Paranoia , fear mongering , excessive over reactions leading to what type of " security " anyway ? Security isn't hiding under you bed because of "chatter " the bogeyman is out there ! Of course , these extreme security mesures may not appear as strange - if it wasn't for the fact that the US and West generally are funding the same alleged terrorists groups that we supposedly are also fighting ( Iraq , Afghanistan , Libya , Syria )
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/05/speculation-over-imminent-terror-plot-grows/
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http://www.debka.com/article/23170/US-sources-Terror-alert-prompted-by-suspected-suicide-bombers-with-implanted-explosives-
US officials are beginning to release nuggets of information about the nature of the threat.
According to one high placed US official, concern focuses on the possibility of terrorists carrying explosive devices implanted inside their bodies. DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources add that plastic explosives in the body of a would-be suicide bomber without metal components are undetectable by standard screening devices such as those used at most international airports.
Some US sources are calling the current threat the most serious since 9/11. They are alarmed by the degree of confidence AQIM leaders show in openly using electronic communications to boast about the unstoppable attack they are plotting.
Britain, Germany and France closed their embassies in Yemen Sunday and Monday. British authorities said some embassy staff in Yemen had been withdrawn. Canada also closed its embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh
US agencies are concerned that just three or five suicide bombers with undetectable implanted devices would not be caught in time to prevent them form detonating their devices in a coordinated attack on three or more continents. This might set off the signal for a large wave of bombing attacks in many more countries.
Nothing in this statement specified the nature of the “potential threat.”
2. If the threat is specific why does the warning extend to so many countries? Al Qaeda is not even active in all them. If the danger is so immediate, why haven’t any governments in North Africa and as far east as Bangladesh declared their own terror alerts ?
4. In the past week, US drones conducted three attacks against al Qaeda targets in Yemen, where the organization is defined by US officials as al Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate and capable of attacking the US embassy in Sanaa.
All 12 US drone attacks in Yemen of the last eight months targeted Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Although its deputy chief Said al Shiri, a former inmate of the Guantanamo Bay facility, was eliminated, AQAP’s entire high command has remained intact and fully functional. In other words, US intelligence counter-terror agencies have not discovered their whereabouts.
5. Neither have they run down the location of al Qaeda’s top leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Tuesday, he released a communiqué accusing US agents of engineering the coup which deposed the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood president by penetrating the Egyptian army. He called for more attacks on America.
6. Saturday, the international police agency, Interpol, published a global security alert following "the escape of hundreds of terrorists and other criminals" in the past month, including jailbreaks in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan. Interpol feared that the escapees would team up with al Qaeda to hit Western targets. Yet none of its 190 member states have declared terror alerts on this score either.
7. Finally, the sweeping warnings from the Obama administration dramatically refute its own oft-heard claims that al Qaeda is no longer a force to be reckoned with, because it has lost its compact central command and control of its component branches, which have split up into regional franchises operating autonomously. Al Qaeda, they have been saying, is no longer capable of large-scale terrorist attacks on a global scale.
The perversity of this comes from the US , by way of the CIA , who have already allegedly been supplying Syrian rebels ( who are likely to pass or lose control of said weapons to islamist / Al Qaeda foreign forces in Syria ! ) But have other jihadist also received US weapons - like Egypt MB forces ?
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/world/2013/08/05/U-S-embassy-closures-across-Mideast-due-to-pre-9-11-levels-of-chatter-.html
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/04/us-terror-alert-sends-allies-embassies-scrambling/
The moves are the latest fallout from a warning last week about a possible terrorist threat somewhere on the planet, which initially prompted single day embassy closures and a global travel warning through the end of the month.
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/05/speculation-over-imminent-terror-plot-grows/
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So to summarize what we think we might know, there may or may not be an imminent attack coming somewhere on the planet of Earth, and if there isn’t one, then that just proves that there’s going to be one some time in the future in the same entirely unknown corner of the globe involving the same, likewise entirely unknown tactics.
http://www.debka.com/article/23170/US-sources-Terror-alert-prompted-by-suspected-suicide-bombers-with-implanted-explosives-
http://www.debka.com/article/23170/US-sources-Terror-alert-prompted-by-suspected-suicide-bombers-with-implanted-explosives-
The Obama administration continued Monday, Aug. 5, to try and impress Americans and the world that its far-reaching still ongoing terror alert across a host of Muslim countries was serious and credible. Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees - Democrats and Republicans alike - fully backing the White House, said the chatter picked up over the past two weeks exceeds anything in the past decade.
