New details are being revealed about terror’s latest gelding:
With his wealth, privilege and education at one of Britain’s leading universities, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab had the world at his feet – able to choose from a range of futures in which to make his mark on the world.
Instead, the son of one of Nigeria’s most important figures opted to make his impact in a very different way – by detonating 80g of explosives sewn into his underpants, and trying to destroy a passenger jet as it came in to land at Detroit Airport on Christmas Day…
Abdulmutallab, 23, had lived a gilded life, and, for the three years he studied in London, he stayed in a £2m flat. He was from a very different background to many of the other al-Qa’ida recruits who opt for martyrdom…
Abdulmutallab’s father, Umaru, is the former economics minister of Nigeria. He retired earlier this month as the chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria but is still on the boards of several of Nigeria’s biggest firms, including Jaiz International, a holding company for the Islamic Bank. The 70-year-old, who was also educated in London, holds the Commander of the Order of the Niger as well as the Italian Order of Merit.
This bit stands out:
Fabrizio Cavallo Marincola, 22, who studied mechanical engineering beside Abdulmutallab – nicknamed Biggie – at University College London, said that he graduated in May 2008 and showed no signs of radicalisation or of links to al-Qa’ida. “We worked on projects together,” he said. “He always did the bare minimum of work and would just show up to classes. When we were studying, he always would go off to pray.
“He was pretty quiet and didn’t socialise much or have a girlfriend that I knew of. I didn’t get to talk to him much on a personal level. I was really shocked when I saw the reports. You would never imagine him pulling off something like this.”
It’s all of a piece throughout: Laziness, a sense of frustrated privilege and the inability to form a relationship with sufficiently submissive women.
At least the “last line of defense” worked.
Make no mistake, we only missed a large-scale disaster through a divine intersection of Providence and incompetence. Abdulmutallab was no doubt surprised that his deity preferred to take only his own scorched wedding tackle for a Christmas present rather than the whole plane and all the passengers aboard, but it could just as easily have gone the other way.
Update: The president is taking fire from his left flank about continuing his Hawaiian holiday, even as the TSA imposes new and more burdensome restrictions on international flights -
(Several) airlines released detailed information about the restrictions, saying that passengers on international flights coming to the United States will apparently have to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight without any personal items on their laps. It was not clear how often the rule would affect domestic flights.
Overseas passengers will be restricted to only one carry-on item, and domestic passengers will probably face longer security lines. That was already the case in some airports Saturday, in the United States and overseas.
Airline flying has already gone from pleasurable experience to enormous PITA, but if this keeps up I’m seeing a real business opportunity in commercial charters, at least for shorter legs.
Update 2: Marc Ambinder spins says that the president is just maintaining an appropriate distance above the fray -
Authorities respond appropriately; the President (as this president is want to to) presides over the federal response. His senior aides speak for him, letting reporters know that he’s videoconferencing regularly, that he’s ordering a review of terrorist watch lists, that he’s discoursing with his Secretary of Homeland Security.
But an in-person Obama statement isn’t needed; Indeed, a message expressing command, control, outrage and anger might elevate the importance of the deed, would generate panic (because Obama usually DOESN’T talk about the specifics of cases like this, and so him deciding to do so would cue the American people to respond in a way that exacerbates the situation.
Well, maybe. If it was something so important as a dispute between a Cambridge police officer and a Harvard professor, the president might jump right in, but a case of attempted international terrorism might require a certain imperial aloofness. Or maybe he’s just learning when to speak and when to hold his tongue.
Whichever: As long as it keeps him out of Washington I’m all for it.
Lex you are a cynic about The Won aren’t you! He’s probably doing less harm on the beach in Hawaii than flying off to Washington D.C. or to Copenhagen or Riyadh to sell us out.
But I agree with you on the ridiculousness of some of the “security precautions” now to be imposed on airline passengers. During my working life I probably flew between Los Angeles or San Diego and San Francisco five or six hunded times. Under the new rules you WILL get in the plane and you WILL sit throughout the entire flight. Makes it easy on the lav cleaning crew at the end of the flight.
And at 6′ 5″ tall with so so knees after six decades of life, those long flights to and from London are also going to be killers, since you can’t get up and stretch towards the end of the flight. That last 90 minutes or so on an overnight flight from London is usually devoted to breakfast, a walk to the john etc. No more.
But as for Mr. “I’ve blown my wedding tackle” off, I trust that the passengers gave him at least a few “Seal style” fat lips.
