Monday, July 07, 2008

How safe is the US from a UK style terrorist attack?

In the past three years the UK has been hit by two major terrorist incidents, the 7/7 bombimgs of 2005 and the June 2007 attempts in London and Glasgow.

These attacks are notable because they were low cost, realtively low tech, and had very little involvement from the main Al-Qaeda organization (at least that;s my understanding). In addition all of the suspects were legal residents of the UK and in most cases were not suspected by the police of any terrorist involvement.

In the US we tend to downplay the idea of such attacks. A group was arrested in Florida with plans to attack the Sears Tower, another was arrested for attempting to blow up the fuel pipelines to JFK Airport. Other groups were arrested for paramiliatry training exercises and so on. In all these cases there is initially a panic in the Media - "Oh My God! Homegrown Terrorists!" which is then downplayed to the point of ridicule. Eventually the conclusion is reached that these groups could never carry out such an attack because the are amatuers without the skills or resources that are needed.

Is that really the way it is?

In yesterday's Washington Post there was an article noting that about 1% of the foreign fighters captured in Iraq and Afghanistan had arrest records in the United States:

In the six-and-a-half years that the U.S. government has been fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, hundreds have turned out to share an unexpected background, FBI and military officials said. They have criminal arrest records in the United States.

There was the suspected militant fleeing Somalia who had been arrested on a drug charge in New Jersey. And the man stopped at a checkpoint in Tikrit who claimed to be a dirt farmer but had 11 felony charges in the United States, including assault with a deadly weapon.

...

"I found the number stunning," said Frances Fragos Townsend, a security consultant and former assistant to the president for homeland security. "It suggested to me that this was going to give us far greater insight into the relationships between individuals fighting against U.S. forces in the theater and potential U.S. cells or support networks here in the United States."

...

"Frankly I was surprised that we were getting those kind of hits at all," recalled Townsend, who left government in January. They identified "a potential vulnerability" to national security the government had not fully appreciated, she said.

The people being fingerprinted had come from the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan. They were mostly in their 20s, Shannon recalled. "One of the things we learned is we were dealing with relatively young guys who were very committed and what they would openly tell you is that when they got out they were going back to jihad," he said. "They'd already made this commitment."

One of the first men fingerprinted by the FBI team was a fighter who claimed he was in Afghanistan to learn the ancient art of falconry. But a fingerprint check showed that in August 2001 he had been turned away from Orlando International Airport by an immigration official who thought he might overstay his visa. Mohamed al Kahtani would later be named by the Sept. 11 Commission as someone who allegedly had sought to participate in hijackings. He currently is in custody at Guantanamo Bay.

Similarly, in 2004, an FBI team choppered to a remote desert camp on the Iraq-Iran border, home to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), whose aim is to overthrow the Iranian government. The MEK lead an austere lifestyle in which men are segregated from women and material goods are renounced. The U.S. State Department considers the organization to be a terrorist group.

The FBI team fingerprinted 3,800 fighters. More than 40, Shannon said, had previous criminal records in the agency's database.


So we know that people who have the commitment to Jihad are among us in the United States. Now couple this with an article I found at Instapundit:

A young undercover city detective spent four years in the shadowy world of terrorist wanna-bes - taking part in jihadist discussions and training in parks in the dead of night - to get a handle on the homegrown threat.

At great personal risk, he participated in everything from prayers at a mosque to martial arts training under cover of darkness to watching jihadist videos, with many of the activities laced with talk of killing, according to a source familiar with the undercover's investigations.

...

The detective spent his time interacting with informal groups of youths and men who shared extremist views - and his experiences illustrate what police say is the potential for radicalization of some elements in the community.

...

The detective reported that some youths became extremists after they traveled to their home countries; others went on the hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca - and came back fired up by imams who encouraged violence as a religious obligation.

Others, after visiting relatives abroad, became enraged at their family's living conditions and blamed the U.S. for supporting nondemocratic governments.

Although the youths talked about ways to attack the U.S., they lacked a strong leader who could help them follow through on a plan, the detective reported.


So we have Jihadis traveling to the US at various times, and we have potential Jihadis in the US lookingfor a leader.

Open Flame ---> Gasoline ---> BOOM!!!!

Anyone besides me see the issue here?

It appears from the articles that the government is making active efforts in pursuing this threat. I hope that there is more going on also.

Edited: Added a link to the NY Daily News Article. Also listen to Radio Free Moronosphere

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