"The best source of information on terrorist attacks is the terrorists themselves " - Bush justifies torture

President Bush gives a weekly radio broadcast. This week he took the opportunity to explain why he was vetoing the Intelligence Funding Bill (HR 2082) which has written into it restrictions on CIA interrogators to use only methods and techniques auhtorized in the 2006 US Army Field Manual. Senate approved the Bill on February 13th but not witha 2/3 rds majority which could prevent a Presidential veto. The 2006 manual specifies that the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees and eliminates separate standards for the questioning of prisoners of war and enemy combatants.

The President gave as evidence the success of interrogation the plot by Al Quaeda to bomb the Library Tower in Los Angeles...and thereby hangs a flimsy tale.

The first the world knew about this alleged and dastardly plot, and the way it was foiled was when The President was in Los Angeles on February 9th 2006 talking to the National Guard Association of the United States.

Under pressure and facing down Congressional attacks on domestic wiretapping and the detention of terrorist suspects, he needed to demonstrate how effective its methods of battling threats from jihadists had been.

He didn't start well ,as he explained how 4 Al Quaeda suspects would set off shoe bombs, blowing off a cockpit door of a hi-jacked plane and fly it into the Liberty Tower in Los Angeles...well he meant the Library Tower and had everyone puzzled for a bit even though it is tallest building on the West Coast. ...but not the schedulers at Fox who were showing shots from the Independence Day ( A 20th C Fox Film) movie of aliens taking over the tower minutes later.

In a sense this wasn't even news as in October Bush had revealed that the US and it's allies had thwarted 10 serious al-Qaida attacks since Sept. 11. A White House list released at the time referred to a plot to fly a hijacked plane into an unspecified West Coast city in 2002. Citing unidentified sources, news organizations reported that the target was the Library Tower and that the plot's author was Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured in 2003.

Anyway in this later manifestation of the alleged plot Mohammed deputized Hambali, head of the affiliated Southeast Asian group, Jemaah Islamiya, to set up a West Coast attack, and they put together a four-man cell. Asians were chosen, Bush said, on the theory that they would draw less suspicion. (Also perhaps on the basis that having blown their feet off, and possibly the front of the plane they would then guide it precisely into the tower)

If this was news to the US nation it was also news to Los Angeles Mayor , Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa who said he knew nothing about the plot ... nobody had told him and he learnt about it , "like everyone else" by watching the TV News.

At the White House a sceptical Press pack hounded fragrant, lissome and beautiful Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend.

Who were the 4 cell members the President mentioned ? Fran Townsend revealed that 2 were South Asian, 2 were Southeast Asian, no she wouldn't give names or say where they were .

The slim nubile young lady did tell the eager press that four plotters met with Bin Laden in Afghanistan where they pledged an oath of allegiance to the Sheikh before returning to Southeast Asia. She was further pressed - when did this meeting take place ?. Ms. Townsend said it was in October 2001 - a good time to meet Bin Laden one imagines, just after the US invasion.

So far there is no public evidence that the plot was operational at any time and there is no public evidence that the plot was thwarted because of NSA wiretaps that the administration seeks to justify.

It's highly likely if any of the alleged plotters were in fact detained and interrogated ... that they were given a hard time. As we don't know who they are, or where they are, we will never know ... but then they may never have existed... like the plot. (Speech Mp3 here)

Anyway if the CIA are torturing people, they can carry on doing it...with the President's blessing.

Al Quaida bombers hit Mexican oil / Gas pipelines in sophisticated terrist attacks - Maybe

It is evident that the series of remotely controlled explosion that hit Mexican gas and oil piplines in the week ending July 16th were more sophisticated than at first reported.

Kevin Hall says that the operation indicated extensive knowledge of Mexico’s energy infrastructure,. Not onyl did they hit gas and oil pipelines they had sufficient knowedge to hit major shut off valves to cut nationwide distribution. He quotes a "US official" (?)

“These are major, very expensive shutoff valves that control the flow of all this petroleum (and natural gas). This wasn’t a round tube in the middle of nowhere.”

The bomb planters knew which side of the valve to strike, ensuring that crude oil did not flow to a nearby refinery and that natural gas did not flow to foreign and Mexican manufacturers in the central Bajio region, the "US official" said.

The Oaxaca based Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR) (Popular Revolutionary Army) has claimed responsibility for the attacks and justified their actuions against the state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). It called the July 5 and July 10 pipeline bombings self-defense and demanded the release of two missing members.

So far the Mexican in vestigations have been kept secret, (and it appears aided by "US officials" ) and Mexican media accounts have un helpful and misleading.

Voice of America's VOA's Greg Flakus reports from Mexico City say the attacks remain a mystery as the EPR have never ventured so far North nor had the access to HE explosives and bomb making skills (no visits to the beauty suppliers for Hydrogen peroxide for these terrists it seems) .

He quotes " political analyst" Ana Maria Salazar , who says she remains baffled by the bombings and says she cannot rule out the possibility that a foreign terrorist group might have had a hand in it.

Then , well, well, well ....

"There was a threat posted on a Web site a couple of months ago, supposedly by al-Qaida, that was threatening all the countries providing petroleum to the United States, which included Mexico and Venezuela, which made Hugo Chavez very upset, by the way," she added. "So there is that possibility."

Energy analyst David Shields sees the hand of the powerful and violent drug trafficking cartels, against which President Calderon launched an offensive shortly after taking office last December. He points out that despite good protection to its oil production and export infrastructure, which employs missile-equipped naval vessels to patrol waters near offshore oil platforms, the internal 60,000 kilometres of internal pipelines and pumping structures serving Mexico's own population are much more vulnerable.

Whilst dismissing attacks on export facilities he sees a continued threat to its domestic energy supply network could cripple important industries and discourage foreign investors who are considering placing plants here. "Security experts" on the basis of the evidence of the explosions say the perpetrators knew the attacks would disrupt important industries and probably had information from someone inside PEMEX as to which pipes to bomb for the most effect.

Two things are for sure - someone somewhere is going to boost the Al Quaida connection.... and the price of oil and gas isn't going to go down.