Pakistani Taliban Behind Times Square Attack
Read Time:1 Minute, 51 Second
According to The New York Times the Pakistani Taliban is behind the attempt to blow up a car bomb in Times Square. Here is the story:
More firmly and publicly than before, senior officials of the Obama administration on Sunday blamed the failed attempt to blow up a bomb in Times Square on the Pakistani Taliban, an accusation that should increase pressure on the Pakistan military to attack the organization in its bastions in the lawless tribal region of North Waziristan.
Attorney General Eric Holder, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said the Taliban in Pakistan “directed this plot and may have also financed it.” The Pakistani Taliban, he said, was “intimately involved” in the attempt on May 1 by Faisal Shahzad, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, to blow up gasoline and propane tanks secreted inside a Nissan Pathfinder parked on West 45th Street just yards from the heart of Times Square.
John Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, echoed Mr. Holder’s statements Sunday morning, saying that it appeared that Mr. Shahzad, a resident of Bridgeport, Conn., who spent five months in Pakistan until February, was working for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The TTP is believed by some military intelligence officials to have joined forces with Al Qaeda and may be hiding some of its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden, who was the motivating force behind the 9/11 attack.
Until now, American officials have speculated that the Pakistan Taliban may have trained Mr. Shahzad during his visit to Pakistan, but Sunday’s statements were their most definitive about the Taliban’s role.
The conclusion that the Pakistani Taliban is behind the attempted bombing “underscores the serious threat that we face from a very determined enemy,” Mr. Brennan said on CNN’s ”State of the Union.”
Mr. Shahzad, who was arrested at Kennedy International Airport aboard an Emirates Airlines airplane bound for Dubai little more than two days after the bomb was discovered, soon told police that he trained in Waziristan, the main base for the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda. Neither Mr. Holder nor Mr. Brennan indicated what new information led them to the firmer conclusions about the role of the Pakistani Taliban.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
Shahzad’s method seems to be a low-tech version of what US troops stationed at Nellis AFB do with their drone attacks.
Shahzad parked an SUV loaded with explosives then walked away, leaving it in a place where he might conceivably kill a war-supporter but undoubtedly would kill civilians.
Troops in Nellis stop in after their gym workout and sip diet coke while they launch drone attacks which might conceivably kill someone who bears a grudge against the US but generally kills civilians. Then they walk away.
Americans consider the troops at Nellis heros and Shahzad a terrorist. Pakistanis may consider Shahzad a hero and the troops launching drone attacks terrorists. All depends upon where you were born.
Or on whose bombs are in range.