The usual suspects have deployed the usual rhetorical tropes against my questions about the evidence in the alleged terror plot based in Britain. Jeff Goldstein has me on an AIDS "dementia watch." Another had this charming metaphor:
Hell hath no fury like a man-bitch spurned.
They don't even need a blood-level of 0.12, do they? A Malkin stand-in writes:
Of course, the fact that [Sullivan]'s hysterically arguing that there was no terror plot out of London makes his charges against me, let's say slightly less believeable.
Well, read the post. I'm not arguing that "there was no terror plot". I'm asking questions about the evidence provided. So far: none. Maybe there's an explanation for that - and we'll find out in due course. But the Malkinian had previously written the following words in defense of torture in Pakistan:
An attack was imminent, and the information had to be obtained, no matter the method.
I have yet to read any evidence that an attack was "imminent". All the stories I've read have argued that the plot was for a dummy-run. Maybe Karol Sheinin has sources that I haven't read. If she has, she should provide them, or correct her post. If she has a different understanding of the term "imminent," then it would be helpful for her to say so. My point about the use of torture is related to the reliability of the evidence. Torture is renowned for providing faulty information, even in totalitarian states whose techniques some conservatives now endorse. My question is about whether the evidence is indeed faulty. We don't know. If there's not much there and the British are forced to release the suspects without charging them, the backlash against Blair will be enormous. And that will make future counter-terrorism harder. I should add I don't think I can be accused of disbelieving the potential of terrorists to strike again. I have a cover-story in the current New York Magazine premised on exactly that - on a far larger scale than anything alleged recently.