UK insists terror-linked military base is safe as US withdraws bombers

Filed 7h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Miri's Magic Dance

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Garry Knight from London, England · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The United States withdrew all 12 B-1 bombers stationed at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire after six men were arrested in connection with a suspected terrorist plot near the base, five of them close to an access gate where police found gasoline in three vans but no explosives.

Downing Street declined to comment on foreign military operations while simultaneously declaring the base safe, leaning on praise from President Trump and a line from Defense Secretary Wes Streeting about tried and tested approaches to base defense. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the bomber withdrawal was unrelated, describing it as ordinary troop and equipment rotation.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there were strong indications Iran played a part in the incident, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards had already called RAF Fairford a legitimate military target in July over its role in U.S. strikes against Iran. A sixth suspect, a dual British-Iranian national, was arrested Thursday and released on bail Saturday, and counterterrorism police are still investigating any foreign state link.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A government says a place is safe right after every bomber in it packs up and leaves, and somehow that is supposed to settle a person's nerves. If the barn is fine, you don't usually see every horse walked out the back gate in the same week. The honest answer here is nobody actually knows yet, and saying 'safe' twelve times doesn't make the bombers come back any sooner.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Miri's Magic Dance · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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