Al Qaeda Takes Credit for Plot (Northwest Flight 253)

MojoMan · Dec 29, 2009

So much for President Obama's theory of this being the act of an "isolated extremist". Al Qaeda has taken credit for the plot, and U.S. officials have confirmed that the claim appears to be valid.

From the Wall Street Journal:

[RQUOTER]Al Qaeda Takes Credit for Plot

WASHINGTON -- Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack on Northwest Flight 253, and U.S. officials said the claim appears valid -- the clearest indication yet that the attempted takedown wasn't just the work of a lone radical inspired by Islamist rhetoric, as some investigators initially believed.

The development came as evidence mounted that the U.S. didn't pursue potential leads that might have brought alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to the attention of authorities, according to Congressional investigators and U.S. officials.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano backtracked Monday from comments she made in televised interviews over the weekend, in which she said the U.S.'s security systems had worked. President Barack Obama, in his first public comments about the incident, promised the government would do everything it can to keep travelers secure. "We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable," Mr. Obama said in remarks broadcast on television from Hawaii, where he is on vacation.

....[/RQUOTER]

When are Obama and company going to pull their heads out of their backsides and accept the fact that we are in the middle of a war with radical muslim extremists, including but not limited to Al Qaeda? We have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We apparently fly drones into Pakistan daily on search and destroy missions. And of course, Iran, probably the largest founder and supporter of terrorists worldwide, is putting the finishing touches on its nuclear weapons program.

Now a new front appears to be opening up in Yemen, located on the southern edge of the Arabian peninsula.

We have Navy Seals being court marshaled for ruffing one of these guys up a little bit, while the man who tried to perpetrate the attack on Northwest Flight 253 is safely lawyered up, making his knowledge of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization that organized this plot safely off limits. This guy could have knowledge of other plots under development right this minute, but we want to make sure he is all safe and comfy, even that ultimately results in the death of thousands of innocent Americans.

President Obama is on a precipice with regards to this issue right now. His administration has badly mishandled this terrorist by giving him over to the legal authorities, and by not treating him as the unlawful enemy combatant that he is. If this branch of Al Qaeda later plots a successful attack on the U.S., as it very nearly succeeded in doing here, President Obama and his administration will rightly be held accountable and responsible for that attack by the American people.

You are on the edge here BO. Show us how smart you are and embrace the reality of this for the best interests and for the safety of the American people. We are involved a Global War on Terror, like it or not. Or, at a minimum, the terrorists are engaged in a war with us anyway.

krosfyah · Dec 29, 2009

This could have been prevented by implementing common sense screening practices. The boy's own father warned America of the threat and nobody ever bothered to pull this guy aside and ask him a couple more questions and put him through extra searches.

In this case, it's an easy fix. Better utilize the intelligence that we already have.

Who had 7 years in office to fix that blatently obvious problem after 9/11? Oh yea, it was W.

Instead of fixing common sense intelligence issues, he decided to take the fight to Iraq. How has that worked out? ...and you are suggesting we do the same thing in Yemen? Not too bright, are you?

Air Langhi · Dec 29, 2009

Why claim credit for Failure?

Shooter3 · Dec 29, 2009

MojoMan said:

We have Navy Seals being court marshaled for ruffing one of these guys up a little bit, while the man who tried to perpetrate the attack on Northwest Flight 253 is safely lawyered up, making his knowledge of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization that organized this plot safely off limits. This guy could have knowledge of other plots under development right this minute, but we want to make sure he is all safe and comfy, even that ultimately results in the death of thousands of innocent Americans.

President Obama is on a precipice with regards to this issue right now. His administration has badly mishandled this terrorist by giving him over to the legal authorities, and by not treating him as the unlawful enemy combatant that he is. If this branch of Al Qaeda later plots a successful attack on the U.S., as it very nearly succeeded in doing here, President Obama and his administration will rightly be held accountable and responsible for that attack by the American people.

You are on the edge here BO. Show us how smart you are and embrace the reality of this for the best interests and for the safety of the American people. We are involved a Global War on Terror, like it or not. Or, at a minimum, the terrorists are engaged in a war with us anyway.
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I don't remember conservatives complaining when richard reid was tried in court.

