Germany stops "massive" attack on US facilities

Germany has prevented a bomb attack on US facilities in Germany including Frankfurt Airport. Three men, two Germans and a Turkish national, are being held in connection with the incident. The trio had obtained 1500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide for the bom

CNN has this article: The attacks were allegedly planned on Ramstein airbase and Frankfurt. This is a further development of a strategic scenario which has been bothering some intelligence observers. Europe is seen as a likely target for attacks by Al Qaeda and sympathizers because of NATO involvement in Afghanistan, as well as the Iraq war. The emphasis appears to be still on American targets, but the support for the war is evidently seen to be spreading among Europe’s disaffected Muslim population. One obvious inference from the proposed attack on Frankfurt Airport, one of the world’s busiest, is that “big targets” are still a favorite. The botched attack on Glasgow Airport earlier this year is a further indicator of a tendency to large, comparatively easy, targets, with a possibility of causing a lot of casualties. That methodology seems to fit with Al Qaeda’s known penchant for attention-getting. Although some of the recent abortive attacks don’t appear to have direct AQ involvement, the idea has evidently caught on among their supporters. Recent attacks have included people with surprisingly little technical capability, but an obvious sense of what to target. Theory: It is possible that the intention of hitting places containing a lot of civilians is intended to further polarize societies, stimulating a backlash from the population, effectively driving local Muslims out of their communities, would be a simple method of creating considerable problems, globally. AQ has shown an ability to be as “economical with the truth” as any political group. What it chooses to consider an issue takes a bit of understanding. AQ and just about every other fundamentalist group on Earth had nothing to say about Dafur and Kosovo, Chechnya, or any other actual attacks on Muslims, including actual genocide. AQ itself has taken sides against other Muslim groups in Iraq and Gaza. But Al Qaeda has been quick enough, often enough, to use its primary refrain against the West, particularly America, that of “attacks on Muslims” by the West, who are routinely called the “Crusaders”. Any civil strife against Muslims generated after an attack, would be great propaganda. Next week is the sixth anniversary of September 11. Al Qaeda has been threatening massive attacks ever since, none of which have materialized, although a lot of attempts have been discovered. Given the obsessive nature of their rhetoric, and the one way traffic of the various recent attempted attacks, it looks like they haven’t found any new hobbies yet.