IDIOT.
Posted on 10/17/2008 6:55:37 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction" and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism.
In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others.
"That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says.
In common with Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who retired as MI5's director general last year, Rimington, who left 12 years ago, has already made it clear she abhorred "war on terror" rhetoric and the government's abandoned plans to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge.
Today, she goes further by criticising politicians including Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, for trying to outbid each other in their opposition to terrorism and making national security a partisan issue.
It all began, she suggests, with September 11. "National security has become much more of a political issue than it ever was in my day," she says. "Parties are tending to use it as a way of trying to get at the other side. You know, 'We're more tough on terrorism than you are.' I think that's a bad move, quite frankly."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
b.s.
jihadists are jihadists.
and they hate you no matter what you do.
There are many muslims in Europe and many of them fail to integrate due to politically correct bull like allowing Sharia Courts in England.
They are easily turned into terrorists from anything. If not from the invasion of Iraq, they would’ve eventually performed terrorist attacks anyway because they believe in an ideaology of hate.
The Commie infiltration of the British Security and Secret services is apparently a multi-generational thing.
If 9/11 was like any other terrorist attack, can someone tell me what attack killed 3,000 innocent people other than 9/11?
Terrorists hate us because we aren’t Muslim and miserable like they are. They don’t need another reason to kill us other than blind hate.
another example of British decadence. 9/11 encouraged Muslim extremists to surface. They were always there, but just needed something to justify their rising.
Kill all the bastards and let the sand sort them out.
Sure.
If not for our "overreaction" to 9/11, Islam would not be trying to establish Eurabia.
In other words, treating terrorist acts as police work didn't work, so let the people die.
MI5 sure did a great job defending Great Britain from Sharia Law!
This woman, Stella Rimington, has got a lot of nerve.
On 9/11 we had 3,000 of our fellow citizens slaughtered in cold blood. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, pregnant women, brothers, sisters, friends, co-workers, Americans. Some of them were pulverized to a fine mush under the weight of collapsing buildings. Some faced the choice of burning alive or plummeting a thousand feet to die on the pavement below. Others died screaming in terror as the planes flew past skyscrapers before hitting their targets.
I had an acquaintance of mine who died on one of those planes, American Flight 11. His name was David Kovalcin. My last memory of him is sitting up on a porch until 2 AM on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee drinking beers talking about life long after all the other people had gone to bed.
My new boss was a Colonel in the Army who had just retired weeks before. I was having my first interview with her in her office, when her phone rang. It was one of her former subordinates calling to tell her that a plane had just hit the Pentagon. After she hung up, she looked at me and said “I have a lot of close friends in that building.”
If those people who perpetrated the horror of 9/11 had weapons that could kill a million people, they would have used them. They intentionally rammed those planes into the WTC to try to trap as many people in the top of the buildings as they could. If they could get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they would use it without hesitation.
We are at war. We have been at war, and people in this country and around this world have not fully come to that realization. This is not a legal matter. It is not a law enforcement matter. This is war. This is a matter of life and death.
This person thinks it was an overreaction? AN OVERREACTION? She obviously does not differentiate between one person shooting another to death, and a nuclear weapon wiping out millions. Otherwise, how could she make that ASININE statement that this event was not materially different from any other terrorist event.
I am APPALLED at this woman. If she is any true barometer of the character of modern Britain, they are in serious trouble indeed.
The present day Brits. Waving the white flag every chance they get.
Lack of stones, lack of understanding and fear.
Way to go England.
IDIOT.
Remember when England was part of the West? Winston Churchill is surely spinning in his grave.
Wow! From MI5 chief to Islamofacist apologist. That’s a heck of a leap.
This coming from the same idiot nation that is allowing Islamic Law to be used in certain areas. I’m afraid the British, or at least many of them, have become spineless.
Saddam was a constant source of trouble in the Mideast. Even IF 9-11 was just a pretext for taking him out...it was worth it.
I don’t say that lightly...I grieve for every member of our military that have died or been maimed in this war. However, I also know it had to be done. Plus, it isn’t over yet. Afganistan is next, with Syria and possibly Iran in the future. We cannot coexist on this planet any longer with a group of people or nations that think they can spread their religious ideas (Islam in this case), by the point of the sword. Namely, you convert or die. That cannot be allowed if there is going to ever be a chance at any semblance of world peace.
I believe that all persons should be able to practice their religious beliefs in accordance with their conscience, and to even use political means to influence those around them. However, when violence becomes the mechanism to “evangelize”, it cannot be allowed.
Yeah, it was only about 3000 people dead and a couple of billion dollars of assets and a couple of years of the economy being in the toilet, etc.
Nothing to see here, move along. Just a couple of disaffected “youts”. No problem, etc. Forgive and forget.
I don’t really need a sarcasm alert here do I?
A very coherent and well spoken rant. Those who don’t get reality, like Rimington, have never been directly touched by it.
The Battle of Britain taught a lot of personal lessons which have been lost on the current generation.
It was the greatest single day of casualties in American history outside of Antietam, and you are stupid.
author spotlight (Random House Publishers)
Stella Rimington joined MI5 in 1965 and during her thirty-year career she worked in all the main fields of the Service's responsibilities--counter-subversion, counter-espionage, and counter-terrorism--and successively became Director of all three branches. Appointed Director-General of MI5 in 1992, she was the first woman to hold the post and the first Director-General whose name was publicly announced on appointment. Following her retirement from MI5 in 1996, she became a Non-Executive Director of Marks and Spencer and published her autobiography, Open Secret, in the UK.
[She has also written several spy thrillers.]
