Apparently accused Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad is ‘singing like a bird,’ to U.S. law enforcement officials, claiming he wanted to kill Americans in retaliation for drone attacks in Pakistan and because he hated George Bush.

But what if it’s all a ruse? What if he was just part of a dry run to figure out how to do a more serious attack later? And what if he was supposed to die in the blast, but chickened out at the last minute? What if he’s been making it up ever since?

Think about it – he claims to have gone to bomb school in Waziristan.

But we know that so far, those bomb school grads have all been suicide bombers. He’s nobody special — it’s unlikely his handlers would have given him an exemption. They would have considered him expendable.

That’s why there was no elaborate plan to get him away after he fled the van.

It appears it took Shahzad two days to figure out an escape plan – fly Emirates Air to Dubai, the major airline hub in the Middle East, and change planes for Pakistan. He made the reservation on the way to the airport, paid cash, used his own passport, and had no luggage. If he was supposed to survive the blast, he would have preplanned an escape route, complete with fake passport, and scrupulous avoidance of the one place they knew we’d look – international flights to the Middle East.

Why a dry run? To flush us out, to determine what surveillance we had in place – cameras, license plate readers, undercover cops. To see how difficult it would be for a van filled with explosives to get to Times Square and stay there long enough to detonate. To see what our response was – how would law enforcement react and the public would react. To see how easy it was for an American citizen to evade detection beforehand.

What have they learned? That an attack on Times Square would be comparatively easy. That the surveillance program in place in Lower Manhattan isn’t yet in place in Midtown Manhattan. That the only thing that stood between a foiled attack and a fireball in Times Square was a bungling bomber and an alert bystander. And that Americans, once again, got lucky.

And then there’s this question: are they sitting back in their caves in Waziristan taking odds on when America’s luck runs out?

Topic: The Obama administration and our homeland security.

TRANSCRIPT

This is DEFCON 3 by KT and I’m KT McFarland.
Just when you thought things were going badly on the homeland security front, we get a report card from a Congressional Commission on how prepared we are for a biological attack. The grade? F.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who tried to get flu shots this year. Last fall we were told there weren’t enough regular flu shots available because the industry was focused on making swine flu shots. But they goofed that one too – the swine flu vaccine wasn’t widely available until after swine flu had run its course. In the end the swine flu wasn’t as lethal as scientists predicted. That’s lucky since over 50 million people were infected – one out of six Americans.
But counting on good luck is no way to protect the American people from biological or chemical attack. Anymore than counting on airline passengers to protect us from suicide bombers, as happened with the when a young Nigerian tried to blow up himself and everyone else on his Detroit bound flight.
The Christmas Day bomber? – we failed to connect the dots. The Fort Hood Shooter? We failed to connect the dots. In our zeal to protect ourselves after September 11 we threw money at the problem and created huge, new government agencies – bloated, bureaucratic, and bungling. Our intelligence and counter terrorism agencies are more like the lumbering Michelin tire man than a swift, innovative, fast moving hero on 24.
Eight years after the anthrax attacks and we still don’t have a rapid-response capability for dealing with disease outbreaks from bioterrorism. Eight years after Sept 11 and suicide bombers are still getting on airplanes. Who’s dropped the ball? Everybody. This isn’t partisan – it’s not a Republican or a Democrat foul-up. It’s a bureaucratic foul-up. And it’s happening more and more these days. And it’s got to change.
That’s DEFCON 3 by KT and i’m KT MCFarland.