CNN reports that Saudi intelligence was the beginning of the data on the tracking numbers of two bomb packets sent by UPS and Fedex from Yemen by a single individual.The United States has thanked Saudi Arabia for the important intelligence tip.The packages were tracked down in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and at East Midlands Airport in the United Kingdom.
ne was intended for a temple in Stops and the former for a Jewish community center.One of the bombs appears to make had a timer, while the former seems to have been intended to be set off by a cell phone call.It is being assumed that the person who sent the bombs is a member of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP).Both bombs were jammed with PETN, the signature explosive for AQAP.
Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula is thought to be behind the attempted `crotch bombing` by a Nigerian extremist recruited in Yemen, last Dec. 25 over Detroit.Among its ideologues is Anwar al-Awlaki, an American of Yemeni heritage born in New Mexico and brought up in the United States, who because of his resistance to the Iraq War emigrated to Yemen, from which he issues inflammatory videos attacking the United States.There are estimated to be but a few hundred al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, and they give in recent months been chased from their former hideout of Ma`arib to Shabwah by the Yemeni army.
The CNN reports raise a total of questions.
1.Why target Chicago Jews?
2.How did the Saudis foil the plot?
3.Why go to Unabomber tactics?
On Jan 13, 2010, the USG Open Source Center carried a paper saying that Saudi citizens Sa`id al-Shahri and Muhammad al-Ufi, who had been at Guantanamo Bay but were released, were sent to Saudi Arabia where they underwent `re-education` at a program run by the ministry of the interior.They then showed up in Yemen.Last year (2009), they put out a picture in which they vowed to destroy "Jews, crusaders and puppet regimes."
Likewise, AQAP ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki issued a declaration in March, 2010, which was posted in English on radical bulletin boards and then disseminated by the USG Open Source Center:
` "Following 9/11, the American people gave George W. Bush unanimous support to defend against the mujahadeen and gave him the blank check to pass as often as required to accomplish that objective_. "On the eve of 9/11 it was Afghanistan alone today it is Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, North Africa, the Arab Peninsula and the number is growing. How many more body bags are American families willing to find? How much more can the US treasury handle? 9/11, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and then operations such as that of our brother Umar Farouk which could have not cost more than a few thousand dollars end up draining the US Treasury billions of dollars in place to make Americans a mistaken sensation of security. For how long can the US survive this war of attrition?
"What profit is it to the American people to have for the interest of supporting Israel? And what profit is it to the American people to stand for sake the al Saud family and the Gulf monarchs?`
For al-Qaeda, the term `Jews` typically refers to Israelis.Despite what some analysts have alleged, enmity with Israel, especially over its line of the holy city of Jerusalem, has been an integral portion of al-Qaeda all on and was among their motivations for hitting New York, with its large Jewish community and strong connections to Israel.It is not inconceivable that the prominence in the Obama administration of Chicago Jewish Americans such as other White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel and adviser David Axelrod drew al-Qaeda`s attention to that community.If so, AQAP is fallible on logic, since Obama`s Jewish American advisers have been active for a Palestinian state and pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
If it is true that one of the bombs was designed to be set off by a cell phone call,that datum may stop to the world of an AQAP agent or cell in Chicago, which was intended to detonate it.Of course, a telephone call could be made from anywhere.But a Chicago agent would help make sense of why a Chicago synagogue was chosen.
That the Saudis had tracking numbers for the packets that were sent would merely be plausible if they had infiltratedthe AQAP cell behind the plot.If so, they only lost their asset inside the organization, since but a few members would have had admission to the tracking number and they will now all come under suspicion.
As for the Unabomber technique of mailing bombs, it is a contract of a little cell lacking the resources for a more robust operation, and of a group lacking the sort of love and organizing ability that would leave them to draw off a suicide bombing.Mailed bombs are not an al-Qaeda modus operandi precisely because they get a low risk of actually hitting their target, given the security procedures in property now.I conclude that this process was not really serious, and it may still have simply been a probe of how feasible the technique is.
Muslim-haters in the US will concentrate on AQAP as being a `Muslim` organization, but will cut the fact that Saudi Muslims defeated the game and Yemeni Muslims have been mired in active combat with al-Qaeda.
Aljazeera English reports on the Yemeni government`s crackdown on al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.The report alleges that both the Yemeni government and the US have used excessive force in attaking AQAP, resulting in civilian deaths that run as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda.
See also CNN`s Nic Robertson:
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