'I blame myself' says father, as shoe bomber Richard Reid pleads guilty
By Andrew Johnson
Sunday, 6 October 2002SHARE PRINTEMAILTEXT SIZE NORMALLARGEEXTRA

The father of the so-called "shoe bomber" Richard Reid has said he stands by his son and holds himself responsible for the act of terror that could have killed 196 aircraft passengers and crew. "I blame myself for not being there when he was growing up," Robin Reid told the BBC. "I was in prison when I should have been there." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...bomber-richard-reid-pleads-guilty-613281.html

The father of the so-called "shoe bomber" Richard Reid has said he stands by his son and holds himself responsible for the act of terror that could have killed 196 aircraft passengers and crew. "I blame myself for not being there when he was growing up," Robin Reid told the BBC. "I was in prison when I should have been there."

Richard Reid, 29, a British citizen, pleaded guilty on Friday to trying to blow up an American Airlines transatlantic flight by detonating explosives hidden in his shoe. He now faces a 60-year jail sentence.

His father, originally from Jamaica, has already received the attentions of self-appointed avengers. The windows at his flat, on a rundown council estate, in Streatham, south London, have been broken. All his front windows are covered with chipboard. At the back of the flat, which lines a main road, one pane of glass has been smashed and the others were protected with mattresses, chipboard or closed curtains.

On Friday Richard Reid laughed as he admitted to a court in Boston, Massachusetts, that he had tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight in December. "Basically, I got on the plane with a bomb," he said.

"Basically, I tried to ignite it. Basically, yeah, I tried to damage the plane."

He was overpowered by fellow passengers who tied him up with belts and headphone wires.

In his interview with the BBC, Robin Reid, 52, described his son as "gentle and caring" and said he had been "brainwashed" by Muslim extremists.

"I reacted in the way any father would," he said, "with sheer horror. I am just grateful he did not succeed. I think now that my son will die in prison. I will try and visit him, but with my record I may not get a visa and with my disability it will be hard. I will have to just write to him and hope he knows that I support him and love him – I always will."

Richard Reid was jailed in Britain in the mid-1990s for a series of muggings and is believed to have converted to Islam while in prison. A Home Office spokeswoman said all Imams are personally vetted by the Prison Service Muslim Adviser to ensure they are moderate and not linked to fundamental organisations. "The Imams also go through the usual Prison Service checks which are made on everyone since September 11," she said.
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Space Ghost · Dec 29, 2009

Shooter3 said:

I don't remember conservatives complaining when richard reid was tried in court.
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Does this really have to be spelled out for you?

glynch · Dec 29, 2009

Air Langhi said:

Why claim credit for Failure?
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This shows that Al Qaeda is pretty weak. They consider this a success that they were actually able to get so close. It shows their followers that they can actually do something besides hide out and be bombed.

The b**** is that it will probably cost us many $billions in additional lost time and airport security.

pgabriel · Dec 29, 2009

glynch said:

This shows that Al Qaeda is pretty weak. They consider this a success that they were actually able to get so close. It shows their followers that they can actually do something besides hide out and be bombed.
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totally agree

Baqui99 · Dec 29, 2009

I heard Al Qaeda took credit for Adrian Peterson's fumble in OT last night.

LScolaDominates · Dec 29, 2009

glynch said:

This shows that Al Qaeda is pretty weak. They consider this a success that they were actually able to get so close. It shows their followers that they can actually do something besides hide out and be bombed.

The b**** is that it will probably cost us many $billions in additional lost time and airport security.
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Disagree. It actually shows that AQ has become more decentralized, with command-level decision-making authority dispersed into several regions.

jo mama · Dec 29, 2009

it also shows that if they followed thru on intel the guy wouldnt have ever gotten that far.

just like many of the 9/11 hijackers, who were on terrorist watchlists, but still managed to get in. or the fbi agents who id'ed 2 of the hijackers in phoenix and minneapolis, only to have their warnings ignored by their superiors.

and again, the response isnt to make sure they do a better job of following thru on intel, its to impose more draconian measures upon passengers.

i was listening to cnn this morning and they are talking about how we need to have the full-body scanners at all the airports and how americans will support it now in order to feel safe.

and wasnt it convenient how quickly they were able to roll out all these new 'safety measures' - no review or anything - all of a sudden, the day after the thwarted attack they have all these new rules ready-to-go.

