“Threat of 2 operations designed to bring Americans ‘to your knees‘“:
Islamic websites yesterday posted a “last warning” warning by Rakan Ben Williams, who describes himself as an “al-Qaida undercover soldier” in the U.S., threatening two major operations designed to bring Americans “to your knees.”
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Global Islamic Media Front was responsible for posting the threat.
Williams is a mystery man, who, according to the London Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, is an English convert to Islam.
The threat suggests the attack will be far greater in magnitude than Sept. 11, 2001, because following this one, “there will be no one to analyze and investigate, because the mind and the heart will be unable to comprehend it. … This will not be a single operation, but two; one bigger than the other, but we will begin with the big one and postpone the bigger one, in order to see [how] diligent the American people is [in preserving] its life. If it chooses life, [it must] carry out the demands of the Muslims, and if it chooses death, then we are its best perpetrators.”
The warning appeared in Arabic and in English.
“Do not put your hopes on Bush and his clan, they are incapable of protecting you, and if they think they are, let them foil or stop the two upcoming operations, and punish those who are responsible for them,” says the statement. “But if they could not identify and foil the devastating events coming your way, you must ask yourselves: How long will we continue allowing ourselves to be slaughtered with full advance knowledge of our fate?
“Let me now inform you why we opted to inform you about the two operations and your inability to stop them before they are carried out. The reason is simple: You cannot uncover or stop them except by letting them be carried out. Furthermore, the best you could do would be to accelerate the day of carrying out the operations. In other words, if we schedule the operation to take place tomorrow, the best you could do is to make it happen today.”
The spokesman claims the operations are inevitable – even if the specific plans are uncovered by authorities.
“This indeed is a sweet situation to be in,” he says. “It is a win-win all the way for us. It is the ultimate control and the most stunning way to stop an operation (accelerating it with the same impact). What we are saying is this: You will have a choice of either let us carry it out on our own schedule and with our own hands or allow your own intelligence apparatus to cause it to happen. This second choice will cause a level of dissatisfaction (with your decision makers) to reach its highest level. Therefore, your Homeland Security agencies would have no choice but to surrender and wait for the inevitable to happen.”
Surrender? Nah. We don’t “surrender.” We don’t need to.
Not when we have Senators willing to give the game away without all those showy formalities.
Asks Glenn Reynolds: “Should we be worried? Or should Bush just promise massive indiscriminate nuclear retaliation, a la Duncan Black, if the threat comes true?”
Sure, it’s a pointed barb at Atrios—but should the attacks described by Rakan Ben Williams take place, I don’t think the American left, the civil liberties right, or the international “peace” movement will be able to hold back a US public, backed by an administration with a documented willingness to use military force, from insisting on the kind of fierce retaliation that will send a very clear message to the Muslim world: your fantasies of a new Caliphate are just that; and should you continue with your war against our way of life, we have the capability of visiting upon you unprecedented—and terribly thorough—destruction.
Don’t believe we’re capable? Look at how Americans reacted to the Dubai Port deal: seems the relentless news of “insurgent” attacks and American troop deaths—all in the service of bringing “these people” freedom—have had the effect of making the majority of Americans distrust all things Muslim. Even as the Eeeeevil Bushco has been pushing precisely the opposite message, whereby Islamic fanaticism is to be distinguished from mainstream Muslim faith.
So score one for the nuanced crowd, whose half-decade-long campaign to sink Bush through a rhetorical onslaught has resulted in a growing sense of anti-Islamic sentiment among the yokels and rubes (to whom our elites are supposed to be teaching “tolerance”). Oh well. Law of unintended consequences and all that, you know.
Of course, as Meryl Yourish suggests, maybe something less sinister is at play here: “Sounds to me like they just got last season’s 24 on DVD.”
(h/t IP)
I hope Meryl is right. The willingness of al Quada to go back after targets they didn’t entirely get last time has me a little worried.
Not that I will allow their threats to alter one damn thing about how I currently live my life.
Often, the pronoun ‘we’ causes confusion. Here it is ‘you.’
Who knew Michelle Malkin, LFG, anti-idiotarian Rottweiler, Annie Jacobsen, et. al. were secretly Democratic operatives?
