By Daan de Wit

At the same times and places of the attacks in London, exercises were held that imitated what suddenly became reality. On the same day of the attacks the risk level was lowered. Both elements could have contributed to the macabre success of the attacks.

This article has been translated into English by Marienella Meulensteen.

The exercises on July 7 were carried out by Visor Consultants, an agency that advises on security and is led by Peter Power, former anti-terrorism expert of Scotland Yard. On the day of the attack, he tells in a radio interview with the BBC [short - long MP3, and on ITV News, WMV] how the exercises of that morning suddenly changed into reality: '[...] within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on'. Earlier that day, 'the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) [lowered] its risk level, which is shared by police and large businesses. [...] Blair can expect concerted questioning over why the risk level was lowered at such a time', writes The Scotsman.

Former gov't anti-terrorism expert: exercise becomes reality
'POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.
HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely [...]', according to part of the transcript of the broadcast, as cited in an article by Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones.

Patterns of attacks on the West starting to become clear
Resemblances with September 11, 2001 are inevitable. DaanSpeak reported already in 2002 about the enormous war games that pulled down the defense system of the U.S. on 9/11. Without these exercises, September 11 could not have taken place. The exercises in London were carried out on the orders of an anonymous company. Nevertheless, the exercise possibly caused confusion for the authorities. Watson and Jones write: 'The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartmentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise'. Earlier DaanSpeak wrote about the attacks in Moscow in 1999 when agents of the secret service FSB were caught planting (bogus?) bombs that would be used during an exercise. This same pretext that the FSB used could have also been used by Visor Consultants. Of course this is speculation, but with these kinds of attacks it is wise to be suspicious, because in the past they were often carried out on the orders of the West (see the last paragraph of this article).

Scotland Yard warns Israeli Embassy before attack
'Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks', writes the Associated Press. A consequence was that the former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu - who was about to leave for an economic conference in a hotel right above one of the metro stations that was later hit - stayed where he was. Israel later denied having received a warning from Scotland Yard. Foreknowledge of the attack in London is remarkable, but not very peculiar. With these kinds of attacks - just think of Oklahoma, September 11 and Bali - there is more often talk of foreknowledge.

'Al-Qaeda terrorist' dream criminal for Western governments
Experienced DaanSpeak readers immediately were alarmed when the news appeared that Al-Qaeda had hit again; all sorts of emails were sent to the DaanSpeak desk. The first motive may have been our article titled Al-Qaeda does not exist - Bin Laden videos are bogus - Osama bin Laden is dead. A second reason was possibly our publication about the attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Meanwhile, it appears more and more that this concerns an attack executed by the U.S. itself. Consequently, Christians as well as Muslims (and everyone in between) have let themselves be fooled by the U.S., and jumped with both feet into the trap that was set for them. It is part of a tactic that started after the collapse of Communism and that became real with the attack in Oklahoma, as we wrote earlier: a matter that reeks to high heaven. From then on it became clear to the American citizen that there was a danger larger than communism, namely terrorism. If the Commies were a good enemy, the terrorist is the ultimate opponent: unidentifiable, uneradicable, and in a position to attack at any moment. It is the basis for current Western politics that rules through fear.

The claim that Al-Qaeda is behind the attack in London is very shaky, according to 'MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular Web site, noting that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said. "This is not something Al-Qaeda would do", he said. 'It immediately reminds one of the car that was found directly after the attacks of September 11, containing a Quran and a manual in Arabic on how to fly an airplane, and the letter [PDF] in Arabic of the head hijacker Mohammed Atta, of which journalist Robert Fisk writes: 'What Muslim Would Write: 'The Time of Fun and Waste is Gone'? Because crazier things can happen, The Guardian writes in an article titled Uncle Sam's lucky finds: 'In less than a week came another find, two blocks away from the Twin Towers, in the shape of Atta's passport. We had all seen the blizzard of paper rain down from the towers, but the idea that Atta's passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged would have tested the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI's crackdown on terrorism'.

Attacks on West often false flag operations
A large part of the attacks on the West consist of so-called false flag operations: operations of Western secret services that blame the attack on their alleged enemies. If you subtract these kinds of operations (think of Gladio) from the total attacks, there is not much left. DaanSpeak is full of examples of these kinds of attacks, among them the attack on Pearl Harbor and the attacks of September 11. But also think of our article in which we explain how the Mossad had planned attacks on Israelis to subsequenly have them claimed by Palestinians in the name of Al-Qaeda. In the same article there is also information under the heading: 'Experts: Israel supported Hamas to sabotage the peace process'. The first thing to ask yourself with these kinds of attacks is Cui bono, who profits from it? Often the answer is Cui prodest scelus, est fecit; loosely translated: He who profits from the crime is the criminal, a quote that we cited in an article written about September 11, 2001.