Propaganda Wars

Last night, pretty damning stuff:

LONDON, April 30 — A jury found five British Muslim men guilty on Monday of planning fertilizer-bomb attacks around London, ending a yearlong trial that linked the plotters with two of the four men who blew themselves up on London’s transit system in July 2005.

According to the evidence, revealed during the trial but made public for the first time on Monday, authorities had closely monitored meetings in 2004 between members of the two plots but never fully investigated the men who pulled off the transit attacks, which killed 56 people.

(snip)

For its part, MI5, the domestic intelligence agency, a famously secretive organization, went public to defend itself, saying on its Web site on Monday that it had never been “complacent” in investigating the 2005 transit attacks.

Last week, the head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, retired and was replaced by Jonathan Evans, a Qaeda specialist. The agency said the change was unrelated to the disclosures from the investigation, which the authorities named Operation Crevice.

That law enforcement authorities knew of a connection between the two groups is especially embarrassing because three days after the 2005 attacks, Charles Clarke, then the Home Secretary, said they “simply came out of the blue.”

This morning, Al-CIA-duh leader killed:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader 'killed'

The interior ministry in Iraq says it has received intelligence that the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been killed.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri, believed to be an Egyptian, has led the group since June 2006 when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike.

One official said he was "100% sure" that Masri had been killed, but another urged caution as the body had not been recovered.