By The Seat of Their Pants
Monday, January 4, 2010 at 11:09AM 
I spent most of my holiday writing about the Crotch-Bomber for work. You know? The guy from Nigeria who took a transatlantic flight to Detroit and decided to, literally, set is loins aflame in an botched attempt to bring down the plane? What amazes me how ANYONE can spin this into a win for the terrorists. Dude set his BALLS ON FIRE and got apprehended by a passenger. Not a cop. Not a federal agent. Not a Marshall, but a DUDE on the PLANE. If anything, this is another example of how hard it is, post-9/11 to do anything even mildly suspicious on an aircraft. I mean, I'm only 5'3" and if I see anyone even looking funny on a flight to anywhere, I'm going to commence to ass-kicking. It's just engrained now. You're the last line of defense. No more passivity from anyone on an airplane. Kids, grandma, anyone might deliver a beatdown if it's between some asshole and you living to see the next day.
Yet, both al Qaeda, and strangely, a lot of Republicans tried to make Crotch-bomber sound like some criminal mastermind who actually accomplished something other than ... again ... setting his own balls on fire.
From Adam Serwer via The Root:
It’s hard to imagine that even al-Qaeda thought they would get so much good publicity for a failed attack that resulted in the alleged attacker setting himself on fire and being neutralized by unarmed civilians. The news that Abdulmutallab’s father tried to warn U.S. authorities about his son’s radical intentions suggests that the U.S.’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies are still struggling to find an effective way to sift through the massive amounts of information they collect to determine which threats are real and which aren’t. But Republicans have used the incident to exaggerate the ongoing threat al-Qaeda poses to the United States in order to score points against the administration, and in doing so, have given al-Qaeda the best reaction they could have hoped to get under the circumstances. While the plot itself failed, the GOP was eager to make sure Americans were terrorized anyway.
I guess what's annoying about this is how some Republicans (and Joe Lieberman) are taking a serious issue like terrorism and national security and are using Crotch-bomber to scare the public and slap around President Obama, calling him "soft" on terrorists. I mean, I don't quite understand how you get the "soft" label when you escalate a frickin' war in Afghanistan and actually ATTEMPT to prosecute terrorists in court. You know? Rather than have them just lie around that "Isle of No Return" known as Gitmo, collecting dust.
From the Washington Post editorial page:
But actions speak louder, and Mr. Obama's actions -- often at the cost of enraging his party's liberal base -- have also demonstrated tenacity and pragmatism blended with a necessary reassessment of the flawed policies of his predecessors and a recommitment to the rule of law. He wants to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, which is all to the good given its stain on the national character, but he has delayed that goal until acceptable alternatives can be found. He has brought criminal charges against some terrorists, but he has also sent others to be tried by military tribunals. He has invoked the authority of the executive to have lawsuits dismissed because they risk exposing state secrets. In addition to the new troop deployments, he has aggressively used predator drones to strike at terrorists, including outside Afghanistan. Even before the failed attack, his administration has been working aggressively with Yemeni authorities to deal with extremists there.
It is possible to disagree with the administration's decision to bring criminal charges against the suspect in the failed airplane bombing, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, although we think that was the proper course. It is possible to fault, as we have, some of the administration's public statements in the immediate aftermath of the attack. And as the president has acknowledged, the incident revealed failures in intelligence and in security screening that must be urgently identified and corrected. The country would benefit from a serious and bipartisan effort in Congress to ensure that the lessons of the Christmas attack are learned. A groundless campaign to portray Mr. Obama as soft on terror can only detract from that effort.
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Reader Comments (12)
Snob:
Why are you so flippant about the attack? It was only the slimmest margins of luck that the bomb didn't explode. How can this be a win for the terrorists, you ask? The guy got on the plane and almost destroyed it. Even though he failed, he caused panic and terror. The passengers certainly looked terrified. If the system had worked, he never would have gotten on the plane. Repubs don't need to exaggerate the the ongoing threat al-Qaeda poses to the United States as this incident speaks for itself as to the threat. The Bush admin tried to try some of the folks at Gitmo, in case you forgot, but some on the left kept filing lawsuits claiming that the alleged terrorists weren't getting proper due process which has has the intended effect of all but stopping any trials.
Scott:
Crotch-bomber was wearing underpants lined with a flammable substance that does not magically ignite the minute it is set on fire. That is a BIG difference from a huge coordinated attack like the ones on Sept. 11th that involved several people, multiple sites, months of planning, tons of money and several planes. It shows how weakened al Qaeda is. And a loss is a loss. Al Qaeda did not succeed. Its goal was to kill people. Dude set his crotch on fire. That's a failure.
