Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Flight 253, corroborating Nigerian would-be terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's statement that the group had trained him and supplied him with his explosive underwear. Discussing the Flight 253 incident, Sen. Joseph Lieberman told Fox News that the U.S. had already stepped up its military presence in Yemen before the attack, adding that a U.S. official told him that "if we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war." Would attacking Yemen make America safer? (Watch a CBS report about Yemen's al Qaeda presence)
We have to do something: Yemen has replaced Afghanistan as "the international jihadi's destination of choice from which to prepare, plot, and launch future terror attacks," says Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. And Yemen's weak government can't do much to stop them. Adulmutallab's emergence from the "Yemeni terrorist melting pot" confirms Western spies' "worst nightmares," and shows just how much of a threat we face from AQAP.
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