1115.org

After the questionable, inflated, possibly politically motivated claims made repeatedly over the last week have been set to one side, what is indisputable is that last Thursday’s arrests in the London liquid explosives plot happened only because the U.S. insisted upon it, and bullied the British authorities into going along. The British had wanted to maintain the surveillance for at least another week, till the plotters started dry runs. They wanted to collect more information and more evidence. But we bullied them into a premature ejaculation.

Why we did this is not entirely clear, since there was indisputably no imminent threat. Maybe we just have a pathological need to treat Britain like our bitch. Just as President Bush likes to go “Yo! Blair!” to Tony Blair, we like to go “Yo! Ho!” to Great Britain. But people who are much smarter than me seem to think the Bush administration was motivated by the need to urgently distract attention from Lieberman’s loss in the Connecticut primary, the ongoing mess in Iraq, Israel’s obvious failure to fulfill its objectives against Hezbollah.

What is clear is the effect of our insistence on forcing immediate arrests:

Home Secretary John Reid, Britain’s chief law-and-order official, acknowledged that some of the suspects would likely not be charged with major criminal offenses, but said there was mounting evidence of a “substantial nature” to back the allegations.

Nice try, Johnny me boy, but mounting evidence of a substantial nature that allows many of those arrested to get off lightly is not exactly the consummation that was devoutly to be wished, is it? Not a very satisfying climax, right?

A post at anewerworld.org explains the implications of Reid’s statement:

First, in contrast to the United States where generally an overt act is required as an element of a conspiracy crime, British conspiracy law requires only an agreement to carry out the act. “Even if nothing is done in furtherance of the agreement, the offence of conspiracy is complete.” This makes the fact that “Home Secretary John Reid, Britain’s chief law-and-order official, acknowledged that some of the suspects would likely not be charged with major criminal offenses” all the more significant. Can the British not even prove that an agreement was made?

After more than a year of surveillance they can’t even meet this low-level burden of proof? This does, of course, call into question whether any reliable evidence exists that there was actually a credible plot. But it also makes it crystal clear how critical it was to continue the surveillance and collect more evidence, instead of rushing in to make arrests, if we were to have any hope of bringing these guys to justice. And it was good old us who said “No way”. And for no good reason. (At some point, hopefully, Bush will clarify who’s in line for what medal for this one. Chertoff is grossly overdue, in my opinion.)

But maybe all this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, actually. If there’s one thing we have proved again and again though our actions and inactions, it’s that we have a pathological aversion these days to bringing terrorists to trial. The lone exception to this evident rule was the clown prince of terrorism, Zacarias Moussaoui. We have absolutely no intention of prosecuting any of the “high value detainees” we have secreted here and there around the world, starting with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. (Of course, for all anyone knows, we have already tortured him to death, and cut him up into little bits, and fed him to the other detainees. Wonderful, innit, what secret prisons and no accountability allow you to do and get away with.) We have resolutely refused to cooperate with terrorist trials in other countries (can you say Germany?), preferring to see defendants acquitted rather than offer the testimony needed to put them away.

Our motto seems to have become “Kangaroo courts or nothing”. And since that wimp Blair doesn’t seem to be able to pull off kangaroo courts, what option did we have?

So why should it be surprising that the one indisputable result of our “assistance” in the London liquid explosives plot is to sabotage the prosecution of the suspects? That seems to be the one thing we do consistently well in TWAT.