Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by justdrew » Mon Dec 28, 2009 3:28 am
by Nordic » Mon Dec 28, 2009 4:33 am
justdrew wrote:most brilliantly, under the awesome new rules, Mr Schuringa will not be permitted out of his seat to subdue the terrorist.
by chump » Mon Dec 28, 2009 1:06 pm
by Maddy » Mon Dec 28, 2009 1:22 pm
by Penguin » Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:39 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:49 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:28 pm
Blowback on Flight 253?
Eyes on Yemen
By GARY LEUPP
The Christmas-day airline bombing attempt by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is generating renewed attention to Yemen as a base of international terrorism. Even if the young man’s so far uncorroborated story about visiting Yemen and obtaining explosive chemicals turns out to be fantasy, al-Qaeda in Yemen and the Sana’a government’s response to it (including air strikes on “al-Qaeda strongholds” December 17 and 24, supposedly killing 60 militants) are now front page news.
Yemen is depicted by the New York Times as “an unstable state with multiple security challenges and an uncertain commitment to battle extremists who see their main enemies in the West” causing “trepidation” to U.S. officials. According to Middle East News Yemen’s national security chief Mohamed al-Anisi has stated that his forces were cooperating with Washington on attacks against alleged al-Qaeda camps in the south of the country. (A secessionist movement there, unrelated to al-Qaeda, particularly limits the power of the state.)
The most recent strike in Abyan province was intended, among other things, to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric who reportedly corresponded by e-mail with Fort Hood gunman Major Nidal Malik Hasan and praised him afterwards on his website. But friends and relatives say al-Awlaki, whom U.S. officials state is a ranking al-Qaeda operative, is alive and well.
“It is thought that the airstrike also killed Naser Abdel-Karim al-Wahishi, the leader of al-Qaeda’s operations in Saudi Arabia,” according to the Times Online. It also seems to have killed some children, producing a large rally at which al-Qaeda members spoke openly. This al-Jazeera news clip shows the scene.
The Times reports that while “Yemen has always been a breeding ground for anti-western sentiment…a few years ago a grouping of hardline Muslim insurgents in Yemen, said to be responsible for the attacks on the USS Cole in 2000 and the kidnap and deaths of western tourists two years earlier, appeared to have burnt itself out after a government crackdown. However, earlier this year a group calling itself Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) emerged in Yemen. It combined jihadists from Saudi Arabia with homegrown activists and has been responsible for, or has influenced, multiple attacks in the Middle East and further afield.”
This suggests that Yemeni government actions taken at the behest of the U.S. have produced an al-Qaeda that wasn’t there before. There’s nothing like aerial bombing or missile strikes to produce radical hatred and anger, on which al-Qaeda thrives.
Al-Qaeda is as much a concept as an organization and seems designed to encourage copy-cat organizations, like the “Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” once headed by the mysterious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and perhaps the defunct Ansar al-Islam in Iraqi Kurdestan. They don’t need to have contact with a central headquarters, Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda number two leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Bin Laden has long since realized that by striking the U.S. in 2001 he unleashed a U.S. response entirely in keeping with the country’s history of violence and racism, likely to draw more Muslim resentment, weaken U.S. security and validate his project among millions of people.
We all know that the attack on Iraq based on lies not only elicited global outrage (not just among Muslims) but created al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda. It made al-Zarqawi, who had actually had differences with al-Qaeda, jump on board and proclaim himself at the service of bin Laden. Such news must have come as a deep pleasure to the fugitive leader far away in his cave. While the U.S. has been able to drive a wedge between the Sunni militants opposing it and al-Qaeda, by exploiting popular resentment at the latter’s heavy-handed puritanism and buying off the former, it is embroiled in an unpopular war that has killed off 4371 soldiers.
It is enmeshed in a second unpopular war now more punishing than the first. Afghanistan has been a brilliant success story for bin Laden. His allies the Taliban are resurgent, claiming to control 80% of the country, and their spin-off Tehreek al-Islam in Pakistan is producing headaches for the secular state.