US officials are beginning to release nuggets of information about the nature of the threat.
According to one high placed US official, concern focuses on the possibility of terrorists carrying explosive devices implanted inside their bodies. DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources add that plastic explosives in the body of a would-be suicide bomber without metal components are undetectable by standard screening devices such as those used at most international airports.
It has been suspected for some years that doctors and surgeons in Yemen in the service of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were experimenting with implanting of plastic explosive devices inside the bodies of suicide bombers or even animals. According to Western counterterrorism sources, the surgeon would open the abdominal cavity and implant the explosive device amongst the bomber’s internal organs.
Some US sources are calling the current threat the most serious since 9/11. They are alarmed by the degree of confidence AQIM leaders show in openly using electronic communications to boast about the unstoppable attack they are plotting.
A senior US official described the terrorists as saying the planned attack is “going to be big” and “strategically significant.”
Britain, Germany and France closed their embassies in Yemen Sunday and Monday. British authorities said some embassy staff in Yemen had been withdrawn. Canada also closed its embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh
US sources explain the exceptionally broad geographic area covered by the terrorist alert – from Mauritania to Bangladesh including the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian subcontinent and homeland America. We don’t know the exact target of the planned attack, according to one US official. “We do not know whether they mean an embassy, an airbase, an aircraft, trains.”
US agencies are concerned that just three or five suicide bombers with undetectable implanted devices would not be caught in time to prevent them form detonating their devices in a coordinated attack on three or more continents. This might set off the signal for a large wave of bombing attacks in many more countries.
DEBKAfile reported earlier on the extention of the terror threat to the American homeland.
Saturday night Aug. 3, the global warnings issued last week by the US State Department and Interpol against terrorist attacks covering almost the entire Muslim world, suddenly reached the American homeland. Sunday morning, Aug. 4, as US missions closed in 22 countries, including Egypt and Israel, the New York Police Department went on high alert. Security was beefed up in high-profile areas outside houses of worship and transportation hubs, although Police Commissioner Ray Kelly complained that “a lack of specific information was cause for concern.”
Friday, Aug. 2 the State Department issued a worldwide travel alert warning to Americans overseas of potential al Qaeda attacks in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
Saturday night, National Security Adviser Susan Rice convened security officials on the situation. The White House stated: “Given the nature of the potential threat through the week, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and counter-terrorism Lisa Monaco has held regular meetings with relevant members of the inter-agency to ensure the US government is taking those appropriate steps.”
Nothing in this statement specified the nature of the “potential threat.”
Sunday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told the ABC that the threat was "more specific than previous ones" and “the intent is to attack Western, not just US interests.” He reported that the diplomatic facilities closed “range from Mauritania in northwest Africa to Afghanistan.”
Western and Middle East terrorism and intelligence experts say that in additional to the lack of information, at least six elements don’t add up in the various global warnings released since Thursday Aug. 1:
1. Thursday, US President Barack Obama ordered that "all appropriate steps" be taken to protect Americans in response to a threat of an al-Qaeda attack. What does this mean? The experts comment that even if all US agencies were pressed into service worldwide, there is no way they could protect all Americans in the vast area marked out in the warnings.
2. If the threat is specific why does the warning extend to so many countries? Al Qaeda is not even active in all them. If the danger is so immediate, why haven’t any governments in North Africa and as far east as Bangladesh declared their own terror alerts ?
3. US officials reported that some of the intelligence came from terrorist communications intercepted by the National Security Agency over the past days. This too raises questions, considering that al Qaeda leaders are wont to avoid electronic media and satellite phones for their communications on operations, preferring couriers who are not susceptible to electronic interception or eavesdropping. The Internet serves them for propaganda and planting red herrings.
4. In the past week, US drones conducted three attacks against al Qaeda targets in Yemen, where the organization is defined by US officials as al Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate and capable of attacking the US embassy in Sanaa.
The last drone attack Aug. 1 killed five low-profile al Qaeda operatives, who were driving in a vehicle in the Qatan Valley of Hadramouth province (Osama bin Laden’s place of birth).
All 12 US drone attacks in Yemen of the last eight months targeted Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Although its deputy chief Said al Shiri, a former inmate of the Guantanamo Bay facility, was eliminated, AQAP’s entire high command has remained intact and fully functional. In other words, US intelligence counter-terror agencies have not discovered their whereabouts.
