One of Key SOTU Lies Was a Rerun

Clipping

"Just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean." --George W. Bush, 2007 State of the Union Well, the British "authorities" did arrest two dozen people at the insistence of the Bush Administration, but numerous reports found consensus among experts that those arrested could not have possibly mixed together on an airplane the liquid explosives they allegedly planned to use. And common sense suggested that if they had managed such a sophisticated plot, it was unlikely anyone else was working on the same thing (the assumption that prevents us all from traveling with toothpaste and deodorant unless sealed in a proper protective plastic bag, and leads to government employees carelessly tossing deadly dangerous toothpaste tubes into trashcans in the middle of unsuspecting crowds). Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, summed this case up well: "None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time. In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms. "What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests. Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth."