Unanswered questions in the Yemen terror scare

[Hannah Bell]

In what has become a regular feature of American public life—especially on the eve of major elections—the airwaves were taken over Friday by breathless reports of a new terror threat. It is impossible to determine how much is fact and how much is fiction in the ever-expanding claims being made regarding two packages from Yemen allegedly containing high explosives and addressed to two synagogues in Chicago.

But the very fact that the decision was made, undoubtedly at a very high level, to give such massive media coverage to the alleged plot—before any concrete details were being reported and entirely on the basis of unsubstantiated claims made by, for the most part, anonymous officials—is sufficient reason to adopt a highly skeptical attitude...

Aside from the unsubstantiated character of the claims, a number of contradictions and anomalies remain unexplained. On Friday, MSNBC was deriding the bombs said to have been concealed within toner cartridges as crude and amateurish. CNN was reporting that no explosives of any kind were found in the packages. By Sunday, the US government and the media were describing the bombs as highly sophisticated—the work of professionals...

On Sunday, Brennan said he agreed with British Prime Minister David Cameron’s claim that the package bombs were meant to explode in the air, not at the designated Chicago synagogues. No one, however, has explained why supposedly expert terrorists would flag their own bombs, designed to blow up airplanes, by sending them from Yemen to Jewish groups in the US...!

It is impossible to know with any certainty whether there is any basis for the official claims, or, if there is a kernel of truth, where fact ends and exaggeration and lies begin. But as always in such cases, it is appropriate to ask, “Who benefits...?”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/terr-n01.shtml

[tabatha]

1. There are too many hypotheticals in that article, to take it

seriously.


Al-Qaeda bombs too sophisticated for X-rays
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-11-01-alqaeda-bombs-too-sophisticated-for-xrays

Senior counterterrorism officials warned that al-Qaeda has exposed a blind spot in international aviation security by successfully smuggling bombs on to commercial cargo planes bound for the US.

One official told the Guardian that the bomb inside a computer printer discovered at East Midlands airport on Friday, en route from Yemen to Chicago, was "one of the most sophisticated we've seen ... The naked eye won't pick it up, experienced bomb officers did not see it, X-ray screening is highly unlikely to catch it."

Saudi Arabian intelligence was tipped off by an informant leading to the discovery of the devices at East Midlands airport and Dubai airport. A special team of officers from MI5, MI6, and GCHQ, which works closely with the Metropolitan police's counter-terrorism branch, was activated as soon as the Saudi Arabian authorities tipped off US and UK intelligence agencies.

[Hannah Bell]

3. what "hypotheticals" are those?

[the redcoat]

2. My question is

If the plan was to explode them in the air, what was the point of addressing them to Jewish centers? Is it common to worry about the shipping address when you don't plan on the packaging arriving?


I remember thinking how stupid the media was for jumping on this so soon. The first reports I saw were of empty toner cartridges with wires as a test run.

[petronius]

4. Maybe they thought it was funny, like chalking messages on artillery shells

Or perhaps they figured if the bombs didn't go off mid-air they might get lucky and kill some Jews, anyway.

Who knows - it seems like the the story is still developing and there may be more details on the way. As it stands now, though, it sure looks like a real attempt to screw up the global cargo industry...

[MineralMan]

5. Unrecommended for conspiracy theory speculation.

That is all.

[Panaconda]

6. Also

If you were indeed a "highly sophisticated" operation would you really mail those bombs from Yemen, a country currently under intense counterterrorism scrunity by the United States?

[TBF]

7. Business as usual.

This is quite predictable now, color coding or not.

[blindpig]

8. fishy indeed...

If this had happened two years ago the reaction here would certainly be different....

Old boss, new boss...it's the Capitalism, the priorities don't change just because the government personnel do.

[Xenotime]

9. [self delete]

[Pathwalker]

10. Katie Couric said we were "facing another 9 -11 as bomb laden planes were

on their way to God knows how many American cities!" Was that hyperbolic, or not?