In that context AQAP has appeared to challenge the Yemeni regime, exploit ethnic divisions in the country, provoke bloody U.S. reaction that will in turn provoke the anger seen in the al-Jezeera video. The cycle of violence is the whole point: use the Americans’ proclivity for force to split the world into Muslims on the one hand and pro-U.S. forces on the other. This is the al-Qaeda strategy for the revival of the Caliphate and destruction of the nation responsible for so much Muslim suffering.
(As many have observed, the anger could be diminished by reduced support for Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land, but Obama has shown how little stomach he has for a public quarrel with the Israelis.)
Consider the post-9/11 history of U.S. relations with Yemen. President Ali Abdullah Saleh, ordered to be “for us or against us” complied with a U.S. demand and sent government sent forces to al-Hosun village December 18, 2001 to attempt the capture of suspected al-Qaeda member Mohammad Hamdi al-Ahdal and twenty others. The effort was a disaster; 18 government troops were killed by local forces, and four villagers were killed, but no al-Qaeda forces were captured or eliminated.
The U.S. then demanded that Yemen accept 200 U.S. trainers for the Yemeni Army, whose deployment was announced January 3, 2002. Dick Cheney after meeting Saleh in March stated that they were going in response to a request from Yemen’s government. But on April 11 Saleh told al-Jazeera: “As for the American anti-terror security experts and technical equipment, it is not we who requested them. It is the U.S. government that said ‘prove your genuineness and let the experts in’ so we let them in.”
Meanwhile the U.S. ambassador was acting like a colonial administrator, making more demands. Just days before Cheney’s talk with Saleh the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) accused U.S. ambassador Edmond Hull of “interfering” in domestic affairs and threatened to expel him. “Since he was appointed (September 2001), ambassador Edmond Hull has behaved like a high commissioner, not like a diplomat in a country which is opposed to any form of interference” by a foreign state, said the Al-Mithaq weekly.
“Edmund Hull adopts a very haughty behaviour, far-removed from his diplomatic duties, when he speaks to certain Yemeni officials,” the newspaper added. Al-Mithaq urged Hull to “respect Yemen in order not to become persona non grata.”
He might have added, and in order not to become a recruiter for al-Qaeda. A group called the “Sympathizers of Al-Qaeda” popped up, seemingly spontaneously in April 2002 and began to carry out its bombing attacks that had abated a few years ago. But al-Qaeda in a certain form is back with a vengeance. Many of its militants are from Saudi Arabia and there are reports of Central Asians being sent to Yemen, but they have to work with local sympathizers. What creates more sympathizers than killing children with missiles?
Eight years after Bush-Cheney demanded and received Yemeni cooperation in the “War on Terror” Yemen and neighboring Somalia are becoming the hub of al-Qaeda. Something’s not working.
Or rather, things are working pretty fine for bin Laden and his cause.
by seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:29 am
The Lap Bomber Mystery
A case that just gets curiouser and curiouser
by Justin Raimondo, December 28, 2009
It just wouldn’t be Christmas in the age of terror if we didn’t have a visitation, ostensibly from al-Qaeda, now would it? ‘Tis the season, and all that. Recall Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," arrested on December 22, 2001, for trying to blow up American Airlines flight 63, coming into Miami from Paris. As in the current case involving one Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, the explosive used was PETN, also known as pentaerythritol: Reid, like Umar, was subdued by passengers and airline attendants, and, to add yet another touch of déjà vu, Reid’s stunt led to the imposition of the take-off-your-shoes rule at airport security, just as Umar’s midair antics have now inspired the Transportation Safety Authority to inaugurate a spate of new regulations: nothing in your lap, please, and no getting up from your seat for a solid hour before landing.
Also please note the timing: the Reid incident occurred at a volatile moment, right after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and just as the Bush administration was ramping up to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq. Umar, the lap bomber – so called because he apparently had his explosive device hidden in his pants – also leaps onto the international stage at a sensitive time, when President Obama is launching a major offensive in Afghanistan and the US has "assisted" Yemen in its air strikes on the alleged al-Qaeda stronghold in that country – where Umar, we’re told, received "training" and the actual explosive device.
Yes, the parallels are certainly eerie – but so what? After all, these terrorists are seemingly a simple-minded lot, if the behavior and demeanor of, say, Richard Reid is any indication. How many different explosive substances are available for such a "job," and, at any rate, what else can one expect from the TSA in response except a bunch of useless and needlessly intrusive regulations that have little relevance to what happened? And, of course, the US, it seems, is always launching some new attack or military campaign, somewhere, so the timing is pure chance. Right?
