Saudis arrest 172 in airplane terror plot

They're saying this plot was at the zero hour. Even scarier then that is how extremely well funded these psychos were. Times Online - Police in Riyadh say that they have arrested Islamic militants who were being trained as pilots to fly suicide attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. The Saudi interior ministry issued a statement saying that the 172 detainees held in raids today were involved in plots to carry out suicide atttacks against “public figures, oil facilities, refineries ... and military zones". Some of the planned targets were outside the Saudi kingdom. “They had reached an advance stage of readiness and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks,” Brigadier Mansour al-Turki, an interior ministry spokesman, told the Associated Press news agency. “They had the personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete, except for setting the zero hour for the attacks.” The ministry did not say that the militants would fly aircraft into oil refineries, as the 9/11 hijackers flew planes into buildings in New York and Washington, but it said in a statement that some detainees had been “sent to other countries to study flying in preparation for using them to carry out terrorist attacks inside the kingdom”. The militants also planned to storm Saudi prisons to free the inmates, the statement said. In their crackdown, the police seized large quantities of weapons, explosives and money. More than 120 million riyals (US$32.4 million) had been seized in the operation, one of the largest sweeps against terror cells in the kingdom. Wow. It makes me wonder though, suppose this plot had been fully executed, assuming the targets were strictly located in the Saudi kingdom, how would that change the perception of the world toward the GWOT, toward the Bush adminstration, and to the US/west in general? Saudi Arabia says they're an ally, but in reality they're no major help. If the Saudis were devestated by several suicide air attacks, the US is instantly there with aid and any military support they request. Saudi Arabia immediately moves away from the terrorist groups and their politics and begins to vigorously pursue them, ostracizing them from the majority of society. Perhaps the marginalized terrorists begin to lash out more like their bastard Iraqi insurgent brothers; they're not part of the solution for the country so they turn to the only option they have: cowardly acts of violence and murder. World opinion can't hammer Arabs for trying to police and protect themselves, so as an Arab nation takes the point (even if only for the moment) in the fight against terrorism, the world supports them, re-legitimizing the GWOT and strengthening Iraqi resolve and our position in it. Bush is once again the maverick cowboy trying to police the world. Of course excellent intelligence, surveillance, and police work went into preventing these planned attacks, no doubt saving thousands of lives. So I guess we'll never know how the world would react because the MSM sure as hell won't pay this story any attention.