5. Neither have they run down the location of al Qaeda’s top leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Tuesday, he released a communiqué accusing US agents of engineering the coup which deposed the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood president by penetrating the Egyptian army. He called for more attacks on America.
6. Saturday, the international police agency, Interpol, published a global security alert following "the escape of hundreds of terrorists and other criminals" in the past month, including jailbreaks in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan. Interpol feared that the escapees would team up with al Qaeda to hit Western targets. Yet none of its 190 member states have declared terror alerts on this score either.
7. Finally, the sweeping warnings from the Obama administration dramatically refute its own oft-heard claims that al Qaeda is no longer a force to be reckoned with, because it has lost its compact central command and control of its component branches, which have split up into regional franchises operating autonomously. Al Qaeda, they have been saying, is no longer capable of large-scale terrorist attacks on a global scale.
The perversity of this comes from the US , by way of the CIA , who have already allegedly been supplying Syrian rebels ( who are likely to pass or lose control of said weapons to islamist / Al Qaeda foreign forces in Syria ! ) But have other jihadist also received US weapons - like Egypt MB forces ?
Pat Caddell: John Boehner Aiding Obama Cover-Up of Benghazi
Speaker of the House suppressing information on weapons transfers to Syrian rebels
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
August 5, 2013
Infowars.com
August 5, 2013
Pollster Pat Caddell charged Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner of aiding the Obama administration in its cover-up of the Benghazi scandal, claiming Boehner knew about weapons being smuggled out of Libya into the hands of Syrian rebels by the CIA.
“We have John Boehner who is purposely suppressing anything on Benghazi because he knew what we found out this week and he had approved it, these sales, these CIA teams on the ground which were sending weapons from Libya through Turkey to Syrian rebels without congressional approval,” said Caddell during an appearance on Fox News.
“We have a President who has suppressed the truth,” he added, noting how the CIA is now subjecting its operatives working in Libya to polygraph tests at least once a month in order to prevent them from leaking information to lawmakers or the media.
“The Congress won’t act in its own defense,” complained Caddell, with fellow Fox News guest and former Congressman John LeBoutillier agreeing that a cover-up was in full swing.
Boehner has faced mounting criticism from conservatives in recent weeks who are increasingly viewing the Congressman as a hindrance rather than a help in getting to the bottom of the Benghazi scandal. Last month, radio host Mark Levin accused Boehner of having, “cut some kind of deal with Obama.”
Last week, the mainstream media confirmed what Infowars.com and numerous notable political figures had been saying for months – that the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was linked to a CIA arms smuggling operation being run out of an annex situated near the consulate, with the weapons being sent to FSA rebels in Syria who are fighting alongside Al-Qaeda militants.
The notion that arms, including surface to air missiles, were being sent from Benghazi to militants and terrorists in Syria was voiced as far back as last November by Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer during an appearance on the Alex Jones Show.
Despite such contentions repeatedly being voiced by prominent lawmakers such as Rand Paul, the story has only now garnered traction following CNN’s “exclusive” August 1st story which merely mimicked what was already in the public domain to a large extent.
And let's look at Egypt !
Egypt claims jihadists fired US Hellfire missile at government office
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Egypt's Interior Ministry posted these photos on its Facebook page of what it claims was a U.S.-made AGM-114F air-to-surface missile used during an attack in the Sinai Peninsula by Muslim insurgents.
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It's unknown how the "Hellfire" missile wound up in the hands of extremists.
Jihadists in Egypt's lawless Sinai Peninsula are using U.S. weapons to carry out attacks against the temporary government in the wake of the military's ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, according to the embattled nation's Interior Ministry.
The government office posted an official statement on its Facebook page
along with images of an exploded missile that hit the third floor of a building in the city of el-Arish last week. The post said terrorist forces targeted the North Sinai Security Directorate office with a ballistic missile that struck the third floor facade of the building, leaving three soldiers injured. While attacks in the Sinai, which borders Gaza and is a haven for terrorist activity, have become commonplace, the prospect that militants have U.S. weapons typically fired from helicopters at their disposal is especially alarming.
along with images of an exploded missile that hit the third floor of a building in the city of el-Arish last week. The post said terrorist forces targeted the North Sinai Security Directorate office with a ballistic missile that struck the third floor facade of the building, leaving three soldiers injured. While attacks in the Sinai, which borders Gaza and is a haven for terrorist activity, have become commonplace, the prospect that militants have U.S. weapons typically fired from helicopters at their disposal is especially alarming.
