It was terrorist incompetence and fast-thinking passengers--and not billions of dollars in air transport security--that prevented disaster in the skies over Detroit on Christmas Day.
ABC News reports that the plot to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was averted only because a detonator failed on an explosive device smuggled onboard the aircraft by a suspected terrorist. That man, Nigerian-born Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, was subdued by other passengers and members of the plane's cabin crew as he fumbled with the device, which contained at least 80 grams of the explosive PETN.
FBI officials told ABC that the amount of PETN carried by Abdulmutallab was enough to destroy the Airbus A330 aircraft, traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit. But a faulty, syringe-type detonator apparently failed to work as planned, preventing a major explosion. Abdulmutallab did manage to set fire to his clothing and carpeting near his seat. He suffered third degree burns and is currently in a prison ward at a Detroit hospital.
Investigators say the explosive was sewn into Abdulmutallb's underwear, and was not detected by airport security scanners or personnel. And, the breach appears even more serious than first thought. According to various media outlets, Abdulmutallb's father, the chairman of one of Nigeria's largest banks, personally alerted the U.S. embassy in Lagos about his son's "radicalization" last year.
It is unclear if information from the elder Abdulmutallab was forwarded to counter-terrorism authorities in the U.S. However, other officials say the son's name was entered into a terrorism database several weeks ago. Additionally, Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab was recently denied an entry visa by the British government, but he was still allowed to board the Northwest flight in Amsterdam.
Congress has promised hearings into the matter, but those won't be held until early 2010. In the interim, there are serious questions about how many bombs may have been manufactured by Al Qaida's Yemen affiliate, which provided the device to Abdulmutallab. A recent Predator drone strike killed several high-ranking terrorist leaders in that country (including radical cleric Anwar Alwaki), but the attack did not prevent the production of the bomb that Abdulmutallab smuggled aboard the Northwest flight.
It is highly unlikely that the Nigerian man is the only operative dispatched by Al Qaida in recent weeks. There will almost certainly be more attacks--or at least, more attempted attacks in the coming weeks. We can only hope that our luck holds.
For years, many Americans and Europeans have enjoyed the luxury of making disparaging comments about the security measures employed by Israel. Measures which have provided effective protection for, among other things, Israel's international flights.
ReplyDeleteNow we are also being targeted by the same enemy (Muslim suicide terrorists) and we find ourselves being driven inexorably towards the point at which we will be forced to lay down our exquisite scruples and politically correct poses, and go with the Israelis' deployment of practical common sense.
The sooner we replace ever more intrusive searches of harmless grannies with the seriously thought-out profiling the Israelis have shown to work, the better.
Muslim terrorists are going to push us there in the end. The only question is how many victims we will allow to be blown up in mid air in the name of political correctness in the meantime.
A few of the appropriate measures (copied from the Israelis, who, by the way advise many US Air Carriers) would be US Federal LEO's at foreign security checkpoints and gates. Of course, this will not work if they are hampered by the idiotic political correctness yokes placed on US law enforcement in this country. There are a few very smart LE people in DHS at mid to higher levels, far fewer(if any) at the lower levels. For example, although I had a number of years with the military, a number of years with law enforcement, and a number of years as an air carrier pilot, I could not become a sworn DHS Air marshal or sworn aviation security agent...Why? because I was beyond the age allowed in the UNION agreement between DHS and the federal LEO union...
ReplyDeleteWill we really see political correctness go down and proper security done during this administration ? I truly doubt it.....