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"On Sunday, attorney general Eric Holder stated unequivocally that Faisal Shahzad, the alleged Times Square bomber, was acting on behalf of the Pakistani Taliban. If that's true, then the Taliban must be off their bomb-building game, since Shahzad makes Wile E. Coyote look like a demolitions expert. His ineptitude seems eerily similar to another suspected wanna-bomber, Umar Farouk \"Flaming Underpants\" Abdulmutallab. Let's compare!\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Faisal Shahzad\n\n Plot: Attempted to blow up the Viacom offices in Times Square using a poorly constructed bomb concealed in his car.\n\n Foiled by: Himself, when the bomb didn't detonate and investigators tracked him down within 53 hours, following clues Shahzad didn't even bother to cover. He also locked the keys to his getaway vehicle\u2014which he drove to Times Square the day prior in full view of security cameras\u2014in the bomb car. Oh, and those cameras later caught him fleeing the scene.\n\n Background: Pakistani by birth, but a naturalized American citizen. Well-educated former junior analyst.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab\n\n Plot: Attempted to blow up NWA Flight 253 using a poorly constructed bomb concealed in his underwear, which he changed into using the on-board lavatory.\n\n Foiled by: Himself, when the faulty bomb only succeeded in immolating his leg.\n\n Background: Nigerian. Well-educated son of one of the richest men in Africa.\n\nAside from mutual incompetence, the Boom Brothers have a lot in common. They are both well-off, educated, and Muslim. This is not unusual for suspected terrorists. Osama bin Laden, after all, is a well-educated, rich Saudi, even if he is\u2014to put it delicately\u2014more dangerous.\n\nYet Bin Laden has something these hacks didn't: actual combat experience. But fewer hardened bin Ladens are getting into the United States today, so terrorism is increasingly the province of poorly trained, poorly funded, and individually motivated agents. In the case of Shahzad, the connection to terrorist organizations/ is especially tenuous, no matter what United States law enforcement says. As former CIA operative and GQ contributor Robert Baer tells the Washington Post, \"The [Pakistani Taliban] knows how to make car bombs, set off explosions. So why didn't they teach him [better]? And why didn't they give him some scratch to pull this off?\"\n\nHolder argues that Shahzad was part of the Pakistani Taliban. Fine. That's plausible, and the intelligence community has uncovered interesting links between the plot and Hakimullah Mehsud, but it also furnishes a politically expedient narrative.\n\nI'm more inclined to trust David Petraeus, the closest thing to a competent hero in a war that has few, who said that Shahzad acted alone, an apparent contradiction between an authority in the field and investigators at home that hasn't yet been squared.\n\nWhile its tempting to link Shahzad and Abdulmutallab to a broader conspiracy against the United States, it's more likely that we've only witnessed the singular acts of people dumb enough to light their own pants on fire."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/america-is-under-attack-by-radical-morons>