More questions

Life is so full of questions. It seems impossible to read the news and be left bewildered by the bits of information streaming out. The previous post poses the question; what are the successes in the war on terror?

Now an article in the UK Daily Telegraph has me asking even more. Terror police target 70 'plots'.

More than 70 anti-terrorist investigations involving over 100 suspected Islamic extremists are under way in Britain in an operation unmatched even at the height of the IRA's mainland campaign.

They are believed to be "multi-handed" terrorist plots, such as the alleged plan to blow up transatlantic airliners that led to the arrest of 24 people last Thursday.

The official statement from the home office qualifies those 70 disclosed cases: "The numbers are very difficult," a source said. "Some may not be about to launch a bomb attack but may be suspected of background help."

Background help apparently refers “to fund-raising activity - aimed at Iraq or other foreign hot spots, as well as the UK - and intelligence-gathering, such as details of potential targets.”

So we don’t have 100 odd bomb throwers, as the bulk are doing background work. That in itself is dangerous enough, but the Home Office also says that “Individuals sometimes drop in and out of suspect groups and, at times, obvious overlaps emerge between terrorist gangs.”

So the level of commitment is, at least to a degree fluid, not your hard-line jihadists.

Internet terrorism?

Then another interesting question arises, what if your hard-line jihadists is a competent bomb maker but is computer illiterate?

“A significant amount of the activity involves internet communication between groups, often young Muslim men at college or university.”

Have the intel operatives been sucked into believing that the world operates from the internet? How are we ever going to get an anus-clenching terror novel out of a bunch of spies sitting at computers doing ‘blue-sky’ research?

The simply fact is that it is easy to be mouthy and provocative on the internet; many of us do it on a daily basis. That doesn’t translate into any direct action. Sure it is an ideal communications medium, but if you want secret then it is perhaps not the best route.

In fact the Internet would be a far more valuable tool for spreading disinformation, for laying the proverbial ‘red herrings’.

The internet; all this vast resource and all I and come up with is more questions.