I say bring back M and 007. --Cicero
I think WW11 was likely an overreaction to Adolph.
This was different. It truly was an expression of a refinement of previous terror, in which not only was the funding from its victim and the execution under protection of international law, but the motivation an extension of a radical, militant utopian religious drive for world conquest. In that it resembles Nazism far more than it does any local movement for local grievances. Osama bin Laden wasn't trying to help the Palestinians against the Israelis, he was declaring war on the United States for its own sake based on a casus belli that was actually intended to benefit the Saudis (and did) - the presence of U.S. troops on Saudi soil.
This is not really a difficult concept, and is the central case for the War On Terror being something other than an attempt to suppress a local insurrection. It is disturbing to consider that Britain's intelligence apparatus was proceeding under the direction of an individual who did not appreciate what the whole thing was all about. I had hoped that to be a strictly American problem, as the leadership of the CIA has demonstrated to our continued embarrassment. Apparently not.
So she was the big boss of the British intel chick who leaked a message from US intel. Feminism and western Europe—ain’t it great? It’s also where our US bosses are taking us.
“what attack killed 3,000 innocent people”
The terrorists were aiming for 100,000 or more. It was only due to the grace of God that not more died. Had it been later in the day, there certainly would have been.
Clinton showed us what happens when you don’t respond to terrorism (the embassies & the ship). They keep doing it and each time it is worse.
“In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida’s attack on the US “another terrorist incident” but not qualitatively different from any others.”
I see.
The world’s financial center devastated for weeks with its New York City’s two tallest buildings completely destroyed, the world’s air traffic suspended in, into and out of the U.S. for three days, the military headquarters of the U.S. attacked, successfully, for the first time since 1812, a simultaneous attack on either the White House or the Capital averted only by 40 private citizens who were willing to die to prevent it, and ending in all with nearly 3,000 American civilians killed by an enemy attack on American soil in a single day and it’s “just another terrorist incident”.
The world has more insane people fermenting up from the masses every day.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to rant.
This makes me angry.
9/11 touches a real nerve in me with respect to the act of terrorism in and of itself.
But that anger takes on a certain jagged incredulity when confronted with the liberal point of view on terrorism, and the way that unpatriotic dissent (as opposed to their calling it “patriotic dissent”) is expressed by the liberal left.
To me, it is the equivalent of The Bull and The Cape. For me, to read what this woman said made me feel exactly the same way I felt a couple of years ago when I saw the movie “United 93”. When that movie ended, I felt all the raw, exposed anger I had felt on September 11th, 2001.
It made me realize just how many people are trying to minimize and hopefully (for them) erase 9/11. Some are trying to make it disappear because it was so traumatic, but some are doing it for political reasons, because 9/11 was such an extraordinary indictment of liberalism.
and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism.
"See what you made me do" is probably the single most despicable excuse for bad behavior. It's despicable when spoken by wife-beaters in the slums.
"See what you made him do" is even more despicable when spoken by what should be authority figures to rationalize criminal pathologies.
Her motive in saying this nonsense is to absolve the British welfare state of its total failure to assimilate, and police, its Muslims.
Excuse me but didn’t the Brits shoot dead an innocent man following their rail and bus bombings on 7/7 a couple of years ago.
I forgot to tell you that was well said. We have been lucky. We have, for the most part, been able to live under the relatively safe roof that was built for us by people like the Battle of Britain generation.
That is what galls me about liberalism and liberals. Liberals think George Bush is a despot and a murderer. Most liberals can simply not comprehend the raw evil of a real dictator like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot Hitler or Saddam Hussein. And Saddam was small time. He was a piker (as Ann Coulter put it) compared to the Nazis or the Soviets. But his mistreatment of his own people in Iraq had a "Personal" quality that Hitler or Stalin lacked. Saddam probably fed some of those people into the chipper-shredders himself.
If you ever get a chance, read how Saddam came to power or watch the video they recorded of it. Frightening to watch, people in the crowd being denounced, stood up and marched outside. The people who had denounced them were forced to kill them with handguns. Inside, people were feverish, tripping over themselves in their cries of "Saddam! Our Leader!" or whatever. They were each trying to appear more fervent than the man next to him, lest you be the next one called out and marched away between two guys. Simply terrifying.
And Saddam just sits there smoking that big cigar, watching like a reptile as the people are marched out.
But Liberals refuse to believe there is real evil in the world. You cannot have evil in the world and have utopia as well. I do believe there is natural evil, but most liberals think that there is a cause and effect, nothing can be simply evil. It must be evil that was a result of poverty, or it must be an evil due to child abuse, or an evil of having your culture repressed or just (insert your favorite excuse here)
Bottom line. What happened in Cambodia was not due to people lacking day care opportunities. It was simple, unadulterated evil. Not complicated. But libs can't see that.
This idiot better be glad I wasn’t President when it happened,we wouldn’t have lost any lives fighting, I would have nuked a few cities and called it even.
Remember, MI5 is analogous to our FBI, state cops. She thinks like a cop and not like a warrior; SAS and SBS. I am not surprised at her comments which somewhat mirror the Clinton’s Justice Department and strategy towards Islamofascists.
Regards.
Women have finally arrived. The Peter Principle applies to them as well as men these days. This woman seems to have found a way to exponentially increase her qualifications from the looks of the information supplied in this article.
You simply cannot let terrorists carry out their acts without having to pay a terrific penalty. Tens of thousands of happy little jihadists have met their virgins thanks to our military and Bush.
Good riddance. I’m not going to second guess this at all.
MI5? How about MI0.5...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.