The article, from the WSWS makes a good case for considering who would benefit from not connecting the dots in this incident. Just as it would be naive to believe there are conspiracies at every turn (never assume conspiracy for what can be explained by incompetence, someone once said), it would be equally naive to believe that those with the power to push the government to the right and to increasingly militarize this country would never ever do so if an opportunity presented itself. The article isn't so much a brief for conspiracy as it is for viewing events with an open mind so one can gain a more accurate understanding of how the government operates.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d31.shtmlIn the five days since the abortive attempt by the 23-year-old Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate an explosive device onboard Northwest Flight 253, information has surfaced that indicates an ostensible breakdown in US intelligence and security that is extraordinary in both its character and scale.
Among the facts now known are the following:
• Abdulmutallab’s father, a prominent retired banker and ex-government minister, had visited the US Embassy in Abuja more than a month before the attempted bombing to warn CIA officials that his son had become involved with Al Qaeda elements in Yemen. He provided them with information with which the young man could have been located, and he followed up his visit with at least two phone calls.
• For at least four months, US intelligence had information from Yemen that Al Qaeda operatives there were preparing “a Nigerian” for a terrorist attack.
• The information from Yemen was further substantiated by the National Security Agency’s interception of communications discussing preparations for an impending attack and the use of the “Nigerian.”
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Both then and now, the government and the media expect the public to accept that all that was involved was mistakes. But why should anyone assume that the failure to act on the extensive intelligence leading to Abdulmutallab involved merely “innocent” mistakes—and not something far more sinister?
If this episode is to be examined seriously, the question must be asked: What would have happened had Northwest Flight 253 been destroyed?
There is no question but that such a catastrophe would have had immense repercussions both internationally and within the United States. It would have seriously destabilized the Obama administration, politically strengthened the most extreme right-wing sections of the ruling class, and cleared the way for an even more massive expansion of military-intelligence operations overseas and a drastic curtailing of democratic rights at home.
Even the failed attempt has touched off a firestorm of criticism by the Republican right of the Obama administration’s supposed laxity in the face of terrorism.
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This second statement—delivered just one day after Obama’s announcement that he had ordered a “thorough review” of intelligence procedures—reflects the divisions and recriminations within the Washington political establishment and the US intelligence agencies. It is indicative of the immense pressure being brought to bear on his administration, and his own recognition that a successful terrorist attack would have had a profoundly destabilizing effect on his presidency.
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