"Mass Murder on an Unimaginable Scale"

So say all the major news outlets. Just a little over two hours ago I was headed to bed and decided to switch over to Fox for a quick scan of the headlines before I turned in. I was surprised to see a live feed from Sky News, Ol’ Rupert’s UK version of Fox, and watched as this story unfolded.

Basically, commercial aviation into the UK is shut down following Scotland Yard’s arrest of 21 people in London and the West Midlands. Police are still looking for as many as 50 people. The Metropolitan Police say they have foiled a large-scale terrorist plot to take down up to 20 airliners in flight by detonating bombs smuggled on-board in carry-on luggage. Sky News and CNN are using the 20 aircraft number, the BBC is saying ten. Even ten aircraft would result in anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 deaths if all ten planes were taken down. That really is mass murder on an unimaginable scale.

The Terrorist Threat Level has been raised to “Critical” in the UK, the highest category. British Airways has cancelled all flights “of short duration,” defined as three hours or less, from Heathrow until 1500 British Time. Air France, Lufthansa, KLM, and Olympic Airways have cancelled all flights into the UK. All flights originating in Brussels and destined for the UK have been cancelled. I’ve seen film of Heathrow and it looks like chaos. Temporary security measures have been implemented and no carry-on luggage is allowed on those flights leaving Heathrow aside from a very short list of permitted items such as wallets, medicine, and baby formula. Additionally, Heathrow’s management held a press conference and advised all people not to travel today unless “absolutely necessary.”

The US has increased its threat level for aviation only to “Orange,” according to CNN. Earlier both CNN and Fox were saying Red for aviation and Orange for the general threat level. Additional restrictions, such as prohibiting all liquids on-board aircraft, are being implemented in the US.

"Due to the nature of the threat revealed by this investigation, we are prohibiting any liquids, including beverages, hair gels, and lotions from being carried on the airplane," the (DHS) statement said.

This is pretty serious stuff and the disruption level is high.

One light moment in all this… I was watching CNN International around 1:30 or so and the anchor, a Brit, was interviewing a “security expert.” The anchorman opened his interview with a leading question, along the lines of “Isn’t this indicative of an intelligence failure, given the last-minute nature of these emergency precautions?” “That’s utter rot,” replied Trevor Somebody, the security expert. The anchor wasn’t fazed at all, but I burst out laughing. Finally, someone called a spade a spade. Stupid, and called out for being stupid. Good for that Trevor guy!

And now, I’m gonna go to bed. Pajamas Media has a pretty good roundup of the news links, memeorandum has a lot of good blog links. But most bloggers are still asleep, like I’m gonna be in about ten minutes.