I was going to try and beat Noam Chomsky to the punch this time around and be the very first to declare this looming destruction all America’s fault…but I think Actus beat me to it.
How many “last chances” and “final warnings” and “we really mean it this time”(s) are we going to get from these guys? The first couple really put people on edge, the next few not so much – now…?
I wonder if we have pounded on AQ so hard that their only weapon to deploy against the US homeland is the “threat” of attack. Man, I hope so.
Of course, all that damned ordnance we used to have to store was getting put onto the enemy, so maybe…
The worst thing about our impending doom?
Women and minorities will suffer disproportionately.
A relevant cartoon on the topic at hand.
Really, this is a crossroads for civilization. Our side will win, but it is up to us whether we make it easy or difficult for ourselves.
You don’t suppose they’re planning on having a bunch of radical muslims get together and take a huge simultaneous crap at the AstroDome and then all flush on “3” and cause a river of deadly yet spicy terror?
If not, I hope I haven’t given them any ideas.
The only solution to that logic problem is that the AQ terrorists have prepositioned explosives at two strategic locations and have suicide bombers on-station.
The only thing you can do is kill them before they kill themselves with the hope of minimizing the damage.
Which means that Meryl is wrong – it’s not last year’s ‘24’, it’s THIS YEAR’s ‘24’we’re talking about.
Knees?
I’m on my back, LMAO.
Come get some.
Do you think we could wait to release this warning a little closer to the election and the mask in some quotes about a few republican in tight races. It helped the Bush numbers last time so I figured why not try again.
If AQ managed it again, I might be on my knees. Praying that our boomers had already begun their countdown.
So, yes, I guess in that sense – we would be brought to our knees.
They might be planning a lame attack on something symbolic of Menace. For example, they might set off a firecracker in front of a nuclear power plant or throw an apple sprayed with Alar in a city reservoir.
We retaliate with a flare over Tehran?
I don’t think a disproportional retaliation can be restrained in the event of another attack. Of course, that’s no deterrence to a martyr, but we can ensure he has company.
Is this a threat, or a koan? Dude needs to put down the hookah, methinks.
Well, look at the bright side: If they pull it off, the survivors get six weeks or so of NPR, post-9/11-like, acting pro-America…
What about hookers? Aren’t they already on their knees?
I believe it’s the plural ‘you’, if that helps.
But your point points to the weakness in how we’ve waged this war. No government rules without the support of a significant portion of the population. Take Iran, for example: a few dozen mullahs cannot suppress 70 million people. We have to figure that at least a third to a half of those people support the islamic government. Iran will not be defeated until those people surrender, and they won’t surrender until we have bombed the hell out of them. If we do like we did in Iraq, take down the government and let the army fade into the population, we’ll be fighting another insurgency, but this time against a nation of 70 million people. When we put boots on the ground in Iran, we want the Iranian people to be so relieved that the bombing has stopped that they wouldn’t dream of picking up a grenade launcher or AK47.
I don’t say this lightly. I’ve known a few Iranians, and liked them all. Of course, the ones over here aren’t the ones who want us dead.
Of course. He’s not an idiot.
What does iran have to do with an al-qaida undercover soldier in the us believed to be English? Again, this ‘you’ is problematic.
6Gun  In my office we followed OIF from day one on NPR. Exactly when did NPR STOP being pro-America after 9/11? 2 days? 3?
My point was, when we make war against terrorists, we have to make war against the states that sponsor them, and the people who support those states.
Sounds great. But again, has nothing to do with the supposed thorough destruction that will be visited on the guy that posted these threats.
Here’s the real deal.
Any Islamo-fascist would have to be out of their minds to attack America in any significant way at this time. With Russ “Fuck the First Amendment” Feingold, Harry “I make my own skin crawl” Reid, Ted “Glub Glub” Kennedy, John “I think I’m Dumber Than Al Gore” Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, etc., making such big inroads for these terrorists, they would have to be nuts to risk uniting this country again with a large strike.
The absolute last thing they want is America united against them, instaed of throwing political spitballs at each other.
Boy. I seem to be in some kind of special pissy mood tonight, Huh?
A portion of And lions and tigers and jihadis; Oh my!:
We’ve screwed around with these asshats long enough.
