More information on bombing suspect

(Note, 11:17 p.m.: CBS has posted the same AP story as below, with an additional paragraph inserted after the third paragraph which reads: “The source told CBS News [that] forensic evidence uncovered in the vehicle led them to a Middle Eastern man’s name that was familiar to counter terrorism investigators.”)

According to an AP story posted at about 9:40 p.m., the suspect is of Pakistani descent (the Fox story posted previously said only that he was a naturalized U.S. citizen who recently spent months in Pakistan) and lived in Connecticut. His identity was traced through the vehicle identification number on the engine block.

My reaction to the initial news reports on the weekend was that the bomb was too amateurish for this to be the work of organized terrorists. Then we heard from Police Commissioner Kelly about the “fireball” and the “hundreds of deaths” the bomb could have caused, and that, plus the fact which came out today that the suspect is a naturalized U.S. citizen who recently spent months in Pakistan, plus the claim of responsibility for the attack by the Taliban in Pakistan, made it highly likely that this was the work of a terrorist organization. But in the present article, a security expert says that the revelation that the fertilizer in the car could not have exploded indicates that “this is amateur hour. My kids could build a better bomb than this.” Does that mean the attack was not organized? But wasn’t the incompetent shoe bomber Richard Reid an al Qaeda agent?

I raise these questions because we obviously need to know the particular facts of the case, not because they matter in the larger scheme of things. Muslims are waging violent jihad on us, and the more Muslims there are in our society, and the more passive and accommodating we are toward them, the more attacks there will be. Whether any given attack is done by a group of jihadists or an individual jihadist is irrelevant. Jihad, whatever its particulars, is aimed at breaking down the resistance of a non-Muslim society until it yields to Islamic dominance.

Further, just as the number of persons involved in any jihadist attack does not change its nature as a jihadist attack, the specific motive for any jihadist attack does not change its nature as a jihadist attack. Liberals, of course, think otherwise. Thus, though the suspect comes from Pakistan and therefore is 99 percent likely to be a Muslim, and though he attempted a car bombing in an iconic location in New York City crowded with thousands of people, the AP blandly states that his “motive was unclear.” Clearly the AP is missing the larger picture.

Here’s the article:

NEW YORK—Authorities have identified the buyer of the SUV used in a failed Times Square terror attack and are seeking him as a potential suspect, two law enforcement officials said Monday.

The buyer is a man of Pakistani descent who recently traveled to Pakistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is at a sensitive stage.

The officials say the man is a Connecticut resident who paid cash weeks ago for the SUV parked in Times Square on Saturday and rigged with a crude propane-and-gasoline bomb.

The car’s last registered owner was questioned Sunday by investigators, and said he sold the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder to a man he did not know three weeks ago to a stranger, one official said.

Officials say the owner, whose name has not been released, is not considered a suspect in the bomb scare. But the revelation of the sale led authorities one step closer to whomever was aiming for mass carnage on a busy Saturday night in the heart of Times Square and achieved only streets emptied for hours of thousands of tourists.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne confirmed Monday that investigators had spoken to the registered owner.

The vehicle identification number had been removed from Pathfinder’s dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine, and investigators used it to find the owner on record.

“The discovery of the VIN on the engine block was pivotal in that it led to identifying the registered owner,” Browne said. “It continues to pay dividends.”

Investigators tracked the license plates to a used auto parts shop in Stratford, Conn., where they discovered the plates were connected to a different vehicle.

They also spoke to the owner of an auto sales shop in nearby Bridgeport because a sticker on the Pathfinder indicated the SUV had been sold by his dealership. Owner Tom Manis said there was no match between the identification number the officers showed him and any vehicle he sold.

In New York, police and FBI examined hundreds of hours of video from around the area. They had initially wanted to speak with a man in his 40s who was videotaped shedding his shirt near the Pathfinder, but backed away as the buyer became clear. The man had not been considered a suspect and officials said it’s possible he was just a bystander. Police also received around 120 tips, and three of which were considered promising, and collected forensic evidence from the Pathfinder.

