How did Britain manage to thwart their "9/11"?

Question

And could they let Bush know how it is done, how to capture them, and how to avoid going to war? I sure admire how they handle things, even their July bombings from last year, they treated the culprits as criminals, not enemy combatants. ANd they found them...

Answer 1

This just goes to show you that in order to fight real terrorist attack you have to rely on Intelligence and good old fashion police work. You can not fight the Terrorist with the military, you can only fight other military. Using our military to fight terror only make more terrorist. There are the right tools for the right job and the UK just proved to the world that if you have good Intel you can prevent future attacks from happening and if you bring home our troops you will reduce the amounts of attacks against us. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Answer 2

If you're so enamored of how the Brits do things..go over there.

Joe $hit the Ragman could fall onto some intel and end up looking better than our intelligence Community did on 9/11 as far as most people are concerned.

Why don't you do some REAL research...not just CNN crap and see how many events our Intel Community has thwarted. 9/11 was an act of war....and just like on any battlefield..$hit happens and sometimes the bad guy prevails.

Based on that..we should go back into history and for every failed campaign or military blunder..take the generals or the field commanders to task??? All countries have long and prestigious records of massive goofs on the field of honor. Huge! 9/11 was a sneak attack and on domestic soil so it should be treated differently??

During WWII, the US, the Brits, France...all of the Allied Command made some huge goofs while in the throes of battle..never mind a sneak attack. It's a common know fact that we had tons of intel that could have changed the events of 12/7/1945..but we goofed....again. I say we rip the guys who blew Pearl Harbor a new one...if that never happened we'd probably not be fighting terrorism now and we'd all be nice and safe..right?? Wrong.
Also...the Brits might have thwarted "their 9/11"..but they sure as hell didn't do much for train stations and subways and other public venues getting blown to hell and back during the mid to late 1990's. Why aren't you bragging on that????

Answer 3

they have been under constant attack all over the world and at home .I have not heard of a year that has gone by that some attack or embassy was not bombed in the british empire .
THE north of ierland has been a constant sore spot till 2000 ,revolts in south africa plagued them for 2 decades ww2 destroyed london and other cities .they gave up many territories around the globe they could no longer control.
9-11 was more then an attack on america and we seem to over look that .
IT was an attack on western society and all those people around the globe that accept capitalism and changing pyhilosophies.
YOU have to remember capitalism exploits some people usually the minority group of some country .IT may not be race but religion or long standing social classes where one group has been in charge of anothers well being thru class structure .
SO i go back to the question and britian has not avoided attack rather has sufferd hundreds of steady attacks over time killing far more then 9-11 did .

Answer 4

First they had someone infiltrate the organization who is now in a mid level rank. Second, they have not shared this info with anyone. They kept it to themselves and have known about this for months. They only acted and notified everyone else because the terrorists where ready to do dry runs. And the poster above was absolutely correct - they have been dealing with the IRA so they have a great deal of expertise. However, if they got the hell out of Ireland, there wouldn't be an IRA.

Answer 5

yeah those criminals were also BRITISH BORN CITIZENS....and were physically in Britain, most "enemy combatants" are not US citizens and were arrested overseas. I think UK is a bit better prepared now after 9/11 and the subway bombings, spectacular terrorist acts isnt as big of a surprise as it was 5 yrs ago dummy. Why dont you open your eyes and focus on reading the Geneva Convention and tell us all where it says that it applies to individual terrorists fighting in a organization? Geneva applies to combatants fightng for a military of a NATION......last time i heard Al Qaeda wasnt the official army of any nation.

Answer 6

I listened to a program and they were talking about civil rights and the British man said the new laws that their government put into action is, they can get a warrant on supposition only, If we did that in the United States the ACLU would be all over the President, and we would be in court, because the ACLU would file a complaint. They already don't like the patriot act. In our laws you have to show proof, before a warrant is issued. And the Pakistani government was also hunting these guys, and they informed the British government, so you can put some of the blame on the ACLU.

Answer 7

This time I would say it is plain and simple good luck and good intelligence coordination between US,UK and more importantly Pakistan. In fact the leads started based on interrogation of those arrested in Pakistan.All the same we should not take away credit for the good work done by Uk intelligence agencies now as well as july bombings. Where will all this end?

Answer 8

They should give our secret service a few lessons. It was in a newspaper after 9/11 how the British knew what was going to happen here but our administration had other plans on how to deal with it. Who knows!

Answer 9

The "enemy combatants" were captured on the battlefield, not on American soil. That is why they are enemy combatants. I also believe we treated Mousssoui, Ried, and any other terror suspects captured on American soil (Buffalo, Miami) as criminals. We capture ours the same way they captured theirs. We also aided in the British investigation (see the article from time.com here http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1225453,00.html). But this does not fit your "Bush is a moron" line of thinking, so just ignore the truth.

Answer 10

The British were on high alert for these types of attacks because they learned from 9/11, before 9/11, there had never been any terrorist attack on that scale, so we weren't prepared...the whole world wasn't prepared, it just happened to us. There was no way the bush administration could have stopped the attacks anyways, there was a trasfer of power from clinton to bush, so if anyone had the chance to be investigating and stopping the attacks, it was the clinton administration.