On the 10th of August the British police claimed they had foiled a terrorist plot to bring down as many as 10 planes travelling from the UK to the US; another plot in the ongoing War on Terror. Previous to this we had the Forest Gate incident, where police shot a 23 year old postal worker, whilst searching for a “chemical vest”. Then there was the erroneously named “ricin plot”. There was no ricin and no plot. The “suspects” in this plot were very quietly, cleared and released. The tragic events of 7/7 leave many questions unanswered as our leaders refuse calls for an independent public inquiry. The official story of 9/11 has been taken apart by many academics and journalists alike; although you need to be neither to identify the inconsistencies, half truths and lies in this version.

In the most recent episode, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, left us in no doubt, declaring that the apprehended suspects had intended to cause “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” More than once, Home Secretary Dr. John Reid informed us of the likelihood of an immediate strike. Franco Frattini, the European Union’s security commissioner told the New York Times “The plotters received a very short message to ‘Go now’.” He had been briefed by Dr. Reid. “I was convinced by British authorities that this message exists”, he said. The security threat was raised to its highest level, “critical”, signalling an imminent terrorist attack. The urgency of the situation was conveyed to us in this manner, news report after news report, from every corner of the mainstream media.

To date 25 people have been arrested, with 17 charged. None of the suspects had made a bomb, none had airline tickets and only some had passports. I would have thought that if a group of people intended to bomb 10 airliners out of the sky, there are certain basic things they would need to do this: Bombs, airline tickets and passports. No fair minded jury would be able to convict these people. No doubt, with this in mind, Prosecutor Colin Gibbs told the Central Criminal Court that there would be no trial before January 2008. Why such a long time before the trial? The cynics amongst us would say it is because of the absence of any credible evidence. By 2008 these suspects will be long forgotten by the British public.

But the war on terror goes on. We are given regular updates regarding the level of the threat we face. The latest by Peter Clarke, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, stated that MI5 and the police are monitoring thousands of Muslims suspected of being terrorists or their supporters. Given the previous false claims, it’s remarkable that a statement like this isn’t subject to the most rigorous scrutiny. Far from this, the servile media repeats these claims over and over again, branding them into the minds of the public.
Journalists and political activists in the Anti-War movement have failed to fill the chasm left by the mainstream media. They acknowledge that the Government lied over Iraq, bringing us the Anthrax plot, yellow cake from Niger, 45 minutes from WMD attack and so on. Yet they accept the basic premise for the war on terror; that there are groups of Muslim terrorists, albeit legitimately disaffected, living amongst us. Apparently, they fail to see that it was 9/11 which acted as the launch pad for the Neocons pre-existing plans to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. Surely it is the War on Terror that maintains the climate necessary for the US/UK alliance to pursue its goals for the Middle East and beyond. Shouldn’t the Anti-War movement take on board the possibility that the people who lied to us over Iraq are lying to us over the War on Terror?