In Washington, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Saturday’s attempted bombing was a terrorist act.

A motive was unclear. Barry Mawn, who led New York’s FBI office at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has since retired, said suspects could range from those sympathetic to the interest of U.S. enemies to a domestic terrorist to a disgruntled employee who worked in Times Square.

The Pakistani Taliban appeared to claim responsibility for the bomb in three videos that surfaced after the weekend scare, monitoring groups said. New York officials said police have no evidence to support the claims. It was unclear if the buyer of the SUV had any relationship to the group.

The SUV was parked near offices of Viacom Inc., which owns Comedy Central. The network recently aired an episode of the animated show “South Park” that the group Revolution Muslim had complained insulted the Prophet Muhammad by depicting him in a bear costume.

is of Pakistani descent, and he attempted a terrorist attack in New York City. But, the AP tells us, his motive “was unclear.”

NEW YORK—Authorities have identified the buyer of the SUV used in a failed Times Square terror attack and are seeking him as a potential suspect, two law enforcement officials said Monday.

The buyer is a man of Pakistani descent who recently traveled to Pakistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is at a sensitive stage.

The officials say the man is a Connecticut resident who paid cash weeks ago for the SUV parked in Times Square on Saturday and rigged with a crude propane-and-gasoline bomb.

The car’s last registered owner was questioned Sunday by investigators, and said he sold the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder to a man he did not know three weeks ago to a stranger, one official said.

Officials say the owner, whose name has not been released, is not considered a suspect in the bomb scare. But the revelation of the sale led authorities one step closer to whomever was aiming for mass carnage on a busy Saturday night in the heart of Times Square and achieved only streets emptied for hours of thousands of tourists.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne confirmed Monday that investigators had spoken to the registered owner.

The vehicle identification number had been removed from Pathfinder’s dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine, and investigators used it to find the owner on record.

“The discovery of the VIN on the engine block was pivotal in that it led to identifying the registered owner,” Browne said. “It continues to pay dividends.”

Investigators tracked the license plates to a used auto parts shop in Stratford, Conn., where they discovered the plates were connected to a different vehicle.

They also spoke to the owner of an auto sales shop in nearby Bridgeport because a sticker on the Pathfinder indicated the SUV had been sold by his dealership. Owner Tom Manis said there was no match between the identification number the officers showed him and any vehicle he sold.

In New York, police and FBI examined hundreds of hours of video from around the area. They had initially wanted to speak with a man in his 40s who was videotaped shedding his shirt near the Pathfinder, but backed away as the buyer became clear. The man had not been considered a suspect and officials said it’s possible he was just a bystander. Police also received around 120 tips, and three of which were considered promising, and collected forensic evidence from the Pathfinder.

In Washington, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Saturday’s attempted bombing was a terrorist act.

A motive was unclear. Barry Mawn, who led New York’s FBI office at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has since retired, said suspects could range from those sympathetic to the interest of U.S. enemies to a domestic terrorist to a disgruntled employee who worked in Times Square.

The Pakistani Taliban appeared to claim responsibility for the bomb in three videos that surfaced after the weekend scare, monitoring groups said. New York officials said police have no evidence to support the claims. It was unclear if the buyer of the SUV had any relationship to the group.

The SUV was parked near offices of Viacom Inc., which owns Comedy Central. The network recently aired an episode of the animated show “South Park” that the group Revolution Muslim had complained insulted the Prophet Muhammad by depicting him in a bear costume.

The date of the botched bombing—May 1—was International Workers Day, a traditional date for political demonstrations, and thousands had rallied for immigration reform that day in New York.

Security had been also been tight in the city in advance of a visit to the United Nations by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a nuclear weapons conference.

