After reading countless news articles and think tank reports on al Qaida Arab Peninsula (AQAP), its leaders, its presence in Yemen and merger with the Saudi al Qaida's, I think this November 2009 analysis by the Human Security Group Project is most on target.

AQAP can't survive in Yemen without the support of the tribes. Lots of other groups have been treating the rebel insurgents and AQAP as one. This group doesn't and its report presents strategies to keep the rebels and tribes from joining up with AQAP.

Western policy should focus on degrading AQAP’s leadership and breaking this developing tribal nexus in a timely fashion without becoming too overtly involved.

U.S. threats to go after al Qaida are unlikely to do the trick. The economic and other problems in Yemen must also be addressed -- by them. [More...]

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab' travel route:

Mr Abdulmutallab's route began in Yemen, from where he travelled to Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria. On 24 December, he flew from Lagos to Amsterdam, where he boarded the flight to Detroit.

He bought the ticket to Detroit on Dec. 16 in Ghana. So how could the plot have been retaliation for U.S. participation in Yemen's Dec 17 and 23 attacks on al Qaida as the group claims? They hadn't happened yet. Here's a link to the released statement in Arabic, with photos of Abdulmutallab and an airliner.

His roommate told the Yemen paper Abdulmutallab was in Yemen from July to October. The Yemen Government says he was there from early August to early December.

Did he train in Ethiopia or Ghana? Did he just stop in Nigeria to get the underwear? Where was the device actually made? Lots of questions still.

In the theatre of the absurd:

Anti-child abuse campaigners are demanding that rock star Pete Townshend be treated as a sex offender when he plays at next year's Superbowl concert in America. They want the guitarist of The Who to provide DNA samples and fingerprints and to pose for a police mug shot before being allowed to perform during the half-time show of America's biggest sporting event.

Townshend was never prosecuted after his 2003 arrest for accessing child p*rn on his home computer. He agreed to be placed on the sex offender registry for five years but insisted he wasn't guilty and had been doing research.

The group is Protect Our Children. Who will protect the rest of us from them?

It's been known for a long time that Said Ali al Shihri, believed to be al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) second-in-command was released from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia in November 2007. Same for the second Guantanamo detainee Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, whose name is now Abu-al-Harith Muhammad al-Awfi. In other words, this ABC news story is not news.

Both were featured in the January, 2009 video announcing the formation of AQAP contained in Sada al-Malahim, (Arabic for “The Echo of Battle”), the group's online magazine. In January, 2009, the Stratford Group, had this long article on AQAP, the two released Gitmo detainees and why the Saudi's "rehabilitation" efforts to deprogram and reprogram them may have failed. [More...]

Update: TMZ has obtained a copy (which it posts here) of the affidavit for Sheen's arrest and it's got some ugly allegations.

The Aspen Police Department has released the 911 call placed by Charlie Sheen's wife on Christmas morning in which she alleges he had a knife. You can listen here.

She tells the operator the knife was a pocket-type knife he kept in his back pocket. She says he's in the bathroom, she's in the kitchen, her family is present, and then says he was trying to get out of the house but hasn't left. Then the police arrived. She sounds upset (and sniffley) and keeps repeating "I have to file this report." As has previously been reported, the call was at 8:34 a.m. and her BAC was .13 while his was .04, and she later recanted her story about the knife.

My detailed first post on Friday suggesting some kind of weapon was involved, based on the specific charges he was arrested on, is here. The DA is not expected to decide whether to file charges until February 8, Sheen's next court appearance. [More...]

Update: Here's a Nov. 2009 report on AQAP and Yemen.

Al Qaida-Arabian Peninsula (a merged group of Saudi and Yemeni al-Qaida cells I described here) has released a statement claiming the explosive device carried by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was manufactured by its members. It says the act was in retaliation for a U.S. operation against the group in Yemen.

Via Al-Jazeera: the group says "a technical fault prevented it from successfully detonating."

The U.S. assisted Yemen in carrying out two airstrikes against AQ-AP members this month, one on Dec. 23 and the other on Dec. 17. It's still not known who was killed in those attacks, but it is believed the group's top leaders were either not there or survived.

