But it appears that someone in Yemen was attempting to send letter bombs to the United States:
Security officials in Britain and Dubai intercepted parcel bombs being sent from Yemen to the United States in a “credible terrorist threat,” President Barack Obama said on Friday.
He said the parcels were bound for “two places of Jewish worship in Chicago.”
Suspicion fell on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, which took responsibility for a failed plot to blow up a U.S. passenger jet on Christmas Day in 2009.
“Initial examinations of those packages has determined that they do apparently contain explosive material,” Obama told reporters in a televised briefing, calling it “a credible terrorist threat against our country.”
The White House said earlier that “both of these packages originated from Yemen” and that Obama was notified of the threat on Thursday night.
This is clearly an attempt at electioneering, even in Yemen, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know of the election, but, unlike bin Laden’s statement just prior to the 2004 election, where he was clearly trying to throw the race to Bush, the intent here is unclear.
Some questions:
- Is this an attempt to favor Democrats or Republicans?
- Why were synagogues chosen?
- Did the perps expect to succeed of fail?
Damned if I know.