Police said the bomb could have produced “a significant fireball” and sprayed shrapnel with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out windows. The SUV was parked on a street lined with Broadway theaters and restaurants and full of people out on a Saturday night.

The SUV was captured on video crossing an intersection at 6:28 p.m. Saturday. A vendor pointed out the Pathfinder to an officer about two minutes later. Times Square, clogged with tourists on a warm evening, was shut down for 10 hours.

The explosive device had cheap-looking alarm clocks connected to a 16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to detonate the gas cans and set the propane afire in a chain reaction, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

A metal rifle cabinet placed in the cargo area was packed with fertilizer, but NYPD bomb experts believe it was not a type volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertilizer used in previous terrorist bombings.

The exact amount of fertilizer was unknown. Police estimated the cabinet weighed 200 to 250 pounds when they pulled it from the vehicle.

To experts in explosives, it seemed to be the work of someone who really didn’t know what they were doing.

Chris Falkenberg, president of Insite Security, which works with Fortune 500 companies, said the device, as described by authorities, “doesn’t differ much at all from ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’”—the underground 1971 manual for homemade explosives.

He said revelations that the fertilizer used could not have exploded suggested “this is amateur hour. My kids could build a better bomb than this.”

President Barack Obama telephoned handbag vendor Duane Jackson, 58, of Buchanan, N.Y., on Monday to commend him for alerting authorities to the smoking SUV. The White House said Obama thanked Jackson for his vigilance and for acting quickly to prevent serious trouble.

[end of AP article]

- end of initial entry -

Daniel S. writes:

The refusal of the media to speculate as to the motives of the probable Pakistani Muslim bomber and his probable fellow Muslim conspirators is hypocritical in the extreme. The media had no time telling us the motives of the recently arrested members of the Hutaree militia (which was frequently identified as Christian militia) on trumped up charges; likewise the media had no problem telling us the motives of Scott Roeder, who shot and killed the abortionist George Tiller; nor did the media refrain from declaring the motives of James von Brunn after he murdered a security guard at the United States Holocaust Museum.

On the other hand, the media danced around the issue when it came to stating the obvious concerning the motives of the Fort Hood jihadist Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and we were instead treated to numerous musings about his mental state, his alleged (and ultimately non-existent) hardships as a Muslim in the military, and every other dodge in the book. Likewise, when the Muslim convert Carlos Bledsoe murdered an army private outside an Arkansas recruiting station the media never quite got around to spending any serious time analyzing his obvious motives (which he himself made quite clear). Every time a white, “Christian” male is alleged to have committed an act of political terrorism the media calls the suspect out, yet whenever a Muslim is involved in an act of terrorism the media quickly retreats into a world in which nothing is certain and all knowledge is hidden or ambiguous. Even with the Muslim jihadists telling us again and again their motives in clear and explicit terms (often in English mind you), the media would have us ignore all of this and commit ourselves to the idea that their motives are forever unclear, or, moving beyond that into accepting the assorted non-Islam theories for Islamic violence which are indulged by liberals or self-styled conservatives alike.

This attitude is of course the logical consequence of liberalism and will continue as long as liberalism is the supreme intellectual, cultural, social, and political doctrine of the West.

LA replies:

On one hand, even the White House is saying that this was a terrorist act. On the other hand, they leave out what kind of terrorist act it was, done for what reason. And of course the word “Muslim” does not appear. The idea seems to be that there is this sort of generic terrorism out there, just as there is generic violence, and just as violence just happens (randomly), so does terrorism. It’s a terrible thing from which we must defend ourselves, but it has no meaning.

The damage George W. Bush did to this country’s ability to deal with the Islamic threat cannot be understated. During those months and years after the 9/11 attack, when the country was ready to grasp the truth, his extravagant embrace of the “religion of peace,” his refusal to name the adversary, set into place a paralysis in the American mind vis a vis the Islam problem from which it may not recover for a long time.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 03, 2010 09:47 PM | Send