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Nigerian Terror Suspect's Explosive Underwear, Obama's Reassurances To American Public
By
Jen Chung
Published Dec 29, 2009
Modified Dec 29, 2009
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By
Jen Chung
Published Dec 29, 2009
Modified Dec 29, 2009
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ABC News showed photographs of the underwear worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab while he allegedly tried to destroy a Northwest Airlines flight landing in Detroit last week. ABC News explains, "The first photo... shows the slightly charred underpants with the bomb packet still in place... The bomb packet is a six-inch long container of the high-explosive chemical PETN, less than a half cup in volume, weighing about 80 grams. A government test with 50 grams of PETN blew a hole in the side of an airliner. That was the amount in the bomb carried by the so-called shoe bomber Richard Reid over Christmas 2001. The underpants bomb would have been one and a half times as powerful."
A court hearing for Abdulmutallab, now dubbed the "crotch bomber" by the NY Post, was postponed yesterday; the arraignment is now scheduled for January 8. The Washington Post reports that the 23-year-old Nigerian national "apparently turned to the Internet for counseling and companionship, writing in an online forum that he was 'lonely' and had 'never found a true Muslim friend.'" While the authenticity of the postings has yet to be concerned, the Post details them:
"I have no one to speak too [sic],' read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. "No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems."
The Washington Post reviewed 300 online postings under the name "farouk1986" (a combination of Abdulmutallab's middle name and birth year). The postings mused openly about love and marriage, his college ambitions and angst over standardized testing, as well as his inner struggle as a devout Muslim between liberalism and extremism. In often-intimate writings, posted between 2005 and 2007, he sought friends online, through Facebook and in Islamic chat rooms: "My name is Umar but you can call me Farouk." He often invited readers to "have your say" and once wrote, "May Allah reward you for reading and reward you more for helping."
In the meantime, President Obama, currently on vacation in Hawaii, spoke about the incident for the first time yesterday, "A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism, and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable... Since I was first notified of this incident, I've ordered the following actions to be taken to protect the American people and to secure air travel." (You can read his full remarks here, including the actions he's mentioned.)
But it's still given the GOP an opportunity to go after him and his administration, especially after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's apparent initial assessment of the situation as "the system worked." On the heels of Rep. Peter King's criticism, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) told Politico, “In the past six weeks, you’ve had the Fort Hood attack, the D.C. Five and now the attempted attack on the plane in Detroit … and they all underscored the clear philosophical difference between the administration and us.... I think Secretary Napolitano and the rest of the Obama administration view their role as law enforcement, first responders dealing with the aftermath of an attack. And we believe in a forward-looking approach to stopping these attacks before they happen.”
Tagged
attempted act of terror
bombing
detroit
gop
homeland security
NWA Flight 253
president obama
terror
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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