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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Saturday, April 21, 2007

It's the one you don't hear that gets you

These may be nothing, but for some reason, both these warnings are hanging with me.

(BBC) "The US and Australia have warned of an imminent terrorist attack in the Philippines...."

(WaPo) "The U.S. Embassy in Berlin warned Friday that Germany faced an increased threat of terrorism and that Americans in the country were particularly at risk."

(NZ Herald) "Neither US nor German officials would provide specific details, but one diplomat said the steps were taken to guard against a particular threat and two newspapers reported that Iraqi militants were scouting US facilities in Germany."

(Just as a thought experiment, how would an Iraqi tied terror attack play out in domestic US politics? Would it support Bush's "fight them over there so we don't fight them here" argument, or would it make the argument that Iraq has increased terrorism?)

4 Comments:

  • Are you suggesting this may be a "false-flag" attack, carried out by the Mossad or a US operation and blamed squarely on the Iraqis? Any logical person could reason that Iraqis wouldn't have to travel very far from their country to attack US targets.

    By Blogger Lew Scannon, at 8:53 AM  

  • I don't know.

    There's certainly enough anger and Iraqis spread all over the place now.

    I would think this is probably from a splinter group (if this isn't a threat for politics) because an attack outside Iraq risks shifting the political dynamic that they're winning right now.

    You couldn't really predict the US response, so I doubt it's one of the larger groups. They use violence very specifically for a predictable effect.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 11:11 AM  

  • How would this play out? I think both sides would use it and it would be about 50/50.

    On the one hand, Bush would argue that if we walk away now, these kind of events will become commonplace.

    On the other hand, logic.

    Both sides will spin and spin and there will be no clear winner.

    By Blogger Praguetwin, at 12:09 PM  

  • That's what I was trying to figure out.

    Because I would fall firmly on the Iraq causes terrorism side, but I can see a segment being "reinvigorated" with the war.

    I've wondered about this for while, but I just have no sense of how it would play out.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 1:47 PM  

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