MI5 warning “carefully designed” to scare public

After the Bush Administration lost both houses of Congress, its British ally sought to divert attention by another desperate attempt to scare the public, according to an editorial on Mathaba News Network.

The article, by Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher, argues that the recent warning by Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of the British intelligence service MI5, was carefully timed to coincide with the U.S. mid-term congressional elections.

Manningham-Buller’s dramatic warning – that her staff identified 30 major “terror” plots being planned in Britain actively involving than 1,600 individuals – was designed to make the public believe that the scale of the threat Britain faces should be taken with great seriousness. In her speech, the MI5 chief also warned that the Iraq War is primarily responsible for British Muslims being driven towards “extremism and terrorism”.

It’s worth mentioning that Manningham-Buller said last year, on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, that some erosion of civil liberties might be needed to "to improve the chances of our citizens not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives". Many critics are now wondering if she’s just protecting the patch of her organization or paving the way for that erosion of civil rights?

Commenting on Manningham-Buller’s recent annoncement, a Muslim Labour MP, Baroness Uddin, said that he was concerned about her entry to the "political arena", and expressed skepticism about the latter connecting one particular community to terrorism.

The victory of the Democrats in the U.S. elections was mainly due to the American voters’ dissatisfaction with the Iraq War. It seems now that the British government is more concerned about the fallout of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. As U.S. politicians run for cover, like former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who’s facing a pending lawsuit in Germany for crimes against humanity, their British counterparts are trying to justify their foreign policy.

Home Secretary John Reid, who approved Manningham-Buller’s speech, previously managed to pull off his own absurd story about the alleged “terror” plot to blow up 10 U.S.-bound airliners with liquid explosives.

Now Britain’s chief spy wants the public to believe that there is an imminent threat from extremist networks in the UK. Tony Blair even endorsed her scare-mongering by stating that the threat would remain for at least another generation, claiming that it was the result of what he called the “radicalization of Muslim youths”.

After the failure of the Forest Gate raid, in which two innocent Muslim brothers were arrested, and all the leads on the alleged “terror” plot to blow up airliners went cold, the government convicted Dhiren Barot, a Hindu convert to Islam, and sentenced him to forty years in British jail for what the article describes as a “thought-crime” because the man didn’t have the power to commit any huge terror attacks, and the police didn’t even find a matchbox in his possession. The conviction was only possible because he pleaded guilty to the crime of a terrorist plot.

According to the article, British prosecutors convinced Barot to admit that he’s guilty or face extradition to the U.S. where he could be detained without being able to challenge his detention.

The general public is becoming increasingly aware of the lies and deception of the political elite. The false justifications to invade Afghanistan and Iraq are now evident to almost everyone, and less people now believe the official story of the 9/11 attacks, the article states.

It seems that it’s difficult for Bush and Blair to see the mistakes of their own policies and attribute the mess they are in to their unwise decisions. It’s a lot easier to criminalize a particular community to terrify the already scared public.