Has UK Prime Minister Tony Blair taken leave of his senses? The sight of tanks and armored patrol vehicles patrolling London’s Heathrow airport suggests so. He has ordered 2,000 troops and extra police to Heathrow, including tanks armed with anti-tank guns, would you believe, because intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have reportedly warned there could be an attack by Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.
It is right to take precautions but this is going over the top. What precisely does Blair envisage — an Al-Qaeda panzer division rolling up the M4 from Hounslow?
Washington appears equally paranoid. Batteries of anti-aircraft missiles have been set up around the city with fighter planes patrolling overhead, while Americans have been warned to stock up on water blankets and food. Hardware stores in and around the US capital have sold out of duct tape and plastic sheeting, following government recommendations that people protect their homes against chemical and biological attacks by terrorists. Not since the 1962 Cuba missile crisis have Americans been so hyped about a possible attack.
But how credible are the reports of impending attacks?
On Tuesday, CIA Director George Tenet told a US Senate committee that the threat is the “most specific” the agency had ever seen, and he included Saudi Arabia in it. The latest taped threat supposedly from Bin Laden reinforced the likelihood of an attack, he said, because statements from the Al-Qaeda leader had preceded previous attacks. Meanwhile, in both Washington and London, officials talked of such an attack possibly coinciding with the end of Eid Al-Adha.
None of this really adds up. For a start, an attack at Eid does not fit in with the way Al-Qaeda operates. There was talk about one at the end of Ramadan. It did not happen because they strike when least expected. As to the CIA’s warning about an attack here, Interior Minister Prince Naif has been quite categorical: there is no evidence that Al-Qaeda is planning an imminent assault.
Can anyone smell a rat behind these manic activities in London and Washington? Bush and Blair could easily have taken precautions without shouting about it from the rooftops. But they have not.
This looks like a deliberate attempt to whip up a sense of fear among the public — a public, in the case of the UK, that is increasingly opposed to an attack against Iraq.
Tony Blair is a master of the political spin, but this is manipulation on the grandest scale — frightening Britons into supporting war against supposed terrorism while confusing them as to who the terrorist is: Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden. This is not lunacy; it is downright deception. The frightening thing is he may succeed if the level of public paranoia in Washington about a terrorist attack is anything to go by.
The first casualty when war comes is truth, said American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917. Times have changed. In this case truth has already been kicked out of the window even before the war starts.
