Why do we suppose that is?Originally Posted by ssb
Why do we suppose that is?
Since this thread is 7 pages long, and PF rulez dictate thread drift, may I point out something?
"Van hits pedestrians' on London Bridge in 'major incident'"
The damn van didn't do anything. This is the type of crap the media pulls to avoid saying "Islamist Assholes hit pedestrians on London Bridge with a van"
Not picking on you Rich - we are immersed in this type of PC BS so it's hard to not regurgitate it occasionally. /RANT - I'll be quiet now.
Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for that dumb bastard.
From BBC News:
Ballsy.Four police officers who tried to stop the attack were among those injured, two of them seriously.
One of them was an off-duty officer and amateur rugby player who tackled one of the terrorists, suffering stab wounds.
Another, a British Transport Police officer who joined the force less than two years ago, took on the attackers armed with only his baton.
"Sapiens dicit: 'Ignoscere divinum est, sed noli pretium plenum pro pizza sero allata solvere.'" - Michelangelo
Boston Bombing 3 killed / 260 wounded in blast; a MIT officer killed by gunfire and another BPD officer killed by a grenade; much of the city on lockdown for 96 hours
San Burnadino 14 killed / 22 wounded by gunfire
Orlando Nightclub 49 killed / 53 wounded by gunfire
I don't know man. Those seem pretty successful to me.
Last edited by Sensei; 06-04-2017 at 11:31 AM.
I like my rifles like my women - short, light, fast, brown, and suppressed.
Just to give an illustration of the kinds of things one can encounter...
Sometime after 9/11, I don't recall if it was days, weeks or months at this far remove...my partner and I were having lunch at the Macaroni Grill in the Doral section of greater Miami.
While seated at the table the waitress came over and told us that there were a couple of guys in a convertible in the parking lot looking up at aircraft flying in to the western end of Miami International Airport. (The flight path takes them right over that location at very low, landing altitude, and the runways begin right across the avenue.)
Thinking that maybe it could be a terrorist event and an attempt to take down an aircraft or two, my partner and I left the restaurant and approached the vehicle from separate sides with guns at low ready.
We observed as two guys watched aircraft fly over and then made notations in a ledger. (No weapons, RPGs or other devices were visible from our vantage points.)
Approached the vehicle and ordered them out of the (rental) car. Patted them down, (no weapons), and asked for consent to search the vehicle and trunk where we found no weapons.
Asked them what they were doing. They said they were aviation buffs and recorded tail numbers of aircraft from all over the world during their travels. Seemed odd to us but there's all kinds of hobbies out there.
Criminal checks came back negative but not everyone is in the system. Told them that they weren't free to depart and had my communications center contact our sister FBI group, (we were part of the Joint Terrorist Task Force), and asked for the duty agent or someone from the proper group at the field office to come and take over from us. (Our role at the time was the arms smuggling side.)
I asked them if they didn't think it was sort of a harebrained thing to do, post 9/11, to sit right under the flight path taking down this sort of data and looking like they might be up to something much more nefarious than a benign hobby? They gave sheepish replies.
After turning them over to the FBI for further investigation we went in and had a well deserved lunch.
Point being...you just never know. What if they had had rocket launchers or other weapons? We'd worked quite a few undercover ops regarding the purchase of Eastern bloc stinger missiles and the like.
See something...say something.
Last edited by blues; 06-04-2017 at 11:37 AM.
There's nothing civil about this war.
Most of the follow ups to incidents in euro-land have resulted in many being detained, some arrests and ongoing information gathering. I think the recent manchester bomber resulted in over 20 being pulled in afterwards and that is still ongoing.
Whilst there are some lone wolves the majority are wound up by one, or more people, and gently cajoled, brainwashed and persuaded in the direction of a heinous act.
To continue Mr Blues thread of thinking on numbers and actors: The publicly stated number of potential actors under observation in the UK is around 3000. Do you realise how many men, time and resources monitoring that many involves? No, me neither. But, I was in Northern Ireland for a while and I know that there was a huge police presence, huge military presence, huge security services presence, disruption to any normal way of life, and that was only for around 130 hardcore members of the Provisional IRA and a similar number of hardcore protestant para-militaries. Once the genie is out of the bottle it takes a humungously humungous amount of effort to get it back in - I seriously hope it never happens in the US.
Gun Free Zones Aren’t an Inhibition….they’re an Invitation.
I suppose I should have said "I expected more of these things to happen," rather than what I wrote, as it seems to have been construed as saying that it hasn't happened all that much/hasn't been successful. What I was getting at is that, for example, I would have expected bombings (suicide or otherwise) or firearm attacks at malls, large public gatherings, busy pedestrian areas, etc. etc. etc. on a far more frequent basis than they've actually happened here. We've been at war with al-Qaeda specifically and fundamentalist Islamic terrorism generally for over 15 years, and while I certainly don't want such things to occur, I'm genuinely surprised they haven't occurred at a far greater frequency than they have.
When I said "or, at least, haven't been successfully carried out," really what I was getting at is that I don't work for the FBI or anybody else with a domestic counter-terrorism responsibility and I'm not privy to events that may or may not have been foiled.
But according to news, the British Police have far superior tactics to knife attacks than their gun toting, trigger happy American counterparts. It's a real shame that not even the police are so handcuffed that a street cop can't decisively end a situation like this.
Whether you think you can or you can't, you're probably right.
After 9/11, I heard a talk by someone in the 'know' (supposedly) who said there were 6000 or so Al-Qaeda types in the USA ready to go. With 6000 folks, you could paralyze the country for a bit. Never happened. The standard answer is that American society is more integrative than Europe and reduces the self-radicalization. If that is true - who knows. Let's hope so. Obviously, the 6000 'ready to go' talk was a touch overblown.
Reply With Quote