Bombs Out of Yemen; Heroes Out of Saudi Arabia?

This is a story that benefitted from the weekend; much of Friday’s rush to judgment was wrong. First reports had the printer cartridge as a fake causing several experts to claim it was a “dry run” for later bombs; the addressees were synagogues and Jewish organizations in Chicago, which some experts said might have something to do with President Obama, although what is unclear; and the suspect was a 22-year-old female Yemeni engineering student.

This is a story that benefitted from the weekend; much of Friday’s rush to judgment was wrong. First reports had the printer cartridge as a fake causing several experts to claim it was a “dry run” for later bombs; the addressees were synagogues and Jewish organizations in Chicago, which some experts said might have something to do with President Obama, although what is unclear; and the suspect was a 22-year-old female Yemeni engineering student.

Over the weekend we understood that the packages were bombs so sophisticated that the explosives in the altered cartridge escaped detection the first time experts dismantled it. The detonations were more likely to have occurred in the air than through the delivery of the packages, destroying the planes, not blowing up in Jewish institutions. And the woman was released after the shipping agent who received the packages in Yemen said she was not the person who signed the shipping documents.

What remains is strange enough.

Addressing the bombs to Jewish organizations is odd – if the plane was going to explode in mid-air, after the blast how would anyone have known that the addressee was a synagogue? Maybe al Qaeda operatives are sensitive to the idea that Americans target whatever appears to be Muslim for extra attention, so they thought a package that said “Jews” would be less subject to close inspection. Of course, American and European authorities are fully aware that Jewish organizations are often targets – but maybe terrorists can be very clever but not very sophisticated.

On the other hand, blowing up cargo planes makes perfect sense for al Qaeda – the last time they tried an airplane bomb, an intrepid passenger stopped Abdul Mutallab, the “underwear bomber,” before the bomb could detonate. Observant Americans similarly stymied the “Times Square bomber.” Cargo on a plane would allow no heroes.

But there was a hero – and odd one at first blush. It was Saudi intelligence that tipped British intelligence that the UPS plane headed for the Midlands in the UK had to be stopped. Although Saudi Arabia supplied 11 of the 19 September 11th bombers, the Saudis have come to understand that al Qaeda’s primary target is not, in fact, the United States or France, but Saudi Arabia itself – which al Qaeda sees as a “slave” of the West. This has prompted the Saudis to invest heavily in surveillance and monitoring not only of the Kingdom, but of al Qaeda elsewhere, including Yemen. Last year, the head of the Saudi counterterrorism program was nearly assassinated when a suicide bomber from Yemen posing as a reformed jihadist detonated a bomb hidden inside his body.

There’s nothing like a really, really close call to focus one’s attention, Saudi or American.

The New York Times reported this weekend, “When the Saudi Interior Ministry released its list of the top 85 wanted militants last year, all of them were said to be outside the kingdom, including some in Yemen. Saudi Arabia’s problem, in other words, has become the world’s problem.”

You don’t say. It is, apparently, also our problem. Stay tuned.