And this incident was an intelligence failure, but running around in fear isn't going to solve anything. The Bush Administration WOULD have easily been able to prosecute people if they'd trusted in the law in the first place instead of creating an island of unconstitutionality in Gitmo. THEY created this problem. We have rules and we have laws in on the books that were more than capable. We've prosecuted and convicted 195 terrorists on US soil since 2001. If the Bush Administration had followed the law instead of creating unconstitutional new ones terrorism suspects who committed crimes would be in prison, just like the original World Trade Center bombers from the 1990s, who are sitting in Colo. in a Supermax prison.
@ Scott
Please.....he set his BALLS AFLAME. And he did it not because he was some self righteous militant who thought Allah wanted him to kill infedels--this was just a kid who wanted attention and friends. Holding this doofus up as somebody the American people should be afraid of is not gonna work--I'm frankly more fearful of those militias and separatists that we harbor within our borders but never seem to talk about until they blow shit up, like in Oklahoma City. You ask how can this be considered a win for the terrorists? I think the reactionary nature of Lieberman and the Republicans fanned the flames of terrorism for eight years by giving them an opposing, rigid idealism to push back against. I say laugh at the simple bastards. Laugh, but do not take them for granted.
Snob:
Please get your facts straight. He had concealed in his pants about 80 grams (Richard Reid only had 50 grams of PETN in his shoe) of PETN, a military grade explosive, that he attempted to detonate with a strong acid which was contained in a syringe. It was only by luck that the device, when it went off, only burned but did not detonate. Further his choice of a seat over a wing would have guaranteed the destruction of the aircraft had bomb exploded. Calling him the "underwear bomber" only encourages folks not take this as seriously as we should. The 289 people on the plane came very near death, which should not be a joke.
As far as Gitmo goes please tell me why it is unconstitutional? The folks there were captured during a conflict and are lucky to get the protections of the Geneva Conventions much less any other due process. Do you even know what qualifies a combatant to get the protections of the Geneva Conventions?
Scott:
Holding people indefinitely without trial is unconstitutional and we put them in Gitmo because we didn't want them to have any rights despite the fact that more than 500 people have been released because we had no real reason to hold them. Again, if we had just dealt with them as we'd dealt with other terrorists in the past we wouldn't be dealing with the worst of choices over detainees and Gitmo right now. And I'm just not going to live in fear of terrorists as THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO DO. I'm especially not going to pump up what they did when they failed. As they want you to pump it up and be afraid. The key is to learn from the experience and improve airport security and fix problems within the intelligence community, not obsessing over how potentially scary something is. That accomplishes nothing.
i wouldn't say obama is soft on terrorism. at least not yet. he was stupid to release the torture memos, though. him prosecuting these terrorist in a CIVIL court is soft. IMO, they need a military tribunual.
had the bomb gone off and killed all 290 on board, you'd be singing a different tune about how he was just some "doofus." this doofus got past several layers of security and ALMOST killed 300 people.
and only in america will the rights of few ever outweigh the lives of many. holding them without cause is unconstituational by the book, but i don't give a damn about their rights.
"and only in america will the rights of few ever outweigh the lives of many. holding them without cause is unconstitutional by the book, but i don't give a damn about their rights."
--SWIV
The problem with that line of logic is that as long as you are of the many, that concept sounds like a good deal; what about when you count yourself among the few? And as for the doofus line--doofus I said, and doofus I meant. I believe that the next time a major attack occurs in this country, it won't be by using an airplane--they will use other means that we are seemingly unprepared for, like attacking the chemical plants that dot my home state of Louisiana, or the ports, which have horrible security, as anybody who watches the news has been made well aware of. That a lone individual set his crotch on fire AFTER the flight reached its destination tells me that he was not particularly capable or aware; that he set his own balls aflame sets him further into the category of doofus.
For once, I gotta agree with Scott, Snob. He's right, we lucked out. Had those chemicals worked, that plane would have been history. This act was only a dry run for the terrorists, showing that we have a weakness in our system. The GOP is wrong, of course, to make political hay out of the affair, but that's what they do.
what about it? i'll do and contiue to do what i can to be in the law-abiding majority. why should i care about the few when they have shown that they don't care about me and my life (and you and yours?). had this terrorist actualy succeeded in blowing up the plane, you'd be singing a different tune.
What I don't understand is that after 9/11, 8 years have gone by and the authorities/intellgence still haven't got the communication system sorted out. Policies won't work if the departments can't get their act together. Eight years!
Simple solution here.
Let the passengers he tried to kill along with their families beat the living snot out of this twerp for as long as they choose.
Then, drop his pampered ass in downtown Lagos with a pocket full of cash and a sign on his chest that reads, "almost forced Obama to bomb Nigeria."
He'll learn his lesson then I bet.
well, i'm glad the feds are taking him seriously
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/06/detroit.bomb/index.html