Amazing. Seems that every time the left in this country builds up a little momentum in the department of telling us how we’re not in danger from terrorism, one of these stories pops up.
ROMULUS, Mich. -AP- [1] An attempted terrorist attack on a Christmas Day flight began with a pop and a puff of smoke — sending passengers scrambling to subdue a Nigerian man who claimed to be acting on orders from al-Qaida to blow up the airliner, officials and travelers said.
The commotion began as Northwest Airlines Flight 253, carrying 278 passengers and 11 crew members from Amsterdam, prepared to land in Detroit just before noon Friday. Travelers said they smelled smoke, saw a glow, and heard what sounded like firecrackers. At least one person climbed over others and jumped on the man, who officials say was trying to ignite an explosive device.
There’s more to the story of course and I commend you to reading the entire article at the link.
We are clearly still in danger, particularly if the man was able to get the device onto the plane undetected.
[2]And…. Nigeria? I have a foul taste in my mouth over that place just now.
At the risk of revealing too much personal information about a friend, I have to tell you, that Nigeria is the source of a goodly portion of spam in the world. Think I’m kidding? Have a look at the header information and do a little WHOIS work against the IP address the message comes from. Those that aren’t coming from Hong Kong will be coming in from Nigeria. Of those most is coming from various IP’s with the same third octet, meaning they’re likely all quite literally within blocks of one another… and in each case they’re usually parked behind a private DSL router all of which in turn usually have a fair number of class C addresses on them.
Nigeria is also the source of a good deal if identity theft. You’d be amazed at how many people on the various dating services, are actually coming from there… looking for some way to raise some money from trusting lonely hearts. They’re fairly successful at it, too. And trust me, I know. I’ve had some experience with helping a good friend get out of an entanglement with such an operation. She’s still having financial problems over it.
How are these situations related? Simple; I suspect that a lot of the money collected from such operations is helping fund al-Qaida. All of which leads me to laugh a little when I see in the article the official denials from the Nigerian ‘government’.
Nigeria’s information minister, Dora Akunyili, condemned the attempted bombing. She said the government has opened its own investigation into the suspect and will work with U.S. authorities.
“We state very clearly that as a nation we abhor all forms of violence,” Akunyili said in a statement issued Saturday.
Yeah, right.
OK, I may be wrong in this case, but I doubt it. I’ve seen the apparent results of Nigerian law enforcement. I would not be shocked to find this Nigerian al-Qaida operative is on the level when he says he was operating under orders. I would also be not surprised to find that Nigeria is a bigger hotbed of al-Qaida operations than we’re being told about.
The article does mention that Sen. Jay Rockefeller has said he’ll hold hearings on the incident in January, but I have my doubts about him diving too deeply into the Nigerian connection in that process. Rather, he’ll tell us all about how our security screwed up… which it certainly did. And never let it be said that any obstacle was too great for Rockefeller… nothing’s going to keep him away from any chance at generating publicity for himself…. Rockefeller is nearly as bad as Chuckles The Clown Schumer in that regard… one of the most dangerous places in America is the space between Rockefeller and a microphone. But look closely at what he does with that hearing. If he doesn’t look at Nigeria and the level of al-Qaida involvement there, he’s only doing half the job… which is about what I’d expect from that sleazeball.
However that plays, I fully expect Nigeria to be very much on the minds of Americans in the very near future. It will be unavoidable, eventually.