Almost immediately after it was learned that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a US airliner using explosives concealed in his underpants, received training in Yemen, US politicians called for Barack Obama, the US president, to expand the ‘war on terror’ – which remains very much a war despite the administration’s official ban of such vocabulary – to that country.
The president obliged, declaring that the US would strike anywhere to prevent another attack.
Such calls were in fact unnecessary, as the US is already involved in Yemen, supervising attacks on militants that have been credited by analysts with helping to further inflame anti-Americanism and support for al-Qaeda in the country.
Indeed, far from heralding a more successful US effort to stamp out Islamist terrorism, the soon to be deepening footprint in Yemen is a sure sign of America’s defeat in the war against violent extremism in the Muslim world. [continued…]
Foreigners in Yemen see terrorism worries as overblown
Elena Rezneac’s lavender eye shadow shimmered in the sun outside a crowded Internet cafe in Yemen’s capital city. The 21-year-old Moldovan student giggled as she pushed her sunglasses up above her blond ponytail.
“If you read about Yemen in the news lately, you think there are terrorists running around and bombs in all the streets,” she said. “But when you are here, it’s calm. I have to go online to remember there’s a war going on.”
Others among the thousands of foreign aid workers and students of Arabic who live in this impoverished nation expressed a similar view. [continued…]
Listening to Obama’s “the dog ate my homework” air terrorism speech I kept remembering that “intel,” like neuroscience term “intelligence,” means the putting together of data into a holistic answer to a question. So when he said that our services had the “intel dots” but didn’t connect them I realized that, once again, he is blindly reading a speech that the Clintonistas wrote for him to look like a fool. I hope the Mossad does not give him “proof” that the often sighted UFOs are “Muslim terrorists from outer space” because it will cost us TRILLIONS more to go after alQaeda’s celestial branch than the billions it costs us going after their terrestrial bases in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and wherever else Mossad sends us. Afterall, we find the dots and Israel connects them.