NFTOS editor in chief Roger West was quoted earlier this week as saying "Al Qaeda no longer needs its bombs to detonate. It merely needs to toy with those who have allowed themselves to be governed by fear."
The initial strategy of Al-Qaeda was to strike big while the enemy was off guard. The blessed operations of Washington and New York represent the greatest special operations in the history of man. Nineteen men ended the lives of almost three thousand Americans, cost the U.S. treasury trillions of dollars, and embroiled America in a War on Terror that it would definitely eventually lose. America has spent time, effort, and money to precent a large scale attack such as 9/11 from ever occurring again. Even though that is what they state, on our side we believe that if Allah willed it no security measures could stand in the way of the mujahidin from repeating the glory of the operations of Washington and New York.
However, to bring down America we need not strike big. In such of environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch, and thus we may circumvent the security barriers America worked so hard to erect. This strategy of attacking the enemy with smaller, but more frequent operations is what some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts. The aim is to bleed the enemy to death.
Inspire magazine prints," We dedicate this issue to cover exclusive material of Operation Hemorrhage. We reveal for the first time the details of the operation and we correct the erroneous information that has been spreading through the airwaves."
In this special issue of Inspire, the Head of the Foreign Operations Team will cover the general details and objectives of the operation, Ikrimah al-Muhajir will go through some of the technical details of the device, Yahya Ibrahim will go through the economic leverage of such an operation and Shaykh Ibrahim al-Banna will discuss the religious objectives. We will also post some photos we took for some of the items we included in the packages.
Quoting radical insiders
"We would like to congratulate the Muslim nation for the success of our operation and we ask them to pray for us that Allah enables us to carry on this fight against America, the head of today's Crusade."
By pursuing a strategy with minimal cost to itself, al Qaeda can be assured that we will inflict the maximum economic damage to ourselves because of our unwillingness to face life’s only certainty: our mortality. Neither the TSA, nor the US Government, nor the US military, nor the war on terrorism, can make us safe, because life isn’t safe.
In pursuit of an unattainable level of safety we show ourselves willing to accept all manner of indignities — all in the name of security. But as one of the latest airline passengers, recounting the humiliation he suffered at the hands of TSA officers, said: “if this country is going to sacrifice treating people like human beings in the name of safety, then we have already lost the war.”
Indeed, as al Qaeda’s planners survey the American scene, they can only marvel at the ease with which they have established their own competitive advantage.
As the New York Times reports:
In a detailed account of its failed parcel bomb plot last month, Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen said late Saturday that the operation cost only $4,200 to mount, was intended to disrupt global air cargo systems and reflected a new strategy of low-cost attacks designed to inflict broad economic damage.
The group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, released to militant Web sites a new edition of its English-language magazine, called Inspire, devoted entirely to explaining the technology and tactics in the attack, in which toner cartridges packed with explosives were intercepted in Dubai and Britain. The printers containing the cartridges had been sent from Yemen’s capital, Sana, to out-of-date addresses for two Chicago synagogues.
The attack failed as a result of a tip from Saudi intelligence, which provided the tracking numbers for the parcels, sent via United Parcel Service and FedEx. But the Al Qaeda magazine said the fear, disruption and added security costs caused by the packages made what it called Operation Hemorrhage a success.
“Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. That is all what Operation Hemorrhage cost us,” the magazine said.
It mocked the notion that the plot was a failure, saying it was the work of “less than six brothers” over three months. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,’ ” the group wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”
The magazine included photographs of the printers and bombs that the group said were taken before they were shipped, as well as a copy of the novel “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens that it said it had placed in one package because the group was “very optimistic” about the operation’s success.
Although Western security officials have insisted that at least one of the parcel bombs was hours away from exploding, it seems just as likely that this operation was designed to showcase security vulnerabilities — that indeed it was conceived as a magazine cover story.
Al Qaeda has warned Britain that it will continue to find ways to bypass its security and plans to ramp up airborne attacks using passenger jets, it was revealed Sunday. The terrorist network said it was training a new generation of bomb makers and intended to target more commercial airliners, having successfully managed to smuggle powerful explosives on board cargo planes.
“The following phase would be for us to use similar devices on civilian aircraft in western countries,” the group’s Yemen-based offshoot said in the latest edition of its propaganda magazine.
It also announced plans to downgrade its use of suicide bombers and step up plots to disrupt transatlantic trade.
The bombs evaded security checks because they used PETN, a powerful form of explosive that is organic and difficult for airport scanners to detect. They were hidden in printer toner cartridges.
Although the plot was foiled, AQAP said it will have cost the West billions of dollars in new security measures. “That is why we dropped into one of the boxes a [Charles Dickens] novel titled 'Great Expectations,'” it said.
Last week Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said the terrorist threat to Britain was now at its highest since the Glasgow airport and Tiger Tiger nightclub bombing attempts in 2007. He said that aviation continued to pose a particular risk.
AQAP appears to confirm the fears of western security agencies that it was training bomb makers to build devices that cannot be detected, even by the most advanced airport security.
It said its master bomb maker, Ibrahim al Asiri, a wanted Saudi militant who is the key suspect in the cargo bomb plot, " is safe and well. He is currently busy teaching a new batch of students the latest in bomb making skills”.
Some 60 percent of global air cargo travels on passenger planes at some point on its journey and the group says it wants to use such devices against civilian aircraft in the West. Colonel Richard Kemp, former chairman of the intelligence group at Cobra, the government’s emergency committee, said al Qaeda’s interest in suicide attacks would not diminish.
He said: “This group, which also attempted a suicide attack against an aircraft a year ago, and other al Qaeda cells around the world, will continue to attempt all forms of mass casualty attack that they believe may stand a chance of success. It is this judgment -- the likelihood of success -- that will determine how they attack.”
AQAP also took credit for the September crash of a UPS cargo flight in Dubai. However, U.S. and U.A.E. officials have concluded that the crash was not an act of terrorism.
Keep this blog in mind when 2012 rolls around. Can we really afford to have a "half governor" running out country as POTUS with issues like these on the table? These times call for SME (Subject Matter Experts) whom can be one step ahead of those whom would like to see out country slowly bleed to death. Writing books, watching your daughter dance haphazardly across the hardwood floors, and using your twitter account as your pulpit is not a vehicle to a seat at the oval office.
NFTOS
