Posted on 01/07/2010 4:23:34 AM PST by kristinn
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Has the failed Detroit airline plot ruined all the progress made in the "war on terror"?
Hoffman: I think a watershed has been crossed. Over the past year, we have seen a dozen terrorism plots or attacks in the United States -- at least one a month, which is completely without precedent. Some are directly orchestrated by al-Qaida or one of its franchises, such as the Northwest Airlines plot on Christmas Day. Others are executed by individuals directly inspired by al-Qaida, such as the shooting spree at the Fort Hood military base.
SNIP
Hoffman: American citizens are functioning as "sleepers" -- as illustrated by the arrest of an Afghan-born US resident who was trained by al-Qaida in Pakistan and plotted to carry out coordinated suicide attacks in Manhattan. Also, there are individuals acting completely on their own who were not even radicalized by al-Qaida or its sympathizers. For instance, the US authorities prevented a plot in May to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military airplanes flying out of a National Guard air base near New York.
SNIP
I am worried that we have so many more attempts from so many different dimensions. That has a great impact on our already strained intelligence services.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Wouldn't that indicate that the al-Qaida network has been weakened and is now forced to resort to more crude attacks?
Hoffman: Quite to the contrary. If the movement was weakened you would not have so many different approaches. I think it is a new strategy of al-Qaida to have this large number of individual adversaries. They do this to create a distraction so that more orchestrated large-scale attacks can be prepared discreetly. The Detroit airline plot shows that these big attacks are still being planned.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Good morning.
The Art of War.
Whatever President Bush’s vision for his Presidency may have been when he entered office, 9-11 changed that and defined his Presidency from then on. The same thing may be happening with Obama. He appears to be on the verge of being overtaken by events that really do not care what his agenda may be.
That Khost bombing became extra troubling when it was followed by the story that the bomber as one of the CIA’s best informants. That’s when I realized the 7 agents killed were probably high level guys.
Great morning reading today. First there was this article: National Security Adviser Says Airline Bomber Report Will 'Shock' Americans when it is released today.
Now this article. All I can say about the title is the usurper has no intention of waging a "fight against terrorism" -- unless of course it refers to the fight against red-blooded American Patriots, aka domestic terrorists by this alleged administration, rising up to stop his islamo-fascist communism.
What makes you so sure these "events" are not part of his agenda?
No it won’t. What will define Obamas presidency, is the staggering number of incompetents he has hired and appointed in his term of office. Hell, he’s already brought more incompetent dumbasses into his administration in less than a year, than any other president did, in their times in office. And that includes Carter and Nixon.
Free Speech attackers, fascist socialists, paranoid communists, child molsters, Whale blubber for brains security appointees, social climbing schmozzers that put the life of the POTUS at risk, Crooks and cheats, bald faced liars.....His entire ..what? 350 members of “experts” who are stealing from the first penny of Federal monies they get for defrauding the people with tyheir fake expertise...It is just jaw dropping how many clusterfucks he has brought into his Admin.
Mr “Know me by those I surround myself with” Obama, if that were true, he’d be wearing a leg tracker for the rest of his life, and be on every watch list there is in the US, including the child molester list, annd with his daughters taken away from him by the courts...for those he has surrounded himself with, and now hides from the Press when they get caught because he is ashamed of having to fire so many of them.
“And to hurry the overwhelming of our intelligence efforts against them, al Qaeda decapitated our bin Laden base in Khost.”
Hi Kristinn,
Can you (or anyone else) point to more information on the Khost base being “our bin Laden base?” I apologize for my ignorance if this is common knowledge. Is there open source information about this?
What has alarmed the US is the fact that al-Qaeda and the Taleban managed, despite an intense US bombing campaign, to mount an operation that wiped out the top CIA experts involved in the hunt for bin Laden. “It’s a huge blow,” a former CIA officer said. “If you are Osama bin Laden, your biggest enemy is the CIA. This is a big hit.”
SNIP
He detonated his bomb soon after entering the base, killing four CIA field agents, three CIA security guards and a Jordanian intelligence officer. One of the dead was the CIA’s chief at the base, a woman in her mid-thirties.
“Several of the [dead] were ... among the top five experts on al- Qaeda in the United States,” Mr Scheuer said. “When you lose that type of expertise, it’s very hard to replace it; impossible in the near term.”
Former CIA officials told The Times that the high number of CIA officers travelling from Kabul to meet al-Balawi reflected how desperate the agency was for information on bin Laden.
SNIP
Thank you. That was exactly what I was looking for.
You’re welcome.
"I am worried that we have so many more attempts from so many different dimensions. That has a great impact on our already strained intelligence services."
Ditto.
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