Abdulmutallab snuck into Nigeria the day before boarding the Detroit flight in Amsterdam. It's not clear when he last was in Yemen, although his roomate has told a Yemeni paper he arrived in July and left in October. [More...]

The FBI has a list of its top ten terror cases of the year. It was written before this weekend's Detroit plane incident, so I'd say the two biggest are David Headley and Najibullah Zazi. Tomorrow it will list its biggest fraud and corruption cases.

CBS posts its list of top 20 crime cases of the year, most I've never heard of. No mention of Bernie Madoff or Phil Spector's murder conviction. It does get Ft. Hood, Roman Polanski, the murder of Dr. George Tiller and Amanda Knox. It also includes the guy who allegedly tried to extort money from David Letterman.

And what about the Somali pirate? Plaxico Burress? Bernie Kerik? Any others you can think of?

Via Jonathan Singer, Politico reports:

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize. Republicans have cast votes against the key TSA funding measure that the 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security contained, which included funding for the TSA, including for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures. In the June 24 vote in the House, leading Republicans including John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan voted against the bill [. . .]

Objectively pro-terrorist. (This is snark from me. When Republicans, Joe Lieberman and the Washington Post Editorial Page Editor said it about Democrats, they were not joking. They were doing their best Joe McCarthy imitations.)

Speaking for me only

via BarbinMd, Spencer Ackerman asks a good question:

So Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged would-be bomber of Northwest Airlines flight 253, is being detained and questioned in a federal prison in Michigan. [. . .] If convicted, he’ll be imprisoned in a federal prison. [. . .] Just like the one that Republican politicians said would leave American communities vulnerable if Guantanamo detainees were sent there. [. . . N]ow here’s a real live aspiring terrorist [. . .] going to a real live federal prison on actual American soil and … nothing [from the GOP]. It’s almost like these guys are hypocrites who don’t think through what they say before they find a bank of cameras.

NYTimes:

When a prominent Nigerian banker and former government official phoned the American Embassy in Abuja in October with a warning that his son had developed radical views, had disappeared and might have traveled to Yemen, embassy officials did not revoke the young man’s visa to enter the United States, which was good until June 2010.

When a father calls to warn about his son, that seems to me to be cause for an investigation of the son. To incompetent bureaucrats, it leads to a chance to punch hippies:

I think its fair to say that at least the Democrats have been campaigning with a dream of having 60 for a very long time. And the American people gave them a gift, and basically they're squandering it. Any organization needs to decide how it wants to hold itself accountable. But to me there's a question of what are the expectations amongst Democrats in terms of governing? What's the social contract? -- Andy Stern, SEIU

To their credit, the Village Blogs have been writing a lot about the problems with the filibuster (see, e.g., Ezra Klein.) Two questions arise - (1) is eliminating the filibuster a good idea?; (2) is there a chance in hell of eliminating it? My answers are (1) I am for eliminating the filibuster for legislative measures and for Executive Branch appointments but decidedly against elimination of the filibuster for Judicial Branch appointments. Indeed, the filibuster is not used at all for Supreme Court nominees and it should be. And (2) there is not a chance in hell of eliminating the filibuster. There will be a single payer health care system first. Why? Because the filibuster empowers individual Senators in ways that no other procedural device provides. Do Presidents hand back power? Neither do Senators. More . . .

As Manuel Zelaya and his supporters, both in Honduras and elsewhere, bitterly learned, the American retreat from engagement in Latin America is not all it was cracked up to be for the Chavistas and their supporters. Jorge Castaneda, the longtime professor of Latin American affairs and one time Mexican foreign minister, calls for the Yanquis to come back:

For the first time in centuries, the United States doesn’t seem to care much what happens in Latin America. [. . .] While the region has reason to cheer this turn in U.S. policy, it simply can’t afford for the United States to disappear. On matters such as immigration, free trade, and the battle against corruption, almost nothing can be done without U.S. cooperation or leadership. [. . .] Economic development in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America is hardly conceivable, let alone possible, without a significant U.S. contribution, both monetary and conceptual. Building up infrastructure, stabilizing currencies, and establishing effective and transparent antitrust institutions are tasks that countries cannot carry out alone, given their integration with the U.S. economy.

More . . .