The Christmas Day Terrorist Attack and Endless Fears
The shocking news of the botched Christmas Day terrorist attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam as it was about to land at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport left millions of Americans and others in the US gasping for breath as they were enjoying their turkey and basking in the joy of the passage of the Health Reform Bill by the Senate.
The terrorist attack has raised so much dust on the shortcomings of U.S. intelligence since investigations have shown that the al-Qaeda in Yemen recruited Abdulmutallab months ago. Also, his father Alhaji Umaru Mutallab warned the local security agencies and the US Consulate in Nigeria that his son had been radicalized by Islamists.
News reports said that Abdumutallab warned his family not to communicate with him again and stopped them from contacting him by changing his telephone numbers. The U.S. Consulate in Nigeria did not really ignore his warnings. In fact, counterterrorism officials were alerted in November and intelligence databases revealed that Abdulmutallab was on the watch list of the CIA. And he still got a US visa?
The Nigerian security agencies may have excuses for failing to respond to the security alerts, but what excuses would the US intelligence give for failing to investigate the security alerts and failing to go ahead to find out the whereabouts of Abdulmutallab to monitor his activities in the UK which has become recruiting grounds for agents of the al-Qaeda.
Investigations have shown that Nigerian terrorist who was a student of Engineering at the University College London was recruited and trained by the al-Qaeda in Yemen and in fact the British security agents knew about him three years ago.
Presently the security agencies in Nigeria, the Netherlands, Yemen and the US seem confused and embarrassed by their failures. But they are still pointing accusing fingers at each other in counter-accusations of how the young terrorist escaped from their radar during the Christmas holidays and nearly detonated a bomb that would have blown up the Flight 253 Airbus 330-300 aircraft with 300 on board and what a catastrophe that would have been on Christmas.
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