What’s more, the pattern fails when we take into account our own mindset, eight years after the Shoe-na’bomber affair: back then, we were all too frightened out of our wits to really question anything the government told us, and the news media reported. We took it all at face value, and trusted in the gods that we wouldn’t all be blown to smithereens in the next attack, which – for all we knew – could have come at any time.
Eight years later, our mental processes have been quickened, through bitter experience, and a growing cynicism which leads us to notice – and question – several seeming anomalies, such as: why, when Umar’s own father – a prominent banker – contacted the US embassy, and met with the CIA as well as the Nigerian intelligence agency, and warned them his son might pose a danger, was Umar allowed on a plane entering the US? Authorities tell us that he was in a database, consisting of over half a million people, said to pose a risk, but not on the "no fly" list, in spite of his own father’s warning.
How could this happen? Inquiring minds want to know.
Another break in the Shoe’na-bomber pattern is Umar himself, whose life of wealth and privilege stands in stark contrast to Reid’s. While Reid was the poor son of a jailbird, a nobody with an apparently limited mental capacity, Umar is the son of Dr. Umaru Mutallab, former economics minister in the Nigerian government and one of the country’s most prominent bankers: schooled at the exclusive British International School in Lome, Togo, and an aspiring mechanical engineer, he had a bright future ahead of him, and if any single word could be used to characterize his life prior to the Christmas day incident, it would be access.
Access not only to the best schools and opportunities, and to his posh London digs, but also access to planes without the proper documents, as one Kurt Haskell, who was on the same flight with Umar, testifies:
“I was on this flight today and am thankful to be alive. My wife and I were returning from an African safari and had this connecting flight through Amsterdam. I sat in row 27, which was 7 rows behind the terrorist. I got to see the whole thing take place and it was very scary. Thanks to a few quick acting people I am still alive today.
"…I was next to the terrorist when he checked in at the Amsterdam airport early on Christmas. My wife and I were playing cards directly in front of the check in counter. This is what I saw (and I relayed this to the FBI when we were held in customs):
"An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said ‘This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport.’ The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17(Although I think he is 23 he doesn’t look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said ‘you can’t board without a passport.’ The Indian man then replied, ‘He is from Sudan, we do this all the time.’. I can only take from this to mean that it is difficult to get passports from Sudan and this was some sort of sympathy ploy. The ticket taker then said ‘You will have to talk to my manager,’ and sent the two down a hallway. I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn’t on the flight. It was also weird that the terrorist never said a word in this exchange. Anyway, somehow, the terrorist still made it onto the plane. I am not sure if it was a bribe or just sympathy from the security manager."
This goes way beyond weird, all the way to sinister. Perhaps we should take Janet Napolitano’s assurance that “right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger” with a gargantuan grain of salt. Not only that, but maybe we should simply make a new rule, as follows: anything Madame Napolitano or any government official says about this or any other similar incident should be considered, at the outset, an outright lie. Assuming deception as the default, we might be better off believing the exact opposite. This argument is especially compelling in light of what Mr. Haskell has to say about the aftermath of the Christmas bomb attempt:
"FBI also arrested a different Indian man while we were held in customs after a bomb sniffing dog detected a bomb in his carry on bag and he was searched after we landed. This was later confirmed while we were in customs when an FBI agent said to us ‘You are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. Read between the lines. Some of you saw what just happened.’(The arrest of the other Indian man). I am not sure why this hasn’t made it into any news story, but I stood about 15-20 feet away from the other Indian man when he was cuffed and arrested after his search."
Why isn’t the "mainstream" media reporting this? Well, perhaps they just don’t know about it: or it could be they do know and have been asked to keep a lid on it by the authorities, not the first time such a thing has happened when it comes to the dissemination of "sensitive" information.
In any case, given the veracity of Haskell’s account, it is clear that, contrary to news reports, Umar was no "lone nut," but had at least one accomplice with him on board the plane. Furthermore, both of his accomplices – the one who got him on the plane without a passport, and the one nabbed by the bomb-sniffing dog – may have been Indians.