What system? The less than esteemed ex-governor of my state, currently titled as the Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napalitano, stated, “The system worked.” WTF? Is this the same system that puts returning combat veterans, pro-life advocates, tea party attendees, gun rights advocates, constitutionalists and their ilk on the federal terror watch list? Does this mean that our inclusion on that list doesn’t mean anything, seeing as how the undiebomber wasn’t trifled with despite his being on the abovementioned list? On the heels of the Ft. Hood fiasco, this is starting to really reek. http://www.politico.com/blogs/politicolive/1209/Napolitano_The_system_worked.html?showall I say the “system” is broke. From the top down. steve
For me the last paragraph of the Independent article was telling
From a terror “expert:”
“Al-Qa’ida is finding it difficult to recruit young people,” she said. “And, interestingly, the election of Barack Obama is a factor in that, because, whatever you think of him as a president, the fact of him shows young people that there is an alternative to killing yourself. Al-Qa’ida is, however, targeting more highly skilled people.”
Alright, I am no terror expert, and Abdulmutallab may not fit the standard terrorist profile (although let’s not forget that the 9/11 hijackers were middle class and not poverty stricken.) But personally I’m stretching and failing to see how someone so dedicated to the radical Islamic cause (strict sharia, global domination, monolithic religious dominance, etc.) that they want to kill themselves in order to kill as many innocents as possible in order to help usher it in, would suddenly give pause because the of “fact of” Obama’s existence (which, his existence, is certainly taken as undisputed fact whatever side of the political fence your are on). Ah yes, he’s, ah, actually doing the surge in Afghanistan but promising to leave soon anyway, massively indebting the great Satan in political giveaway projects, spends all his time worrying about health care and a massive domestic expansion of government, and wants to but cant really close GTMO. I can see how a young radical Muslim willing to kill himself and others for the sake of Islam would suddenly find hopey-changeness in his heart over the “fact of Obama” and throw in the towel against the Great Satan. Yeah, sure I can.
In a sane world, Janet Napalitano would have the good sense and/or grace to take full responsibility for the “system” breakdown and resign in disgrace. NOT, however in Obamaworld. These people have NO sense of shame. Their sense of entitlement and power leads them to ALWAYS brazen it out. These people are true sociopaths by ANY definition one chooses to use.
For Janet baby to cooly, calmly, look t5he nation collectively straight in the face thru the camera lens and even purse her lips to claim “The System Worked” takes a Lake Superior-sized vessel full of unmitigated gall….
PS: WTF time indeed…
Almost unbelievable that she has not been fired by the BHO, the infamous Chicago Community Organizer.
This week and next we are reviewing our plans for 2010. If there is any way that our clients needs can be meet, and for us to still meet acceptable profit margins, I am driving or taking a train. The airlines and the TSA can KMA if they think that I am going to allow my behaviour to become even more cattle-like than is already demanded of me.
No, Janet, “The System” failed. So did the wannabees explosive device. What then worked was honest citizens then jumping and restraining the wannabee thug.
More restrictions on honest citizens will do nothing to stop things like this. The thugs will study what is going on, and come up with some way to get around it. Even if you were to require that all passengers be naked and handcuffed, they would find a way.
When I first heard of this character and his “third-degree burns”, I just could not resist the thought; do you suppose it would be out-of-bounds to ask him a few questions while they are doing the debridement?
-Have been reading Lex for a long time, first note posted.
Fire Capt., that is an excellent question.
All Natural, no nasty “bad” chemicals would be required. I’m thinking of that process as an organic, green way to gather information.
I would expect that even the libs in Chapel Hill would approve of it. The process (debridement) has to be done, no option there. Why not make it as efficacious as possible?
Ron, Fire Capt. Only problem with your “organic” approach to interrogation is that in most cases 3rd degree burns burn off all the nerve endings, so, ironically, these most severely burned patients actually feel very little pain–even the ones so severely burned they are predicted to die eventually anyway. It’s the 2nd degree burns that produce all the intense pain, not the 3rd.
Hmm, did not know that Virgil. Well, I am now better educated, though my heart was in the right place.
One bright note from this:
Even a European from the Neterlands will react to an existential threat.
Maybe there is hope yet for change in the EU (I just couldn’t resist that).
Edward,
Another bright spot (and one which will allow me to once again mount my well-worn soap box entitled “Not all Muslims are our enemies”)- note how his own father notified our embassy warning us about his son. Assuming of course the father is not in fact an anamist or a Christian, this points to how it is worthwhile playing up on the fact that we are not at war with Islam, but with Islamists (who, as our own agitprop rightly points out have killed more Muslims than kafirs). We need to play up how this is a common threat to increase the kinds of (potentially) actionable intel that we received from Sir Abdulmutallab, Senior, who from preliminary accounts sounds like an honorable man who has a rotten apple of a son.