So where y’gonna nuke first, dear Jeff? The wilderness of Pakistan/Afghanistan? Now, that’s sensible, bin Laden’s there. There’s just one problem: like where, exactly? It’s kind of a large area. Gonna take a lotta nukes and there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t have split for parts unknown. And y’know, nukes are a helluva expensive way to kill goats, which, chances are more than likely, are all you will kill.
Okay, so not there, then where? How about Tehran? Yeah, that’ll do. Never mind that they would like bin Laden as dead just as much as you or I would. Nuke ‘em anyway. And if there just happens to be some A-rab princes from another country caught in the city, that’s just too doggone bad. We’ll nuke ‘em too. Yuh, yuh! That’ll teach them Muslims not fook around with the You Ess Uv Aaaaa!
Then let’s go after the Sikhs. They’re Muslims, well, at least they too wear towels on their heads. Nuke them, too.
And while we’re at it, France! Oh, yesssssss….
But wait a minute. All those A-rab-loving lefties in New York. They’re no better than real Muslims. Nuke New York! Oh, it brings tears of joy to my eyes just to imagine it! Osama was a piker, just bringin’ down two towers. Let’s whack the whole friggin’ island!!!
Nuke! Nuke! Nuke! Nuke! Woo hoo!
Lost Dog,
I believe that’s Nancy “Hit me again Murtha, and this time put some stank on it” Pelosi.
You’re right tristero. Nukes are our answer to everything.
Like when those goddam camel jockeys wanted to buy our east coast and use it to bring their anthrax in right through the ports, we wanted to drop the big fuckin’ hammer on them. But those of your ilk called for calm. “Just cause they’re Arab doesn’t mean they can’t do the biz in America”
………oh wait
I have been saying this for a number of years; “These guys don’t know who they’re messin’ with. Just ask the Japanese.” At some point (the Tipping Point?) they will provoke the ultimate response. It won’t be pretty and we won’t be proud of it but it will happen. I guess the only consolation they’ll have is our Judeo/Christian guilt will haunt us ‘til death (Oh! That’s right they don’t believe that killing hundreds/thousands/millions of the other guy is anything to feel guilty about so how would they know.)
I ride my bike a lot: mountain, road, `cross. and one of the things you learn, off road, on road, especially on tight rocky singletrack, is look where you want to go, not where you don’t.
apt, no?
It took a lot of detective work, but I discovered the big al qaida plot: they’ve taken over all the smog check garages and THEY’RE PASSING CARS THEY SHOULD BE FLUNKING!!!
You understand, right? They’re bringing on global warming! They’re killing us with smog. Not only that, they’re building bonfires on the greenland ice caps so they melt into the north atlantic—destroying the gulf stream circulation!!!!!!
You see their evil plot? They’re wrecking the climate, for gods sake. This is the big one. Nobody gets out alive. allahu akbar
I agree with thirdfinger. When the tipping point is reached, and the American citizenry turns on the war machine it will be a very uncomfortable time to be perceived as an enemy of the US.
What needs to be remembered by friend and foe alike is that so long as our soldiers remain soldiers rather than policemen, the US is for all practical purposes invincible, even without the use of nukes.
We have never subscribed to the ‘kill them all and let God sort them out’ school of warfare, but it is just possible that we might make exceptions in Teheran, Mecca, etc., just as we did in Berlin, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Odd to say we’ve never done somethng, and then list the exceptions.
“Lucius: [Bob and Lucius are sitting in a parked car, reminiscing] So now I’m in deep trouble. I mean, one more jolt of this death ray and I’m an epitaph. Somehow I manage to find cover and what does Baron von Ruthless do?
Bob: [laughing] He starts monologuing.
Lucius: He starts monologuing! He starts like, this prepared speech about how *feeble* I am compared to him, how *inevitable* my defeat is, how *the world* *will soon* *be his*, yadda yadda yadda.
Bob: Yammering.
Lucius: Yammering! I mean, the guy has me on a platter and he won’t shut up” – (from The Incredibles)
Life imitates art.
“All your efforts to stop us are belong to us!”
Fuck this Ben Williams asshole and his empty Jihad Joe fantasies.
It´s a very interesting theme and a simple answer of many questions
Quite good information with useful tips.
I can´t hear this anymore. Peace !