12.28.2009

A Brief History of Air Terrorism in the United States, 2001-present

pre-2001: Some bad dudes are busy cooking up a scheme to hijack airplanes and smash them into U.S. buildings. FBI agents in the Minnesota office report suspicions to their higher-ups in D.C. Incompetent/corrupt officials drop the ball.

Sep 2001: Dudes smash planes into WTC and Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000.

Oct 2001: U.S. invades Afghanistan, ostensibly to capture Osama Bin Laden.

2002: FBI threatens and intimidates agent who points out the agency's ineptitude (see above link). By year-end, 70 coalition troops and ~5000 Afghan civilians are dead. No sign of Osama.

March 2003: With the "War on Terror" in full swing, U.S. invades Iraq, ostensibly to seize weapons of mass destruction. Year-end: no sign of WMD.

2002-2009. TSA adds an array of security enhancements and travel restrictions. Cumulatively, more than 6,000 American deaths in war, hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilian deaths.

Dec 25, 2009. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boards a U.S.-bound plane with high explosives but in a fortunate fluke fails to detonate them.

Dec 27, 2009. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: "One thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked."

3 comments:

reddog said...

If you take the 4 planes involved in 9/11, add the shoe bomber guy and the Nigerian the other day, that's 6 terrorist incidents. I think there were 4 other documented attempts at terrorist motivated violence on American bound flights for a total of 10. At this point, there is not and never has been real evidence that al Qaeda even exists outside the heads of bin Laden and a few buddies and we have no idea where they are.

All of the perpetrators were relatively well educated, bilingual and Westernized.

None of them were minions of the Sunni military dictator of Iraq. None of them were Pashtun tribesman, much less Taliban Islamic fundamentalists.

Given the mayhem, death, political destabilization and trillions of dollars we have expended in response. Ya gotta wonder what the fuck is goin' on.

Now Lieberman wants new military aggression against Yemen.

Gotta be a better way, Bro. I know, I ain't your Bro. What else is new?

zeke said...

Dicho con inteligencia, hermano.

Sic Ibid said...

Reddog's got a point. There are many "forgotten" incidents, as well. Let's add the attempted attack at LAX, the attempted attack on Seattle at Y2K time, the guy who's vest-bomb fuse went off early outside of the sold-out Oklahoma football game (which allowed people time to run away from him), the lone-wolf jihadist who drove an SUV into crowds of people on a big college campus (was it Virginia? I forget), the attack (shootings) on a Hebrew center in San Fransisco, the plot to blow up the Sears Tower (court case pending), the plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, the Fort Hood shootings, and a few others I'm not recalling at this time. There's nothing going on, no. Nothing to see here.

Happy Super Tuesday!