sightedness on Syria and Iran, Kaplan pretends that only Britain cooperated with Pakistan’s ISI on this terrorist bust. Kaplan thereby ignores that the US–in both this bust and the war on terror more generally–has precisely the kind of relationship he would advocate, one cognizant of the fact that, "the concept of morality in international relations is more complex than President Bush sometimes seems to recognize." Indeed, I have a suspicion that Pakistan’s involvement here may raise some very challenging questions about our cooperation with them on the war on terror.
Consider how Pakistan itself describes its involvement in this terrorist bust.
According to William Arkin, our gov’t has known about this for some time. He makes the following points
If the TSA and Homeland Security KNEW that liquids could be used as explosives and they did nothing, particularly if they did nothing so as not to disrupt the British investigation, then indeed little has changed since 9/11. The government has promised us is that it is no longer going to hoard information and investigate endlessly If it comes upon actionable intelligence, the government claims, it is going to use it to protect citizens first.
But they didn’t. That much is clear.
One thing I love about Arkin is that he doesn’t consistently agree with me (or, since he’s the expert, I with him) on the degree of threat of these things. That’s comforting in one sense, because it shows he’s really assessing each event independently.
But in this case, it’s one of the most damning comments about the BushCo WOT.
Pakistan is a real country and everything.
What do you mean Iran and Syria?
If, someday soon, the opposition in Pakistan manages to decapitate the government, as they have attempted unsuccessfully several times in the past, will those F-16s come back to bite us? When Khomeini took over, Iran had 79 F-14s. As of 2004, at least 25 of these Tomcats were still in service, despite the lack of original spare parts (except for engines, the Iranians have fabricated these themselves) and high attrition of these complex fighter-jets during the Iraq-Iran war. The 30-year-old Tomcats, of course, are no match for the 21st Century U.S. (or Russian) air arsenal.
On the other hand passing out F-16s to unstable regimes seems more than a little foolish even if they are arresting alleged terrorists. Otherwise, why the outcry over Venezuela’s threat to sell its 21 F-16s to Iran?
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As for the no-liquids-but-baby-formula rules now in place after a decade of knowing al-Qaidah had actually tested liquid explosives in â€Bojinka,†does it really matter given that the 6 billion pounds of air cargo that travels by passenger jet in the United States continues to be uninspected, and the Safe Skies Cargo Inspection Act introduced by Congressman Ed Markey languishes in Congress?
A test run for the Bojinka attack was carried out against Philippines Air Flight 434 in December 1994 without the need for a suicide bomber. Ramzi Yousef left behind a small bomb in a life jacket under a seat. The bomb worked perfectly, killing one passenger, and had it been full strength, might easily have brought down the plane.
Since air cargo isn’t inspected, nobody would have to deal unstable liquid chemicals like the nitrogylcerine planned for â€Bojinka.†It only takes a pound or so of Semtex to take out a plane, and a terrorist could put many pounds aboard a box labeled whatever he wanted; it would never be screened. Indeed, because nobody inspects, a terrorist could wire up some black powder for an explosive strong enough to bring down a jet.
As we saw yesterday and today, passengers generally don’t gripe about tightening of air security. Even if certain measures don’t really protect them, they go along with â€better safe than sorry.†But the air cargo industry has opposed inspections because it would, it is said, have an impact on their bottom line. And the GOP Congress has taken no action.
And if we did inspect cargo, then it might make local labor more competitive.
Yeah, I’m with you MB. I keep raising the comparison some made a few months back with Iran, early 1979. If you had a choice at that point, would you have kept arming the Shah?
And if you figure one F-16 per terrorist (which is about what Pakistan got), then we’re looking at thousands of F-16s for our partners in the WOT.
Hmmmmmm. Perhaps I will reconsider adding Lockheed to my pitiful stock portfolio.
Think about it, MB, it’s the best get rich quick scheme ever!!
Bush: Making an unlimited supply of terrorists in Iraq which makes him look weak which means he desperately needs to bust some terra-ists
Pakistan: Happy to cooperate at the cost of one F-16 per terrorist
MB as Lockheed owner: â€Happy†to sell Pakistan an unlimited supply pof F-16s
emptywheel as Taxpayer: Hopeful her friend MB will help her out after the US’ unlimited supply of loans to Pakistan to buy an unlimited supply of F-16s so it can help us capture an unlimited supply of terrorists makes the US go broke and ruins the global economy
They’re fricking geniouses, these Neocons.
EW:
Look up the fire in Islamabad Government offices on the night after 9/11 (2001 in case you are in the 30% who don’t know the year;-)
I don’t want to hear Condi Rice say again ’No one could have known… Maybe down in the bowels of the CIA maybe someone knew but no one in the WH …’ blah blah.
So here goes, bowels and all: Has anyone mentioned that body cavities (male and female) could hide the precursor explosive liquid materials? Just like with drug mules crossing the US southern border, these materials could be retrieved easily during flight with a series of short or long bathroom breaks by one or several plotters.
Unless the airports announce that they are hiring proctologists and gynecologists and screening EVERYONE preflight (at least it would give us something to do during the 3 hour preflight screenings), I don’t see how giving up my water bottle, MP3 player and my noise cancellation headphones will make me any safer. I might as well be comfortable if I’m going to be flying my last plane ride.
I suppose the current liquid bans WILL make it more difficult for terrorists to act with impunity. Forcing terrorists to resort to stuffing explosive materials into their body cavities might make them more resentful of authorities, but I suppose they would get over it eventually.
“The bomb worked perfectly, killing one passenger, and had it been full strength, might easily have brought down the plane.’’
If it had been one row further back, it probably would have brought down the plane. So claims Peter Lance in his book about Ramzi Youcef and the background to 9/11: 1000 years for revenge: international terrorism and the FBI, the untold story. This has an interesting if somewhat melodramatic account of Ramzi Yousef’s doings as well as about the FBI’s attempt to investigate.
The point was that the aircraft was a Boeing 747 and the seat just behind where Ramzi Youcef put the bomb would have been directly over the center fuel tank: whereupon there was a good chance the explosion would go thru the floor under the seat, ignite the center fuel tank and destroy the aircraft. [A center fuel tank explosion is believed to have been the cause of the crash of TWA flight 800 a few years later. Lance, in his book, offers up the possibility that Flight 800 was brought down by such a bomb, with the traces of the downward explosion erased by the center fuel tank explosion. He agrees that this possibility seems unlikely at present.]
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