Obama refused air strikes requested by Yemeni Government

denem

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Mon Dec-28-09 08:17 PM
Original message

Obama refused air strikes requested by Yemeni Government

Edited on Mon Dec-28-09 08:42 PM by denem

Time Line:

2008

--June 12: Abdulmutallab applies for a visa at the U.S. Embassy in London.

--June 16: His visa is granted. The visa is a regular multiple-entry tourist visa valid until June 12, 2010.

--August 1-17: Abdulmutallab visits Houston, Texas.

2009

--January: Abdulmutallab attends the University of Wollongong in Dubai.

--May 2009: Britain refuses to grant Abdulmutallab a student visa because the school on his application form was not a government-approved institution.

--August: Abdulmutallab visits Yemen after receiving a visa to study Arabic in a school in Sana'a, according to the Yemeni Foreign Ministry.

--Nov. 19: Abdulmutallab's father goes to the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, to express concern his son was in Yemen and had fallen under the influence of extremists.

--Nov. 20: The U.S. embassy sends a so-called ''VISAS VIPER'' cable with the information that Abdulmutallab's father had provided. The cable is sent to all U.S. diplomatic missions and the State Department in Washington, where it was also shared with the interagency National Counterterrorism Center for review.

--Nov. 20, 2009, Abdulmutallab's name is entered into the National Counterterrorism Center's Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database based on information provided by his father.

--Dec. 16: Abdulmutallab's round-trip plane ticket is purchased in Accra, Ghana, for $2,831 in cash, presumably by Abdulmutallab himself, according to Nigerian officials.

--Dec. 17: Obama Administration refuses first air strike request by Yemeni Government.

--Dec. 24: Abdulmutallab re-enters Nigeria for only one day to board a flight from Lagos to Detroit, via Amsterdam.

--Dec. 24: Obama Administration refuses second air strike request by Yemeni Government.

--Dec. 25: Abdulmutallab tries to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approaches Detroit. The plane lands safely and he is taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., for treatment of burns.

--Dec. 27: Abdulmutallab is transferred to a federal prison in Michigan.

--Dec. 28: Yemeni Al-Queda claims responsibility for the attempted bombing.

What's wrong with this picture?

1. It's a RW dream: Stuff up after stuff up then Obama had actionable intelligence on Al-Queda in Yemen and refused to act.

2. It gives the lie to the Al-Queda statement the bombing was in reconciliation for the US missile strikes. By November 17 he was gone with his explosive underpants. Then he 'just decided' to use them on a flight to the US to deliver some special Christmas Cheer? BS.

3. Isolationists say Yemen is the the midst of a tribal war that should be left alone. Gee. This would have gone down well with the low information voters:

Al Qaeda's Yemeni wing claims Detroit attack

The Al Qaeda statement called on Yemen's powerful tribes to "tackle head-on this campaign by the Crusaders and their agents... by striking their military bases, the intelligence stations concealed in their embassies, and their naval vessels operating in the waters off the Arabian peninsula."

But Yemen vowed on Monday it would not become a new refuge for Al Qaeda like Afghanistan, even as the jihadists urged new attacks against Western targets in the strategic Gulf region.

"Yemen is a land of peace and security, and will never be a refuge for these terrorist murderers and drug traffickers," the defence ministry newspaper quoted a senior security official as saying.

"Our mountains will never be a new Tora Bora for them," the official added, referring to the Afghan hideout where US-backed Afghan opposition forces came close to capturing or killing Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in December 2001.

"We will hunt them down until we have rooted out their terrorism and cleansed Yemeni soil of their satanic crimes," the newspaper's 26Sep.net site quoted the official as saying.

He promised "more operations against the terrorists and their hideouts" like those of December 17 and 24, when Yemen's air force launched deadly strikes against suspected jihadist targets...

Yemen is Bin Laden's ancestral homeland. In the most spectacular attack by the jihadists in the country so far, Al Qaeda suicide bombers killed 17 US sailors on the destroyer USS Cole in the southern port of Aden in October 2000. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/29/2781845.htm?section=world

BUT The United States should refuse further requests by the Yemeni Government. Innocent people will die. Indeed, unlike 300 in a plane and another 2,000 below. They funded the Imperial War Machine. Guilty.