Faos · Dec 29, 2009

Why didn't the guy try to do this in the bathroom where he couldn't be stopped, or at least not as fast?

rhadamanthus · Dec 29, 2009

Security theater pisses me off. So do people who refuse to understand statistics.

LScolaDominates · Dec 29, 2009

jo mama said:

it also shows that if they followed thru on intel the guy wouldnt have ever gotten that far.

just like many of the 9/11 hijackers, who were on terrorist watchlists, but still managed to get in. or the fbi agents who id'ed 2 of the hijackers in phoenix and minneapolis, only to have their warnings ignored by their superiors.

and again, the response isnt to make sure they do a better job of following thru on intel, its to impose more draconian measures upon passengers.

i was listening to cnn this morning and they are talking about how we need to have the full-body scanners at all the airports and how americans will support it now in order to feel safe.

and wasnt it convenient how quickly they were able to roll out all these new 'safety measures' - no review or anything - all of a sudden, the day after the thwarted attack they have all these new rules ready-to-go.
Click to expand...

I also caught a bit of CNN this morning. They were doing interviews with people at the airport, and they unanimously said that they were ok with the new "security" measures because they made them feel safer.

I'm not going to go as far as to say this whole thing was a conspiracy to increase surveilance at airports, but the propoganda machine is certainly in full effect.

rhadamanthus · Dec 29, 2009

Bruce Schneier on Airport Security

CNN) -- Last week's attempted terror attack on an airplane heading from Amsterdam to Detroit has given rise to a bunch of familiar questions.

How did the explosives get past security screening? What steps could be taken to avert similar attacks? Why wasn't there an air marshal on the flight? And, predictably, government officials have rushed to institute new safety measures to close holes in the system exposed by the incident.

Reviewing what happened is important, but a lot of the discussion is off-base, a reflection of the fundamentally wrong conception most people have of terrorism and how to combat it.

Terrorism is rare, far rarer than many people think. It's rare because very few people want to commit acts of terrorism, and executing a terrorist plot is much harder than television makes it appear.

The best defenses against terrorism are largely invisible: investigation, intelligence, and emergency response. But even these are less effective at keeping us safe than our social and political policies, both at home and abroad. However, our elected leaders don't think this way: They are far more likely to implement security theater against movie-plot threats.

A "movie-plot threat" is an overly specific attack scenario. Whether it's terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists contaminating the milk supply, or terrorists attacking the Olympics, specific stories affect our emotions more intensely than mere data does.

Stories are what we fear. It's not just hypothetical stories -- terrorists flying planes into buildings, terrorists with explosives strapped to their legs or with bombs in their shoes, and terrorists with guns and bombs waging a co-ordinated attack against a city are even scarier movie-plot threats because they actually happened.

"Security theater" refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security. An example: the photo ID checks that have sprung up in office buildings. No one has ever explained why verifying that someone has a photo ID provides any actual security, but it looks like security to have a uniformed guard-for-hire looking at ID cards.

Airport-security examples include the National Guard troops stationed at U.S. airports in the months after 9/11 -- their guns had no bullets. The U.S. color-coded system of threat levels, the pervasive harassment of photographers, and the metal detectors that are increasingly common in hotels and office buildings since the Mumbai terrorist attacks, are additional examples.

To be sure, reasonable arguments can be made that some terrorist targets are more attractive than others: airplanes because a small bomb can result in the death of everyone aboard, monuments because of their national significance, national events because of television coverage, and transportation because of the numbers of people who commute daily.

But there are literally millions of potential targets in any large country -- there are 5 million commercial buildings alone in the United States -- and hundreds of potential terrorist tactics. It's impossible to defend every place against everything, and it's impossible to predict which tactic and target terrorists will try next.

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders.

When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Often, this "something" is directly related to the details of a recent event. We confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on airplanes. We tell people they can't use an airplane restroom in the last 90 minutes of an international flight. But it's not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning.

If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we've wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we've wasted our money. Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets.

Our current response to terrorism is a form of "magical thinking." It relies on the idea that we can somehow make ourselves safer by protecting against what the terrorists happened to do last time.

Unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible. Such measures include enhancing the intelligence-gathering abilities of the secret services, hiring cultural experts and Arabic translators, building bridges with Islamic communities both nationally and internationally, funding police capabilities -- both investigative arms to prevent terrorist attacks, and emergency communications systems for after attacks occur -- and arresting terrorist plotters without media fanfare.

