Left I on the News

All over the news is the story of how British police arrested nine Muslim men who were planning (according to reports I heard on two different channels) an "unprecedented" terrorist attack. What was that attack? We're told they were planning to kidnap one (1!) British Muslim soldier and execute him by beheading, videotaping the murder and showing it on the Internet. While it may (or may not) be technically "unprecedented" for someone to be beheaded in Britain, the British government (using bombs and hanging ropes) has certainly, along with their American allies, done its own share of beheading in Iraq, so Britons performing beheadings and broadcasting them on TV certainly wouldn't be unprecedented. And kidnapping one man? I mean, a busload might be unprecedented, but one?

The whole story, despite receiving the usual uncritical treatment in the corporate media, seems highly dubious. Does it really take nine people to plan to kidnap one person off the streets of England? And if there really were nine terrorists in a cell in Britain, is kidnapping one British soldier the most dramatic plan they could come up with, even with the beheading angle? I'm skeptical.