And of course, we are fortunate that our current head of Homeland Security has already, prior to a real, thousand-or-more dead “human-created disaster” revealed herself to be a gold-plated idiot of Biblical proportions who has no business keeping a lemonade stand secure, much less pretending she can even be the face, much less the brains, of our public security apparatus.
Would be nice if you followed the logic, as provded by experience and guided by intelligence, that (virtually) all of our terrorist enemies are Muslims? Or is that too “racist” for you Mr. Curp.
Ron,
On the meaning of words. Racism concerns prejudice in relation to race, anti-religious bigotry is about prejudices towards certain religious groups (all Catholics are anti-gay, crypto-fascists is a kind of religious bigotry, but it is not racism/ all Poles imbibe anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk is a form of racial/ethnic bigotry). Is that clear?
Secondly, following the logic of my argument, we have friends and enemies in the Muslim world. Not all our enemies are Muslim (when Chinese weaponry turns up in Afghanistan my assumption is not that the Iughirs are smuggling them, nor do I believe that our inscrutable sparring partners in Beijing are surprised or dismayed that weapons they are sending to Iran are ending up in Afghanistan) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1562148/Chinese-weapons-reaching-the-Taliban.html (and let’s not forget that other perpetual long-time favorite enemy http://english.pravda.ru/russia/kremlin/19-09-2006/84521-Russia_doctrine-0 ). Strangely enough, given that we face multiple threats, some of them coming from the Muslim world, some not my prudence leads me not to needlessly multiply our enemies. Not only would I rather not that Sir Abdulmutallab Sr. and people like him believe that he must not only be concerned about his son being radical but he needs despise his entire religion when helping us. Similarly, it is likely as not nice and useful in our goal to people heaven (or, more likely, help fill Hell) with Al Q and their sympathizers that the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Afghan and other soldiers, intel officers and politicians in the Muslim world, who for their own reasons are fighting Al Q, and whom we have trained and armed (and quite often are telling us where to send them some Predator luvin) don’t feel that in aiding us they are electing to fight against all that their cultures’ religion tells them is good and holy.
I have said repeatedly, there are pathologies in Islam that render a broader circle of Muslims open to radicalization. It is a problem, but one that needs a different kind of logic (for the sake of argument, let’s call this the logic of hegemony) where we show enough broadness of mind that we don’t alienate potential allies – by doing such things as talking about nuking Mecca would kind a do that, don’t ya think? http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162795,00.html) or “killing all of their leaders and converting them to Christianity”. Again, I realize it is all terribly complex, this distinguishing between Muslim enemies and friends, not picking a fight with 20% of humanity while much of our armed forces are fighting in the Muslim world, supported by (and surrounded by) Muslims (and yes, fighting them to), but then we in academe often have our own need to split such hairs. But what it lacks in simplicity it makes up for by promoting survivability….
David,
Ok, we can’t nuke ‘em. But neither should we bow to them, coddle them, go to their mosques with our heads hanging in submission and recite a liturgy of American sins. Realpolitik Chicago style? Obama sitting for 20 years through Rev. Wright’s enlightened missives is an exact parallel to faithful “good” muslims not getting up and walking out when the cleric spouts “Death to America.” Complicity. Leadership, based in the belief of fundamental human rights, requires calling bullshit the moment the turd hits the dirt. It also requires the occasional fat lip administered to those who would do harm to those following such leadership. Outside academe sometimes we split heads, not hairs. Looking down from lofty ivy covered towers is not quite the same as looking down from a burning Trade Center Tower and then leaping into the great unknown. steve
Ok, so daddy is an apostate muslim. What’s yer point?
Steve and Blackeagle,
Steve – precisely because I never want an American to look down from a building burning due to terrorist action on our soil, I want us to adopt the most efficient way of isolating and killing our enemies abroad. Part of that includes not producing all sorts of loose talk about Islam as such, not because there are not aspects of Islam I hope change (in ways that some believers – whom I want everyone to get used to calling extremists – would label as a complete betrayal/apostasy from their faith) but because the way to NOT bring about such necessary changes is for the kafirs to root too loudly and obviously for it, or to be too free with their anti-Islamic bigotry. Be realistic by all means, say hard words in charity, but avoid the radicalizing tendencies of war, which makes the enemy less and less human, not to be nice and soft liberals, but to do what is necessary to keep our country safe. That is the prize, not making Baghdad, Kabul or Riyadh a light for woman’s rights, religious freedom or secular utopias.
