American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the guy who had a bomb in his underpants, plead guilty,
A Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane with a bomb in his underwear two years ago pleaded guilty on the second day of his trial Wednesday.
He now faces a possible life sentence.
At Public Secrets,
According to Dr. Kifah Al-Ramali of the Gaza Islamic University, beauty contests are yet another part of the eternal Western plot against Islam. The true beauty queen, according to Cousin Itt Dr. Al-Ramali, is the “jihad mother” who waits patiently while her menfolk blow themselves up or otherwise get themselves killed trying to murder Jews
In other news, Terrorists ‘plan attack on Britain with bombs INSIDE their bodies’ to foil new airport scanners
an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror campaign by inserting ‘surgical bombs’ inside people for the first time.
…
A leading source added that male bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks, while females would have the material placed inside their breasts in the same way as figure-enhancing implants.Experts said the explosive PETN (Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate) would be placed in a plastic sachet inside the bomber’s body before the wound was stitched up like a normal operation incision and allowed to heal.
A shaped charge of 8oz of PETN can penetrate five inches of armour and would easily blow a large hole in an airliner.
Security sources said the explosives would be detonated by the bomber using a hypodermic syringe to inject TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) through their skin into the explosives sachet.
Of course a body cavity search will be useless, but rest assured that the general public will be subjected to them.
Following up on yesterday’s What’s with Detroit? post, this report: Unruly Passengers Disrupt Northwest Flight 243, via James Joyner,
MyFoxDetroit.com – Sources tell Fox 2 that a flight from Amsterdam into Detroit Metropolitan Airport was held on the tarmac after landing because of unruly behavior by some of the passengers.
The source says four men from Saudi Arabai were saying something in Arabic that alarmed four on-board Federal Air Marshals. The Marshals speak Arabic. A decision was made to stop the plane on the tarmac away from the passenger terminal and remove the men from the plane.
Once the men were removed, the rest of passengers were then taken to the terminal for deboarding.
The Transportation Security Administration says the unruly passengers were interviewed by Customs and Border Protection officials.
But the TSA says the passengers were released and no arrests were made.
If four Arabic-speaking air marshals were alarmed by what they heard, I’ll say that’s reason enough to remove those passengers from the plane.
Oh, yes.
The Christmas pantybomber, the guy locked up in the bathroom, and now this,
Northwest Flight 243 4 Unruly Passengers detained: NW 243 Amsterdam to Detroit
A Detroit station is reporting another unruly passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. This report came in at 2:07 p.m. EST, and said passengers were being “let off” the flight. Update: Four men of Middle Eastern descent caused the disturbance (alleged).
Update 3:40 p.m. CDT: Detroit News says 4 passengers from Saudia Arabia are being questioned.
Maggie’s notebook asks,
Read about Clogging the Intelligence Pipeline. Is that what this is all about? Keeping the pipeline so busy that we run out of personnel to really keep the country safe.
Check out their links.
The question remains,
So it wasn’t a threat, but crew members were worried enough that they felt the need to have authorities meet them at the gate and detain these four, er, noncompliants, who just happen to all be from Saudi Arabia?
Links via Larwyn.
UPDATE, Wednesday 13 January
Follow-up post.
Treat a terrorist as a criminal instead of as an enemy combatant, and lose valuable time and intelligence-gathering opportunities:
The lawyer for the 23-year-old Nigerian entered a formal not guilty plea on Friday to charges that he tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25 – even though he reportedly admitted earlier that he was trained and supplied with the explosives sewn into his underwear by al-Qaeda in the Arab state.
“He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up,” Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph.
It’s all about the law enforcement issue:
“I find it incomprehensible that this administration is treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue. The president has finally said that we are at war with al-Qaeda. Well, if this is a war, then Abdulmutallab should be treated as a combatant not a criminal.”
Abdulmutallab could have been held and interrogated in military custody under existing US legislation before a decision was taken whether to charge him before a military tribunal or a civilian court, according to Michael Mukasey, the last Attorney General under President George W Bush.
Mr Mukasey argues that it was crucial to gain intelligence from him immediately as details about locations, names and other plots is subject to rapid change. For the same reason, he dismissed the argument by John Brennan, Mr Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, that investigators will garner valuable data during any plea-bargaining talks.
“He certainly should know that the kind of facts that Abdulmutallab might be expected to know have a shelf life that is a lot shorter than the plea bargaining process,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week.
