ABC News Accused Of Aiding Terrorists

ABC News Accused Of Aiding Terrorists Furious readers call for dismissals after article discussed why UK car bombs didn't detonate

Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Thursday, July 5, 2007

ABC News has been accused of aiding potential terrorists after a news article that discussed why the attempted terror attacks on the UK were unsuccessful led to many angry readers claiming the the company was educating future car bombers on how to better hone their techniques.

In a story entitled, Exclusive: U.K. Terror Plot -- Why the Bombs Failed, writers Richard Esposito and Jim Sciutto attempt to explain why the car bombs discovered in two Mercedes in London last week failed to ignite, citing a "medical syringe used as part of the firing mechanism," that "caused a malfunction."

This provoked dozens of furious responses from those who commented on the article who accused ABC of directly educating terrorists on how to perfect the construction of a car bomb for the next attack.

"Are you so stupid that you want to earn a few dollars and help train terrorists on how to avoid their mistakes next time?" wrote one.

"I find it absolutely incredible that you provided technical data as to why the bombs did not go off, guaranteeing the enemy a better shot next time at either civilians or troops," exclaimed another.

Others called for the writers to be "fired unceremoniously," as ABC's advertisers were urged to abandon the company.

ABC News are aiding terrorists but not for the reasons cited above - the real outrage comes in the shape of the following paragraph.

"Had the fuel-air bombs successfully ignited into a superhot fireball filled with roofing nails, casualties were almost a certainty among the 500 or so patrons who partied late at the 1,700-person occupancy nightclub that perhaps best symbolizes London's vital nightlife scene."

In view of the almost ridiculously crude nature of the devices, had the so-called bombs ignited, casualties would not have been a certainty, they would have been restricted to a few minor injuries at worst. ABC is bolstering the magnitude of the terrorist's efforts and by doing so encouraging more copy-cat attempts.

As former Scotland Yard detective John O'Connor stated, the botched attacks were "hopeless", "incompetent" and "almost laughable" and the result of them amounted to nothing more than a bonfire.

"I mean when you see the ludicrous situation when none of the bombs were able to be detonated and these guys are then trying to set fire to petrol," O'Connor told CNN.

His assessment is backed up by former British Army bomb-disposal operator Lewis Page, who characterized the attempted attack as "difficult to distinguish from minor accidents," adding that the perpetrators failed to even conduct a test that would have "told these idiots what every bomb-disposal operator and Hollywood effects guy already knows: that petrol, gas etc make for an excellent, photogenic fireball which you can normally be quite close to without ill effects."

Page writes that teenage joyriders routinely have more success in igniting vehicles than these "terrorists", who didn't even bother to steal some Semtex or any other real explosive from a landfill or quarry.

Other mainstream news outlets that carried screaming phrases and headlines like "car bomb carnage" (BBC) and "explosive-packed cars" (Washington Post) are also complicit in beefing up the profile of the terrorists and eliciting the kind of fear that their amateurish attempted attacks could not generate alone.

Along with ABC's contention that the lives of 500 people were in danger from what in essence was a failed Hollywood stunt fireball, the media are guilty in handing the bad guys a propaganda victory by inflaming the kind of fearmongering that achieves the terrorists' goal - fundamentally changing society and the way we go about our daily business.

The objective of the terrorist is to jolt the existing political landscape by influencing enough to believe that their influence and danger is big enough to cripple the status quo. By adding to the fear and facilitating this agenda in overblowing the scope of the terrorist's accomplishments, the media itself is actively engaging in rhetorical terrorism.