Am I missing something here about the big terrorist link to Al-Quaida with the would-be Detroit bomber?
Granted, I haven't follwed it as closely as most Republicans, but I do see today that the substance the suspect used was PETN. To quote the Canadian Press:
The chemical - PETN - is small, powerful and appealing to terrorists.... PETN was widely used in the plastic explosives terrorists used to blow up airplanes in the 1970s and 1980s.
But it doesn't ignite with a flame, which is what the suspect created.
(New York Times)...one characteristic of PETN is that it does not easily detonate.... Dropping it or setting it on fire will not typically detonate it, explosive experts said.
So I have to ask, since this substance has been around since shortly after World War I, and Al-Quaida likes to blow things up, wouldn't they know exactly how to do it?
Like the fact that it needed a detonator to blow up?
Again, the New York Times
Usually, a shock wave from a blasting cap or an exploding wire detonator is needed to set off PETN. Mr. Abdulmutallab was reported to have used a syringe to try to inject a liquid into the explosive.
"It sounds like he was trying to cause a chemical reaction that would initiate it, and that didn’t work out so well," said Jimmie C. Oxley, an explosives expert and professor of chemistry at the University of Rhode Island.
Oxley goes onto say it's "conceivable" that the subtance in the syringe might have been sufficient to set off the PETN. He could think of how it might work.
Still, doesn't it seem like if you're Al-Quaida, and your business is blowing things up, and you go to all the trouble of recruiting someone willing to kill himself by taking down an airplane, that you'd make for damned sure that the explosive was going to work?
Like... by practicing blowing things up a few times, before you go to the trouble of smuggling it onto a plane with a man willing to die to make it work? Because I would think those opportunities don't come along that often. You'd need to make the most of them.
Did anyone in the media bother to ask these questions? I mean... do we really believe Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was in tight with Al-Quaida? And they didn't know how to make this commonly used, long-time available substance explode?