Word: attack
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Passengers later said there was something curious about the spare young man who had tried to bring down their plane: he was silent throughout the attack. He didn't panic. He didn't yell any last-second religious slogans. He was calm and methodical as he set himself on fire. It was as though he had been trained...
...story of Flight 253 exposed a raft of glaring flaws in the global aviation-security network. Almost all are well known to aviation experts. Yet what President Obama eventually called a "systemic failure" caught his Administration flat-footed for the first 72 hours after the attack, as officials initially tried to play down the weaknesses of the web Abdulmutallab slipped through. More than eight years after 9/11 and 21 years after Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in midair over Scotland, the attempted Christmas bombing revealed that the array of protective measures put in place around the world still...
...attack reverberated beyond airport security lines, though those have already become longer and more complicated. The airline scare represented the second time in the past 12 months that purported Islamic terrorists have tried to launch a strike on American soil - and may be the first time that such an assault was directed from Yemen. That's a reminder that the struggle against jihadism is not confined to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where U.S. forces are now concentrated. In its provenance and near catastrophic outcome, the story of Flight 253 is a reminder that the war on terrorism is far from over...
...terrorists, it is obvious that al-Qaeda has set up franchises to wage offensive war against the U.S. in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Yemen, which has vast tracts of lawless countryside, has been harboring - and nurturing - terrorists for years. It is the site of the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors, as well as the stomping ground of Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric and cyber-pen pal of Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood, Texas, shooter who killed 13 people in November. Abdulmutallab visited Yemen at least twice, most recently...
...Downplaying the threat doesn't help Though Obama learned of it while vacationing in Hawaii soon after the attack was foiled, it took him more than 72 hours to make a live, on-camera comment about the near tragedy. (There is some evidence that Democratic partisans were privately pleading with the White House to say something after 24 hours.) Obama's cause was not helped by the comments of his Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano, who announced on Sunday, "Once the incident occurred, the system worked." Say what? Napolitano has eschewed the word terrorism for "man-caused disasters," explaining...