Below is the CNN transcript (received from CNN by e-mail, no link yet) of National Security Adviser John Brennan on its program State of the Union as to whether the Administration will continue to send Guantanamo detainees back to Yemen.

It seems to me he's confirming we're going to be holding some in indefinite custody without charges, probably at Illinois if that goes through. More will be slated for military trials.

As to those it decides on a case-by-case basis to send back to Yemen, "at the right time and the right pace and in the right way," I'm wondering whether he's signaling that the only ones who will be sent back are those the Yemenis agree to put in custody through their repatriation program. (See this Human Rights Watch report, No Direction Home, on how that's worked so far.) The complete transcript is below: [More...]

Crime news has been slow this week but should pick up tomorrow when the courts reopen, and I'll be getting back to those issues.

For those of you with things besides Yemen and AQAP on your mind, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

As al Qaida Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) continues to dominate the news, more news organizations are coming out with primers. Here's one from The New Republic.

A major point that needs to be made more is that this is an off-shoot of the central al Qaida associated with Osama bin Laden.

AQAP represents what many consider Yemen's second generation of Al Qaeda--and while the group may have ties to "Al Qaeda central," the organization appears to act independently. Counterterrorism officials believe AQAP has learned from its recent past and built an organization that can withstand the loss of its leadership. Savvy in delivering its message, the group even has its own magazine, Salah al Malahim (The Echo of Battle), which covers everything from biographies of suicide bombers to advice columns on how to become an Al Qaeda foot soldier.

[More...]

The U.S. and U.K. closed their embassies in Yemen due to threats by al Qaida Arabian Peninsula (AQAP.)

The embassy statement is here.

Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan told ABC's This Morning:

“I spoke with our ambassador in Sana, Steve Seche, early this morning and last night, looked at the intelligence that is available as far as the plans for al Qaeda to carry out attacks in Sana, possibly against our embassy, possibly against U.S. personnel,” Mr. Brennan said. “We decided it was the prudent thing to do to shut the embassy.”

[More...]

Experts are now questioning prior accounts of the August 28, 2009 failed IED assassination attempt by a suicide bomber on Saudi prince Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.

AQAP quickly claimed control of the attack. It was believed that the suicide bomber, Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, had hidden the bomb in his anal cavity, and that it was activated by remote control cell phone signals. Here's a pretty good Stratford account.

The video above, which shows a happy al-Asiri describing the attempt ahead of time, also contains the cell phone call that occurred during al-Asiri's meeting with the prince 14 seconds before the bomb went off (killing only al-Asiri), and explains the then widely-accepted version of how it went down. [More...]

It's not easy learning about events that have been going on for some time in another country. Here is a chronological account of al Qaida Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and other terror-related events in Yemen and Saudi Arabia I've compiled from the update section of the last ten issues of The Sentinel published this year. The Sentinel is the publication of The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. I'm mostly posting it as a reference point since I've been trying to get up to speed and want the information in one place, and the easiest way to do that is to post it.

The list includes events from from December, 2008 through November, 2009. [More...]

The war on terror is predominating the news. I suspect it will for the next several weeks.

For those not watching football or following Yemen, Somalia and the latest related developments, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Even though Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula, an off-shoot of the central al Qaeda took responsibility last week for the failed Detroit plane attack of Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, today was the first time that President Obama directly accused the group. In his radio address, he said:

"We know that [Mr Abdulmutallab] travelled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies," said Mr Obama, who is on holiday in Hawaii.

"It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaeda, and that this group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America."

Obama also discussed the U.S. planned response: [More...]

Orrin Hatch and Kenneth Blackwell lead the "intellectual" charge:

First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate. Congress's powers to tax and spend do not apply because the mandate neither taxes nor spends. The only other option is Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. [. . .] It is one thing, however, for Congress to regulate economic activity in which individuals choose to engage; it is another to require that individuals engage in such activity. That is not a difference in degree, but instead a difference in kind. It is a line that Congress has never crossed and the courts have never sanctioned.

Even if this were true (and it is not as the bill's enforcement mechanism is a tax on persons who do not purchase health insurance), Hatch's argument is faulty. While mandates applied to individuals is not an everyday occurence (the differentiation of participation in a federal pension and health insurance system (Medicare and Social Security) is not apparent to me), application of mandates to corporations is quite routine. Hatch would argue that businesses are "choosing to engage" in such activity, but it would be the only time ever Hatch will have made such a distinction. More . . .

The Big Ten had a banner day yesterday (for the Big Ten -- these things are relative - the Big Ten went 2-1. The SEC had a disappointing day - they also went 2-1.) Can Sparty keep it going today? They have the turmoil at Texas Tech in their favor. Tech fired coach Mike Leach this week amid charges of player abuse - charges Leach hotly denies. In any event, they play a game today. And Tech is an 8 point favorite over Michigan State. I like Sparty (-8).

Ole Miss, Arkansas and South Carolina carry the SEC banner today. I like Ark (-8) over East Carolina, Ole Miss (-3) over Oklahoma State and South Carolina (-3.5) over Connecticut. In the other game today, I'll take Northern Illinois (+7) over South Florida.

This is an Open Thread.

Former HSA Secretary Michael Chertoff has jumped into the fray over whether to use full body scanners with an op-ed in the Washington Post. He urges that Congress fund "a large-scale deployment of next-generation systems."

Most airport security checkpoints use metal detectors. Al-Qaeda has shown that it knows how to avoid detection by using an explosive device that contains little or no metal, such as PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, used by Abdulmutallab and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in 2001.

It will only be a matter of time before terrorists figured out how to avoid detection with these machines as well. One reason: The Government's publicly available list of which machines have been purchased for airport use. Each one carriesthe name of the company that makes them, and the company's website has all the particulars about the machine, including in some cases, what a particular machine doesn't screen. [More...]

From a NYTimes editorial:

[. . .] Either the National Counterterrorism Center didn’t get all of the information it was supposed to get — or it utterly failed to do its job, which is to correlate data so any pattern emerges. No doubt sorting through heaps of information and determining what is urgent or even worthy of follow-up is daunting. Still, it is incredible, and frightening, that the government cannot do at least as good a job at swiftly updating and correlating information as Google. Long before Mr. Abdulmutallab was allowed to board that flight to Detroit, some analyst should have punched “Nigerian, Abdulmutallab, Yemen, visa, plot” into the system. We are still waiting to find out whether Britain told Washington that it had revoked the suspect’s visa. Shouldn’t that have been on file?

We will reserve judgment about whether anyone should be fired for what President Obama has rightly called a “systemic failure.” [. . .] The United States cannot be enclosed in an impermeable bubble. But Mr. Abdulmutallab never should have been allowed to board that plane.

Can someone explain to me why this is wrong?

Speaking for me only