The Fizzle -- it didn't, before
I'm very pleased that the New York City car bomb did not go off, and that they've apparently made one arrest so far. The Muslim Brotherhood is, unfortunately, often better at bomb-making than this.
In 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and others were apparently not very good at making bombs. Nichols flew to the Philippines multiple times, to the city where al Qaida's bomb-makers were active. His wife was from the Philippines, but he traveled there without her, and nearly a hundred phonecalls in the months before the Oklahoma City bombing. As Richard Clarke (head of counter-terrorism for Clinton and Bush) put it in his book Against All Enemies:Could the al-Qa'ida explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for the US government? ... We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned.
Do I trust Mr. Clarke? No. But there is a lot more to this story.
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In 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and others were apparently not very good at making bombs. Nichols flew to the Philippines multiple times, to the city where al Qaida's bomb-makers were active. His wife was from the Philippines, but he traveled there without her, and nearly a hundred phonecalls in the months before the Oklahoma City bombing. As Richard Clarke (head of counter-terrorism for Clinton and Bush) put it in his book Against All Enemies:Could the al-Qa'ida explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for the US government? ... We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned.
Do I trust Mr. Clarke? No. But there is a lot more to this story.
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