Posted by Tina
Authorities in Iraq have told the BBC they’ve uncovered an Al Qaeda chemical weapons plot with targets that included Europe and North America:
Defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said five men had been arrested after military intelligence monitored their activities for three months.
Three workshops for manufacturing the chemical agents, including sarin and mustard gas, were uncovered, he added.
Remote-controlled toy planes were also seized at the workshops.
Mr Askari said they were to have been used to release the chemical agents over the target from a “safe” distance of 1.5km (1 mile), reports the BBC’s Rami Ruhayem in Baghdad.All of the arrested men had confessed to the plot and said they had received instruction from another al-Qaeda offshoot, he added.
David Cameron will give a speech tomorrow about the recent violent murder of a young British soldier but former PM Tony Blair has voiced a strong opinion today on the Islamic threat the West is facing:
Mr Blair urges governments to ‘be honest’ and admit that the problem is more widespread.
‘There is a problem within Islam – from the adherents of an ideology which is a strain within Islam,’ he writes.‘We have to put it on the table and be honest about it. Of course there are Christian extremists and Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu ones. But I am afraid this strain is not the province of a few extremists. It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies.’
Bush and Blair took our defense operation to the enemy in nations where terrorists the lived and hid. A more appeasing and retreating approach has been adopted since leadership changes took place in both Briton and America. In the ensuing years terrorist organizations have blossomed and spread to other regions. Their operatives are stationed in cells around the world waiting to be activated in just such an operation as that foiled in Iraq.
The overt threat from Muslim terror has not been as dramatic as the 911 bombings in New York or the 7/7 London Train bombing but they have been no less illustrative of the intent and commitment of the extremists who perpetrate these plots and attacks.
Tony Blair is correct. We have to be clear about the nature and background of the radicals involved and we have to be willing to honestly discuss the threat they pose to free and open societies around the globe.