Also, once upon a time when we were fighting the Bear (or even Sadaam) we were happy to have the help of the Saudis, the Pakistanis and even some Mooj. As my comments above indicate, I think we live in a world where there are enough would-be challengers that I don’t want us to burn our bridges with much of the 1/5 of humanity that are Muslim. They are not us, they have customs and sensibilities that are problems, but on some days I feel that way about Kanooks and West Europeans as well (not to mention the Japanese and South Koreans, who are living right next to a Stalinist hell-hole but produce lots of Kim sympathizers). Also, I think that there is enough piquant and drop-dead viscerally authentic about many Arab and West Asian cultures and socio-economic orders that even if by some miracle a Western-supported or cheer-led anti-religious campaign were successful in breaking Islam this would not necessarily lead to the rise of honorable, life-affirming cultures in these areas of the world.
In short, Blackeagle, I want none dare call it apostasy, and what’s the reason? For when apostasy prospers, none dare call it religious treason.
But my apologies for invoking the ivory tower – as Lex’s post about Marc Lynch indicates, my guild as such (with some honorable exceptions – think Bernard Lewis or Sam Huntington don’t have things to teach us?) is pretty much useless when it comes to providing useful analysis.
Yet, who shall speak for the oppressed?
Loosen the muzzle of muteness. Nourish the embers of courage.
Who shall hold the torch high, that others may find the path?
The light is of the truth. Who among us will shout that truth without shame?
Are there none who will unsheath their sword and move forward past the appeaser?
Great is the man who sacrifices for those counted least amongst others.
Who will be my brother?
steve
TSA,
Still searching for tools instead of terrorists. bah, humbug.
I have over 5K hours of aircrew time. I love airplanes. And yet, I prefer to take the train or the bus whenever possible. After this last event, I’ve decided to forswear commercial aviation, unless it’s an absolute emergency. Even then, I’ll likely end up in jail, as I am done kow-towing to the rent-a-cops from TSA, I will no longer take off my coat, empty my pockets, remove my shoes. or keep my mouth shut when around these idiots.
Safety means carrying a handgun and knowing how to use it.
Well may as well throw another log on the fire here, as to where leading mental lights like Napolitano may take us.
A few months back a middle rank poohbah in the Yemeni/Saudi terror corps managed to get an interview with the Saudi Defense Minister. Said poohbah had a bomb secreted in his lower colon. While seated before the desk of the Defense Minister, said poohbah detonated the bomb.
Sooo–in this morning’s Los Angeles Times a “security expert” was qouted as saying that the only way to insure against future bomb attacks on airlines was to require a body cavity search before you were allowed to board. Naturally I suppose such body cavity searches will be carried out by our highly trained crack security service team at TSA.
I’m glad that my business travel days are over.
We’re there, as required. I was on this flight back in 2007.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/07/local/me-lax7
What was interesting was how the pilots said there was a problem with the ATC system and so we were being diverted to Vegas, even as a steady stream of contrails pressed west. As expected, on landing we were chased down the runway by lots of vehicles with flashing lights. Four hours under guard with an escort to make a head call.
Fun!
MIke, wish that my business travel days were over also (voluntarily of course).
Alas, they are not and meeting a clients needs, while still making money for the company, in Maine, or Texas, or California when I am in NC restrict my options.
We can only go so far in using teleconferences, or videoconferences before boots on the ground is required.
“body cavity searches by a crack security service… ”
Mike, you outdoes yourself.
Well – Joe Biden said it would happen.
The President “stays above the fray”. Means: he is voting “present” again.
Hey, I think it’s pretty probable that I’ll never get laid, but I don’t go around blowing up random strangers to get my anger out about it, even though an awful lot of said strangers are prolly golfers (around here, anyway) and really deserve it. (I hates me some Midwestern Damnyankee Florida Golf Trash.)
I mean, with all of the anti-personnel mines in the world, why are there none planted in the golf courses in this really bad part of FL, where I have the misfortune to reside?
If I can keep my cool and chill my hostility, and mostly “act normal” and be polite, why can’t priveleged scions of the ruling class of Nigeria do the same?
Umm, “privileged”, I think.
Can’t find a sufficiently submissive woman in your home town? Fly to Detroit!
I’m thinking travel agent fail here…
– Max
We’re damn lucky that no SEAL was on that flight and jumped on poor old Abdul. cuz now we’d have Holder bringing the SEAL up on charges that in the apprehension of said perp the SEAL violated Abdul’s civil rights.
Actually “didn’t socialise much or have a girlfriend” seems to be a common thread for these jihadistas. Mebbe they got the runt’s portion in the manly hydraulics department?
It’s coz they’re betting on getting too much for one man to handle…all in reward for murder, and it don’t mean nothin’ to Allah if you have a little (or a lot) of “collateral damage” along the path to unbridled hot and cold running virgins.
Why bother with having an earthly relation, with women who might ask you to take care of them, when you can have a harem or slaves at your commend for greasing infidels?
Lazy…just freaking laziness.