They do not include expansive new police or spying laws. Our police don't need any new laws to deal with terrorism; rather, they need apolitical funding.

The arrest of the "liquid bombers" in London is an example: They were caught through old-fashioned intelligence and police work. Their choice of target (airplanes) and tactic (liquid explosives) didn't matter; they would have been arrested regardless.

But even as we do all of this we cannot neglect the feeling of security, because it's how we collectively overcome the psychological damage that terrorism causes. It's not security theater we need, it's direct appeals to our feelings. The best way to help people feel secure is by acting secure around them. Instead of reacting to terrorism with fear, we -- and our leaders -- need to react with indomitability, the kind of strength shown by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II.

By not overreacting, by not responding to movie-plot threats, and by not becoming defensive, we demonstrate the resilience of our society, in our laws, our culture, our freedoms. There is a difference between indomitability and arrogant "bring 'em on" rhetoric. There's a difference between accepting the inherent risk that comes with a free and open society, and hyping the threats.

We should treat terrorists like common criminals and give them all the benefits of true and open justice -- not merely because it demonstrates our indomitability, but because it makes us all safer.

Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, the risks to its future stability are much greater than terrorism.

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we're doing the terrorists' job for them.

Today, we can project indomitability by rolling back all the fear-based post-9/11 security measures. Our leaders have lost credibility; getting it back requires a decrease in hyperbole. Ditch the invasive mass surveillance systems and new police state-like powers. Return airport security to pre-9/11 levels. Remove swagger from our foreign policies. Show the world that our legal system is up to the challenge of terrorism. Stop telling people to report all suspicious activity; it does little but make us suspicious of each other, increasing both fear and helplessness.

Counterterrorism is also hard, especially when we're psychologically prone to muck it up. Since 9/11, we've embarked on strategies of defending specific targets against specific tactics, overreacting to every terrorist video, stoking fear, demonizing ethnic groups, and treating the terrorists as if they were legitimate military opponents who could actually destroy a country or a way of life -- all of this plays into the hands of terrorists.

We'd do much better by leveraging the inherent strengths of our modern democracies and the natural advantages we have over the terrorists: our adaptability and survivability, our international network of laws and law enforcement, and the freedoms and liberties that make our society so enviable.

The way we live is open enough to make terrorists rare; we are observant enough to prevent most of the terrorist plots that exist, and indomitable enough to survive the even fewer terrorist plots that actually succeed. We don't need to pretend otherwise.
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rocketsjudoka · Dec 29, 2009

Baqui99 said:

I heard Al Qaeda took credit for Adrian Peterson's fumble in OT last night.
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What's funny is when they were showing the leaders of the Yemeni Al Qaeda cell on the news after the game one of those guys looks a lot like Jared Allen.

Major · Dec 29, 2009

Space Ghost said:

Does this really have to be spelled out for you?
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I can't speak for him, but I would love to hear your explanation of this.

gifford1967 · Dec 29, 2009

Faos said:

Why didn't the guy try to do this in the bathroom where he couldn't be stopped, or at least not as fast?
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Good question.

thadeus · Dec 29, 2009

Faos said:

Why didn't the guy try to do this in the bathroom where he couldn't be stopped, or at least not as fast?
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Two reasons: because he's a ****ing idiot, and because he didn't really want to kill himself.

Surfguy · Dec 29, 2009

Faos said:

Why didn't the guy try to do this in the bathroom where he couldn't be stopped, or at least not as fast?
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I think there is a requirement where the terrorist has to scream "God is great" in public before they explode themselves. Or, they will be denied the virgins.

rocketsjudoka · Dec 29, 2009

Faos said:

Why didn't the guy try to do this in the bathroom where he couldn't be stopped, or at least not as fast?
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I'm guessing that his position on the plane was important. The explosive he used was powerful enough to punch a hole in the plane but possibly not enough to blow the plane complete up or even in two. The bathrooms in many planes are located in the middle of the cabin and an explosion there might've just taken out the bathrooms and punched a hole through to the cargo compartment instead of taking the plane down. An explosion near the exterior of the plane could open a hole outside and create a dangerous decompression. If at the wing might even take the wing off.

My guess is he was trained to set it off from his seat.

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