What India has to do with all this is sheer speculation. While India’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), stands accused by Pakistanis of being behind much of the sectarian strife that riles the region, it’s unclear – to me, at least – what interest they would have in stirring the pot in faraway Yemen, the supposed source of the plot. If, however, it should suddenly be discovered that the "real" source of all this lies in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where Washington insists Osama bin Laden & Co. have set up their world headquarters, the Indian connection would make sense.
Haskell concludes his account as follows:
"What also didn’t make the news is that we were held on the plane for 20 minutes after it landed! A bomb could have gone off then. This wasn’t too smart of security to not let us off the plane immediately.
"You can see what time I am writing this as I am having a hard time sleeping tonight. Just thought some of you would like to know what I saw, Merry Christmas."
A telling note of authenticity there: clueless bureaucrats keep him on a plane that might be about to explode, and a Merry Christmas to all – and to all a good night!
No wonder the poor guy couldn’t sleep. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t sleep for a week. And if, somehow, I did manage to take a cat nap or two, I’d dream of Umar being led onto the plane, passport-less, escorted by his mysterious helpers, including several demonic figures lurking in the background, chortling and rubbing their hands together in gleeful anticipation.
We are asked to believe that a highly privileged young man, with everything to live for, was suddenly seized with a desire to commit suicide as an act of jihad: that he disappeared from his life of ease, on a street lined with Mercedes Benzes and Ferraris, in a fashionable district of London, and traveled to Yemen, where he received what may have been a defective bomb, which was sewn into his underwear by his jihadist trainers. This bomb then went undetected in Amsterdam airport, where the security arrangements are said to be tight (and a personal interview is conducted), and where he was let on a plane headed for the US in spite of explicit warnings given by his own father.
I’m not buying it, and, furthermore, in the context of Haskell’s testimony, another narrative seems just as likely: that this was a staged incident, a false flag operation, launched by those who have everything to gain by ramping up the atmosphere of hysteria and fear that regularly precedes America’s wars. This – admittedly speculative – scenario, of which I am equally skeptical, is buttressed, however, by the testimony of Jasper Schuringa – the passenger who leapt out of his seat on the other side of the plane, put out the fire, and secured Umar in a headlock – who says of the alleged terrorist:
“He was shaking. He didn’t resist anything. It’s just hard to believe that he was trying to blow up this plane. He was in a trance. He was very afraid.”
He didn’t resist? This hardly seems like the behavior one might expect of some fanatic jihadist bent on destruction and meeting those virgins in the afterlife.
The simplistic narrative that took shape as the news broke is already beginning to break up into something a bit more complicated, as additional information comes out, including this brief news item that just came across the wires:
"A passenger aboard the same Northwest Airlines flight that was attacked on Christmas Day was taken into custody here Sunday after becoming verbally disruptive upon landing, officials said.
"A law enforcement official said the man was Nigerian and had locked himself in the airliner’s bathroom. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
"Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Susan Elliott said crew members requested that security remove the man from Flight 253 after he became disruptive. The remaining 255 passengers got off safely, she said.
"Airport spokesman Scott Wintner said it was the same flight on which a man tried to set off an explosive on Christmas Day.
"’The pilot requested emergency assistance upon arrival,’ he said. Security and airline personnel are on edge since the attempted terror attack on Christmas Day, and the law enforcement official said that lesser incidents had been reported on other flights arriving in Detroit, but the incident with the Nigerian man had sparked the most concern."
Whether Nigerian, or Indian, something is up here, and it seems to have little to do with al-Qaeda, which – breaking its past habit of promptly taking "credit" – has yet to claim responsibility for the attempted attack. More grounds for suspicion: allegations that the Detroit incident was planned and carried out by al-Qaeda in Yemen can be traced back to "IntelCenter," a mysterious private contractor with a dubious reputation [.pdf] (see frames 89-100) that does business with the intelligence community.
Another shoe is bound to drop – the arrest of this other "Nigerian" may be it, along with the surprising news that Detroit, for some reason, seems to be the latest "terrorist" target – and when it does, I’m wondering how much closer to the truth we’ll get. One thing is certain, however, and it is this: look on the pronouncements of government officials with a very jaundiced eye.
