Sinai Terror Attack Could Easily Have Been in Minneapolis - Daniel John Sobieski

by Daniel John Sobieski

We need a president who doesn't think the war on terror is won or over, or that it doesn't matter here what happens over there.

Before the Russian Airbus 321 was blown apart 30,000 feet over the Sinai by what a growing consensus of intelligence experts believe to be a bomb planted by a passenger or airport worker, a man who would later fight and die for the Islamic State (IS) worked at the Minneapolis airport with security clearance and access to the tarmac and aircraft.

It could have happened here. It may yet. As Investor’s Business Daily reported in September, 2014:

Fox affiliate KMSP-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul has reported the case of Abdirahmaan Muhumed, who, before he went to Syria to fight and die for IS, worked at Delta Global Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines. His job was to clean aircraft, and he had a security clearance that gave him unfettered access to the tarmac and passenger jets….
The New York Daily News reports that the 29-year-old Muhumed died in the same battle as 33-year-old Douglas McCain, another Minnesotan recruited by IS. Muhumed and McCain were said to be friends in high school, with Muhumed becoming politically active in the Twin Cities Somali community. He was one of at least 16 Minnesotans, according to Reuters, who have gone overseas to fight and train with IS.

So we have already had one airport worker with Islamic State sympathies who instead of fighting and dying over there could have easily become one of the “lone wolves” the Islamic State constantly recruits through videos, statements, and social media.

The documented security failures of the TSA do not reassure us that American security is any better that the security at Sharm el-Sheikh. As ABC News reported in June:

An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.
The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system.
According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.
In one test an undercover agent was stopped after setting off an alarm at a magnetometer, but TSA screeners failed to detect a fake explosive device that was taped to his back during a follow-on pat down.

We can safely say that the Islamic State, while ruthless and barbaric, is not stupid. And we face the very real possibility that al-Qaida, which the pundits told us were repelled by Islamic State tactics, may soon be working in tandem with it, if it hasn’t been already. The Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State and the Sinai bombing took place on Muslim Brotherhood turf where Egypt is battling the Islamic State in the Sinai. As the International Business Times reported in September:

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called on the group's militants to cooperate with Islamic State (IS) in fighting the US-led coalition in Syria and Iraq, though refused to endorse the group's self-proclaimed caliphate….
"Despite the big mistakes [of IS], if I were in Iraq or Syria I would co-operate with them in killing the crusaders and secularists and Shi'ites even though I don't recognize the legitimacy of their state, because the matter is bigger than that," said the Egyptian doctor, who took control of the jihadist group after Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.

So the enemy of my enemy can be my friend, which begs the question, was it in the Sinai? Was it really a coincidence that a Russian airliner was brought down shortly after Moscow starting a bombing campaign in Syria to prop up the Assad regime?

Incredibly, the Obama administration wants to add to the Islamic State sympathizers that are already here and possibly already working at our airports by importing 10,000 Syrian refugees which the head of the FBI, who says there are active terror investigations in all 50 states,  admits cannot be properly vetted. If there are not among their number Islamic State agents ready to exploit our generosity, then certainly there are young and bitter Arab males vulnerable to Islamic State recruiting. As the Daily Caller notes:

FBI director James Comey said during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Wednesday that the federal government does not have the ability to conduct thorough background checks on all of the 10,000 Syrian refugees that the Obama administration says will be allowed to come to the U.S.
“We can only query against that which we have collected,” Comey said in response to a line of questioning from Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson .
“And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.”

What we need is a president who doesn’t think the war on terror is won or over and thinks that it doesn’t matter here what happens over there. They are still trying to kill us. They are learning how to work together And they have already worked at our airports.


Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/sinai_terror_attack_could_easily_have_been_in_minneapolis.html

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