Massive Plot? Maybe Not.

Ok, this is starting to look bad. Blair's former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, observes the following:

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth ...

So, it's quickly starting to look like this will plot will take it's place with the other exaggerated threats the Bush Administration has "saved" the American people from. My personal favorite was the plot to "blow up" the Brooklyn Bridge. A plot concocted by a mentally disturbed man with a blowtorch.

I'm sure someone will do the work of listing off all of the plots that have ended up being more "aspirational than operational." I'll link to it when they do.

(hat tip, Sullivan)