Marc Thiessen explains why the administration ought to Stop Blaming the CIA:
In the age of terror, our enemies do not have large armies or flotillas of warships that can be observed by spies or tracked by satellites. Instead, the terrorists conspire in secret, hide among civilians, and attack us from within. Their plans to kill innocent men, women, and children are known only to a handful of cruel men.
This means there are essentially three ways to gain information about terrorist attacks:
The first, and hardest, is to penetrate the enemy. This can be done, but it is no easy task. Al Qaeda is a small, secretive network of Arab extremists that is extremely suspicious of outsiders. And we saw this week just how difficult it is to penetrate their ranks. The terrorist who blew up a CIA base in Afghanistan—killing seven operatives—turns out to have been a double agent, a trusted source who was really working for the enemy.
The second method is “signals intelligence”—using advanced technology to intercept and monitor the enemy’s electronic communications. Signals intelligence has been essential to the fight against terror, but it has inherent limitations. When intelligence officials monitor terrorist communications, they are passive listeners to the conversations of others. They cannot ask questions, probe for additional information, or sometimes even identify voices or email addresses in intercepted communications. Moreover, the terrorists know they are being monitored, so they are careful to speak codes that are difficult to break without inside information.
This leaves only one other human intelligence tool: interrogation. The interrogation of senior terrorist leaders has distinct advantages over other forms human intelligence. It allows our intelligence professionals to ask the terrorists direct questions. Because terrorists are held in secret and cut off from the outside world, CIA officials can expose sensitive intelligence to them during questioning without fear it will get back to terrorists at large. CIA officials can use information gained from one detainee to question other detainees—and then go back and confront the first detainee with what they learned. Captured terrorists can also help the CIA verify whether the sources we recruit inside al Qaeda are trustworthy, and providing reliable information. They can identify voices in phone calls and email addresses, and decipher enemy codes that would otherwise remain a mystery. No other tool provides our intelligence community with this kind of dynamic flexibility.
Go read the rest. As Marc points out,
The ability to detain and question senior terrorist operatives is not a luxury we can do without; it is essential to preventing new attacks on our country.
Right now the administration is closing the door on that option.
(Yes, Scott Johnson beat me to the better title for this post, I know why the caged bird isn’t singing. Oh well.)
UPDATE
* Commenter Omnibus Driver came to the rescue with the perfect title, The Silence of the Loins. Thank you!
Not that this should come as a surprise,
Not Guilty Plea Entered for Christmas Day Bombing Suspect
A not guilty plea was entered on behalf of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with attempting to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.
Mr. Abdulmutallab was arraigned Friday on six charges. The most severe carries up to life in prison — the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill nearly 300 people.
The hearing at federal court in Detroit was brief. Mr. Abdulmutallab walked into the courtroom wearing a white T-shirt, pants and tennis shoes. He answered “yes” in English when asked if he understood the charges against him. After that, his lawyer said Mr. Abdulmutallab would stand mute to the charges. The U.S. magistrate judge said a not guilty plea would be entered on his behalf.
U.S. Marshals Service said Mr. Abdulmutallab was in a dark Chevy Suburban that drove into an underground entrance. Outside the courthouse, authorities set up metal barricades outside the courthouse and limiting foot traffic in the area. A protester stood holding a sign that read: “No U.S. Rights For Terrorists.”
Experts say that with so much evidence stacked against Mr. Abdulmutallab, his defense team is left with few options as the case moves forward. Attorneys outside the case say Mr. Abdulmutallab can challenge incriminating statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, seek a mental-health exam for Mr. Abdulmutallab — and seriously consider a plea deal.
Yup, that they’ll do.
Obama Calls for Intelligence Shakeup
Mr. Obama sketched four steps the intelligence community will take: assigning specific responsibility for following leads on terror threats; distributing intelligence reports more rapidly; strengthening the analytical process; and enhancing the criteria used to add people to terror watch lists.
I have a couple of questions:
How is what he proposes any different from what’s being done now?
How is that different from simply ordering people what to do?, or, as Drew points out,
So far it sounds like he’s saying, “I’ve directed we do things better”. Ah well, if only we had thought of that sooner.
He says he’s going to hold people accountable when they screw up but this time no one was directly responsible but the system failed. So, um, no one is held accountable if everyone is at fault? Ok.
But hey, at least he said we’re at war with al-Qaeda.
Boy, now he’s in real trouble; Obama administration revokes U.S. visa of accused Nigerian bomber. I guess they had to wait until they got back from Christmas break.
As Tommy Christopher Andrew Malcolm (with apologies!) puts it,
That will show him and who knows how many others that the Obama administration really means business.
Yup, “the system worked,” alright.