Already Joe Lieberman and several Republicans are calling for more preemptive strikes on targets in Yemen, and it’s not hard to see that the US is very close to opening up yet another "front" in our eternal "war on terrorism." Deeper into the quagmire we go – and those demons in my dreamscape are chortling ever louder.
by stefano » Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:57 am
by 82_28 » Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:29 am
by Penguin » Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:53 am
stefano wrote:Ha. The BBCseems to have got its information about "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" from two outfits called SITE Intelligence and Intelcenter. The former is based in Maryland and run by an Israeli spy called Rita Katz, the latter based in Virgina and run by Ben Venzke. At the moment Intelcenter has a helpful wall chart for sale on its front page, showing a link analysis of "al-Qaeda Activity in Yemen".
Same old indeed.
IntelCenter and As-Sahab logos added at same time, indicating Pentagon linked "middleman" is directly releasing Al-Qaeda videos
An expert computer analyst has presented evidence that so-called "Al-Qaeda" tapes are routinely digitally doctored and has also unwittingly exposed an astounding detail that clearly indicates a Pentagon affiliated organization in the U.S. is directly responsible for releasing the videos.
"Neal Krawetz, a researcher and computer security consultant, gave an interesting presentation today at the BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas about analyzing digital photographs and video images for alterations and enhancements," reports Wired News.
"Using a program he wrote (and provided on the conference CD-ROM) Krawetz could print out the quantization tables in a JPEG file (that indicate how the image was compressed) and determine the last tool that created the image -- that is, the make and model of the camera if the image is original or the version of Photoshop that was used to alter and re-save the image."
Krawetz's most telling discovery comes in the form of a detail contained in a 2006 Ayman al-Zawahiri tape. From his analysis he concludes that the As-Sahab logo (the alleged media arm of Al-Qaeda) and the IntelCenter logo (a U.S. based private intelligence organization that "monitors terrorist activity") were both added to the video at the same time.
This clearly indicates IntelCenter itself is directly creating or at least doctoring the Al-Qaeda tapes before their release. After all, why would Al-Qaeda terrorists be interested in branding their videos with the logo of a U.S. based organization that is run by individuals with close ties to the military-industrial complex?
3rd UPDATE: I was finally able to reach Neal Krawetz at the BlackHat conference to respond to the questions about the IntelCenter and As-Sahab logos (Krawetz doesn’t have a cell phone on him so finding him at the conference took a while). He now says that the error levels on the IntelCenter and As-Sahab logos are different and that the IntelCenter logo was added after the As-Sahab logo. However, in a taped interview I conducted with him after his presentation, he said the logos were the same error levels and that this indicated they were added at the same time. Additionally, after I’d written the first blog entry about his presentation, I asked him to read it to make sure everything was correct. He did so while sitting next to me and said it was all correct. He apologizes now for the error and the confusion it caused.
by stefano » Tue Dec 29, 2009 8:01 am
Penguin wrote:Wasnt that IntelCenter the same organization that released some doctored "Al-Qaeda" videos time back?
by 82_28 » Tue Dec 29, 2009 8:02 am
by stefano » Tue Dec 29, 2009 8:15 am
82_28 wrote:Just a thought, but could there be an extra bonus that to the Anglican ear, al-Queda, al-Quida, al-Qaeda has never been able to been spelled right? Nobody agrees on it's spelling and nobody knows really how to spell it. I've never seen such a short word quite like it.
Robin Cook wrote:Al-Qaeda, literally ‘the database,’ was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujaheddin who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.
by 82_28 » Tue Dec 29, 2009 10:11 am
stefano wrote:82_28 wrote:Just a thought, but could there be an extra bonus that to the Anglican ear, al-Queda, al-Quida, al-Qaeda has never been able to been spelled right? Nobody agrees on it's spelling and nobody knows really how to spell it. I've never seen such a short word quite like it.
Well since it's an Arabic word there's no 'right' spelling... but it looks like Qaeda is now standard and Qaida the variant. I do think the fact that it's short and exotic makes it a good SMERSH. That's why every terrorist outfit has to be described as "an Al-Qaeda affiliate".Robin Cook wrote:Al-Qaeda, literally ‘the database,’ was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujaheddin who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.
Users browsing this forum: BenDhyan and 5 guests