London attack story gets murkier

The mayor of London:

I have no doubt whatsoever that this is a terrorist attack. We did hope in the first few minutes after hearing about the events on the Underground that it might simply be a maintenance tragedy. That was not the case.

   article

AP report:

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.

[...]

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties.

Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said.

  article

Shalom is now denying the Israeli advance warning. Simply Appalling blog takes that apart.

Smells like fish to me. And the mayor of London is taking the bait, or baiting the public along with Buttie and Blair, one or the other. But, he's right about one thing:

The mayor of London:

This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is.

   article

Operation Gladio:

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West -- against their own populations.

   article

Justin Raimondo comments on the conflicting stories about advanced warning to the Israelis:

So when did Netanyahu receive his warning – and who warned whom? Stratfor.com circulated an interesting analysis shortly after the first stories began to come out: Although several news reports had Netanyahu on his way to the conference, Stratfor avers that he simply stayed put. Also noted is Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's denial that Scotland Yard informed the Israeli Embassy of the attacks in advance, with the Brits echoing this "clarification," but Stratfor has the supposed scoop:

"Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned 'minutes before' the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks 'a couple of days' previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.

"The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long. This is sure to apply pressure on Blair very soon for his failure to deter this major terrorist attack."

I would also point out that Stratfor, with its passion for reiterating the obvious, stated in its summary that "there has been massive confusion" over the warning – confusion generated by whom, and to what purpose, is best left to the fertile imaginations of my readers.

The Stratfor piece puts the best spin on this story, at least from the Israeli point of view. If word that Netanyahu had a warning got out, then the best way to salvage it – and even score a few brownie points in the process – is to float the story that the warning was received not minutes but days before the attacks, and that the recipient of those warnings was not Netanyahu but the British government. Taking the focus off the eternal "war on terrorism," and trying to solve the problems of world poverty and global warming, the British government deliberately downplayed the threat, even ignored it – in spite of Israel's best efforts.

And if you believe that, there's a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in purchasing.

Netanyahu was no doubt a target of the bomb plot – why else would the terrorists bomb an underground station directly below the hotel where the investment conference was going to take place? If Israeli intelligence knew about the attacks days in advance, and only thought to let Netanyahu in on the secret "minutes" before the bombs went off – well, that's a little hard to believe, now isn't it? (Oh, wait … maybe not.)

I don't believe that Scotland Yard knew diddly-squat about the terror plot, either days or minutes before the bombs exploded, although what seems beyond dispute is that Netanyahu was warned beforehand. The question is, who warned him?

Background posts.