In the immediate aftermath of the multiple terrorist attacks on London in July of 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that an investigation into the bombings was not going to be beneficial since it would not reveal any further information pertaining to the suspected perpetrators, and it would only divert "a massive amount of police and security service time", thus reducing our continued counter-terrorism efforts.
The issue has reached the media spotlight again this week. On the BBCs Radio 4 Today program the British Governments Home Secretary Charles Clarke continued to concur with Tony Blair stating that what we really need is to determine what actually happened on July 7th. He said a narrative of the events should be drawn up by a senior civil servant, based on data obtained from the intelligence services and the police.
On the other hand opposition MPs, Muslim leaders and representatives of the victims' consider that an inquiry is needed so that we can learn from the events. Tory MP and the shadow minister for homeland security, Patrick Mercer, said that "clarification was needed on all the details of the attacks." He focused on the government reducing the level of warning in the weeks before the attack. "I think it's time that we fully understood what happened and most importantly... make sure that we've learned the lessons so that this isn't going to happen again - or if it does, that the effects of it can be mitigated," he said.
While the intelligence agencies have been keeping tracks with suspected terrorist cells for a while now under the so-called War On Terror they were it seems taken by surprise on July 7th. Since that date, according to Tony Blair, at least two attempted attacks have been prevented by the security services.
In considering the lessons that may be learned from these events I am intrigued by one paralled with the September 11th attacks in the United States. In both cases it seems that terrorists, either by chance or design, managed to perpetrate an elaborate event that was very nearly an exact replica of an official counter-terrorism exercise planned for the same cities on the same days.
These counter-terrorism exercises include the training exercise that was underway at the very same London Underground tube stations that bombs were detonated on July 7th 2005, and the multiple (at least four) war game senarios that were underway by U.S. security agencies and NORAD on September 11th 2001 which included targets in New York and Washington D.C. (including hijacked aircraft being flowing into buildings.)
Is it plausable that these are all just coincidences, or could it be that in attempting to learn from these events with the intent of preventing future attacks, we should consider the a terrorist organisation may have hijacked these counter-terrorism exercises.
I'm not suggesting that Tony Blair is covering up intelligence failures and that al Qaida may have infiltrated both U.S. and British Inteligence agencies; I simply suggest that we have a opportunity to learn and use that knowledge to prevent such atrocities happening again...
Links:
BBC News article
Info Wars article
Addendum 22nd December 2005
From the announcement on day one by Tony Blair, the official reason for not holding an inquiry into the bombings was that the work involved would dilute our counter-terrorism efforts. Yet, in the last week we have seen plans by the British Home Secretary (MP Charles Clarke) to restructure the Police forces in England and Wales - by merging smaller forces into larger super-forces. What level of disruption would these mergers cause I wonder? Would the potential long-term benefits out-weigh the short-term disruption to our 'counter-terrorism' efforts? If this is the case (as is would seem to be according to the media coverage) then what of the long-term benefits that an inquiry into 7/7 would bring?
