NoaIzumiThe Torture Memos and an LA Story, Part 2
April 30th 2009 01:09
Last week, I posted a little piece on Marc Thiessen's article claiming that "enhanced interrogation" saved Los Angeles from a terrorist attack. I pointed out some of Mr. Thiessen's errors, and I wasn't the only one. Well, Mr. Thiessen did not take it lying down (although he did take it lying)
The West Coast Plot: An "Inconvenient Truth"
“He also notes Townsend said that after the cell leader’s capture other cell members “believed” that the plot was not going forward … all of the key operatives in the plot were still at large and operating with impunity.”
Um, OK. According to the White House memo, the key operatives thought the plan was canceled. So, they thought the plot was off the table, but they were still working feverishly to put it in motion? As what, a thought exercise?
“Planes were off the table after 9/11? That would come as a surprise to every passenger in the past three years who had their liquids confiscated in an airport security line. Those security measures were instituted because in 2006 we foiled an al-Qaeda plot to hijack airplanes leaving London’s Heathrow airport and blow them up over the Atlantic (a plot our intelligence community says was just weeks from execution). Apparently al-Qaeda didn’t get Noah’s memo explaining that hijacking airplanes for terrorist attacks is “no longer viable al Qaeda strategy.””
This is a sad, but predictable, case of twisting an opponent’s words, then using them as a straw man. At no point in his article did Tim Noah say that attacks on planes were off the table, he said attacks using planes were off the table, and Thiessen’s example doesn’t prove him wrong. The London terrorists weren’t planning on hijacking the airplanes, then blowing them up. They were planning on blowing them up, period. In fact, this suggests that Noah was right. It’s not like there are a dearth of potential targets in London, one of the most politically and economically important cities in the world. The fact that Al Qaeda didn’t plan a 9/11-style attack there suggests that they knew it would be futile.
In fact, Al Qaeda and their affiliates have pulled off several attacks since 9/11. They have come close to pulling off others, being stopped only by the activities of law enforcement (and the idiocy of many of the would-be terrorists). Of the successful and known attempted attacks, not a single one has been a 9/11-style attack. Not a single one.
“In my Washington Post piece, I was citing the very documents which President Obama released,”
The documents, the “torture memos”, said there was a plot at some point, which no one disputes. They don’t say that the plot was still going forward, and they don’t say how far it had gotten.
“If we have learned anything from recent history, it is that once al-Qaeda develops a plot for a major attack, it never gives up until that attack has been carried out … In 1993, al-Qaeda tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and failed. In 2001, al-Qaeda finished the job."
Same target, different MO. The first attack used a truck bomb, not a kamikaze plane.
“In 1995, KSM hatched the “Bojinka Plot” to hijack multiple passenger planes and blow them up over the Pacific. The plot failed — and so al-Qaeda tried it again over the Atlantic in 2006."
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Same MO, different tools (The original plan didn’t involve liquid explosives). Both plans had similarities to previous ones, but Mr. Thiessen claims that the Los Angeles plan would have gone forward in exactly the same manner, when Al Qaeda has proven its willingness to change plans to adapt to different circumstances. And as Mr. Noah points out, the circumstances were very different after September 11, and it’s extremely improbable that the Al Qaeda wouldn’t have found that out within a few months.
“At the time of his arrest, Bin al-Shibh was in the midst of planning a 9/11-style attack on Britain, in which al-Qaeda operatives would hijack planes in Europe and fly them into Heathrow airport."
An attack of whose existence there is no independent confirmation.
“According to the intelligence community, terrorists held in CIA custody also provided information that helped stop a planned strike on U.S. Marines at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti using an explosive laden water tanker. They provided information that helped us uncover al-Qaeda cell from developing anthrax for attacks against the United States. And according to the memos released by the Obama administration “intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports”
The CIA had the prisoners, but were they all waterboarded? Does Thiessen expect us to believe that that’s the only way the CIA has to get information from someone? The captured operative that led us to the strike on Camp Lemonier is Goulad Hassan Dorad. There’s no evidence that he ever underwent enhanced interrogation; he's not one of the three that the government has admitted to waterboarding.
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“So you can believe Hayden, Tenet, McConnell, and Blair … or Tim Noah and Andrew Sullivan"
What Tim Noah says makes sense. I can’t say the same of Marc Thiessen’s claims.
PS:
Timothy Noah noticed Thiessen's response as well.
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