Three photos of the missile posted by the government agency shows that it appears to be an AGM-114F with a label written in English and the letters “U.S.” stenciled on the side.
“If, and that is a big if, it was a AGM-114, as in the report, that's not a ballistic missile, which conjures Cold War images of something massive and long range, but a Hellfire, which is of the type carried on helicopters,” Peter Singer, of the Brookings Institute’s Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, told FoxNews.com.
Egyptian security forces apprehended three suspects at the scene, including one Palestinian citizen.
A request for comment to the U.S. Department of Defense was not immediately returned.
Reports of U.S.-made weapons turning up in the Sinai date back to at least January, when six U.S.-made missiles were found in a cache of weapons bound for Gaza. And in February, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that weapons left over from the revolution in Libya were being sold at clandestine auctions is the Sinai Peninsula. The U.S. has repeatedly denied arming the Libyan rebels, though it did assist them in other ways with the overthrow of longtime Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi.
Egypt's military has been trying to rout terror cells across the Sinai Peninsula for several weeks. A recent attack on a military outpost left six Egyptian soldiers dead. Some 17 security force members and five civilians have been killed in the region since Morsi’s ouster on July 3. Egyptian intelligence estimates that there are at least 500 armed extremists operating on the Sinai Peninsula. As many as 30 attacks have been carried out against security forces in the region in the past two months.
The Muslim Brotherhood has denied playing any role in the escalation of violence.
While most reports focused on the unrest in Cairo leading up to Morsi being removed from office, the Sinai Peninsula has seen a large amount of civil unrest. Dozens have been killed in the past month during skirmishes between the military and guerrilla fighters.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/world/2013/08/05/U-S-embassy-closures-across-Mideast-due-to-pre-9-11-levels-of-chatter-.html
U.S. embassy closures across Mideast due to ‘pre-9/11 levels of chatter’
Al Arabiya
U.S. embassies across the Middle East and Morth Africa close as a controversial surveillance program alerted National Security Agency (NSA) authorities to “pre 9-11” levels of alleged “terrorist” chatter on Sunday.
The U.S. State Department has announced that diplomatic posts in 19 cities will remain closed at least until end of this week. A spokeswoman said the decision to keep the embassies and consulates closed is a sign of an "abundance of caution" and is "not an indication of a new threat."
Britain, France and Germany have taken a similar approach temporarily closing their embassies in Yemen, at least until the end of Ramadan.
Intelligence committee members in Washington who had been briefed on the alert said that they were aware of the highest level of chatter in over a decade, and repeatedly cited the threat in the U.S. and calls to resist Congress for reform of the NSA’s sweeping powers.
"There has been an awful lot of [terrorist] chatter, which is very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11," said the Republican senator Saxby Chambliss on NBC's Meet the Press. "As we come to the end of Ramadan, which is always an interesting time for terrorists, and the upcoming 9/11 anniversary, this is the most serious threat that I have seen in the last several years."
Chambliss said he believed the intelligence had been gathered by the NSA using “important” foreign surveillance powers granted under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
A White House statement on Saturday said: "Early this week, the president instructed his national security team to take all appropriate steps to protect the American people in light of a potential threat occurring in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula,” and that “the U.S. Government is taking those appropriate steps.”
Unlike UK embassies, U.S. diplomatic facilities will remain closed in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among other countries, until Saturday August 10.
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/04/us-terror-alert-sends-allies-embassies-scrambling/
US Terror Alert Sends Allies, Embassies Scrambling
Some Embassy Closures Extended Amid Talks of Another 9/11
by Jason Ditz, August 04, 2013
Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad is in a state of “red alert” today, and the US State Department has extended the closures of 15 embassies across the Middle East and Northern Africa through the end of the week.
The moves are the latest fallout from a warning last week about a possible terrorist threat somewhere on the planet, which initially prompted single day embassy closures and a global travel warning through the end of the month.
Though exactly what this threat might be remains apparently nebulous to officials, and is completely undefined by what little they’ve told the public, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R – GA) said it amounted to “an awful lot of chatter” of the type seen before 9/11.
The White House reported another high level meeting on the threat last night, but they too offered little in the way of detail, with officials saying only that it involved a “potential threat” either in or from the Arabian Peninsula.
The complete lack of concrete details has many speculating that this is just one of those random “focus on terrorism” warnings that the administration randomly comes up with to distract from other stories, in this case the NSA. Rep. Peter King (R – NY) expressed outrage at that idea, insisting he had totally seen the secret intelligence and was convinced it’s real.
and....
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