WHY NO MANHUNT FOR THE RESTAURANT KILLERS?
Now that the immediate cops-and-killers Paris drama seems to be drawing to a close, some things look clear, but many others only slightly less confusing or implausible. Very obvious indeed are the main winners: the EC federalists, who are well on the way to forming some sort of Euroarmy; Vladimir Putin, who has pretty well secured his ally Assad’s position by bombing the hell out of ISIL; those keen to get rid of free EU movement, for whom this has been a lucky bounce to say the least; the US, which sees itself as somehow vindicated by the attacks; and the multivariate shades of policemen across the EU, who will now get even more impunity and draconian powers of Big Brother watchfulness than they had before.
The losers are greater in number, but much easier to define: the people of Paris, who must feel extremely vulnerable by now; and the ordinary citizens of Syria, whose sole solace for being the unlucky target of US oil mania has been to get bombed by pretty much everyone – the Russians, the Israelis, and now the French….with Camerlot not far down the road.
I was watching the BBCWorld channel earlier today, as a substantial majority of US Congressmen voted to stop any Syrians settling in the US. It has to be one of the more unaccountably selfish acts in history – open the door, lob some bombs onto the folks on the lawn, lock the door when they start burning to death – but then, we’ve seen it before from the US élite: when the Mullahs hit London, the senior US officer in place ordered all his men to get TF out with all speed. This we term a Special Relationship. For myself, I’d rather we had a more even-handed one.
One could never accuse Big Power autocrats of behaving responsibly, and the US can be more hare-brained than most. Without asking Mrs Thatcher’s permission, they invaded the British territory of Grenada, and in order to dispose of the by then neutered Jihadist Osama Bin Laden they carried out a full-scale search and kill operation on Pakistani soil – again without asking that entirely Muslim nation. In turn, they were covertly involved at the start of the Golden Dawn trial in Greece, had troops as advisors on the ground in Libya, and a great many Ukrainian citizens on both sides have attested to the fact that American accented soldiers were clearly heard in the capital there….just, as it were, checking that the régime change was ticking along nicely.
Now, a week on from the Paris atrocity, I’ve been looking further at the order of events, the arrests made since, and the press releases given by various figures and organisations along the way. And I think there are good grounds for investigating the possibility that two types of attacker were involved.
To recap, 4 jihadists were at the Bataclan, and three at the Stade de France. One of the Bataclan assassins then left before the cops arrived, strolling the short distance to the Voltaire restuarant, where he blew himself up.
That meant all seven dead by 9:53 pm – and so having reviewed the other events of the evening, I pointed out that at least 10 and probably 11 terrorists were involved in total. The Paris authorities remained adamant that only seven were involved and one had a Syrian passport….until Tuesday, when it became clear that the Syrian passport was a fake, and the number involved had been nine.
Wednesday dawned and it was announced that the ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud had been shot (his missus having dutifully blown herself up). But then yesterday, it turned out he wasn’t the ringleader at all: this soubriquet now belongs to Salah Abdeslam, who is ‘on the run and fears ISIL reprisals for not having completed his assignments’ on the night in question. Ergo, he must have been an active participant….so the number involved now goes up to 12. But Abaaoud, we’re told, entered Europe as a fake refugee: so that narrative is still not dead – and I’m sure Nigel Farage is delighted by this. I happen to think there is a real danger from fake refugees, but either way you have to accept that this is the atrocity that aims to please every agenda in town.
If Abaaoud was at the event, then of course it means 13 nutters were out there.
Except I think it very possible that there were 9 nutters – and 4 others made of altogether different stuff.
I base this view on five key observations:
- The four hit nothing but restaurants
- Their demeanour was calm and silent
- They killed as pros, not as extremists
- None of them committed suicide
- They all got away.
True, having hit the Bataclan, one nutter went off to complain about the food at the Voltaire; but all the other eaterie witnesses saw large, ops-dressed muscular blokes get out of cars, fire at their targets, knock off some others they figured might be witnesses, and then re-enter the limo to drive smoothly away. Several survivors at two locations insist at least one of the attackers was Caucasian.
The more normal MO of Jihadists is to target big occasions and aim to kill as many as possible. Bataclan and Stade de France fit that, the restaurants don’t. Bataclan was a cockup in that the three blokes remaining there left no escape route, and the SdF caper was an almost complete failure. Their hits are usually accompanied by lectures about not insulting the Prophet or supporting Crusaders and shouts of “Allah Aqbar!” As far as I can establish, nobody remembers any Jihadist yelling at the restaurant attacks.
Equally telling, perhaps, is that while at first I said 11 and the authorities said 7, despite twists, turns and swift positional changes since last Saturday, I’m now saying 13 and they’re saying 9. The number who melted away into the night remains the same: 4.
Over the last three days – and this cannot be considered a full and accurate audit – I have been struck by the recurrent mantra now taking centre-stage: “the scale of the threat”, “the size of the operation”, “the professionalism shown”and so on. As always with Arab fundamentalist sects, the game plan of intelligence agencies seems always to ‘Big Up’ the importance and network of the threat. In fact, the evidence that Al Q’aida represented “a global terrorist threat” was always nonsense…..and I posted earlier in the year my doubts about how IS as it then was leapt from being a rag-tag bunch of squabbling diehards in Syria to being “40,000 strong” in Iraq – in a little over ten weeks…and being called by the ever-present arms envoy John McCain “the most powerful Islamic terrorist on the planet”.
Whether the Daersh lunatics were or were not given help a week ago tonight, the multiplicity and apparently military nature of the op has had the desired effect: at a stroke, Federica Moguedini’s military objectives, EU police surveillance powers, and suspicion about the wisdom of keeping the refugees in Europe have all been given a massive shot in the arm. That outcome is at very best a curate’s egg; in time, I believe it will be used to justify all kinds of State encroachments upon free speech and freedom from 24/7 cameras purely there for our own good.
Last night at The Slog: War-on-Terror….where the Cyber-apples grow
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