Republican doubts Taliban link to New York plot

[Robb]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - The senior Republican on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee cast doubt on Tuesday on the Obama administration's assertions that the Pakistani Taliban orchestrated the attempted car bombing in New York on May 1.

Senator Kit Bond, after a briefing by U.S. counterterrorism and law enforcement officials, said it was not confirmed the accused bomber -- Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan -- was working for the Islamist group.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Sunday evidence showed the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) helped direct the failed attack in New York's teeming Times Square and likely assisted in financing it.

"I am not convinced by the information that I've seen so far that there was adequate, confirmable intelligence to corroborate the statements that were made on Sunday television shows," Bond told reporters after the classified briefing.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64A6L120100512

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This should be a toughie for a few on here. Is Obama banging the warmonger fear drum, and Bond is the sensible voice of restraint? :rofl:

[FreakinDJ]

1. Or are RATpubliCONs deliberately down-playing the connection

It would give them the 1-upmenship in saying Obama never stopped an attack on US soil.


Given the RATpubliCON's track record on distorting the truth.....

[sinkingfeeling]

2. It's just not the 'Obama administration' that has said it. Here's what the NYPD had to say:

When Faisal Shahzad set out from Connecticut for his Pakistani homeland late last year, he had no thought of planting a car bomb in Times Square. Instead, a top New York Police intelligence analyst says, Shahzad’s plan was to join the insurgents fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. But according to Deputy Inspector John Nicholson of the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, the naturalized U.S. citizen apparently met up in the Waziristan tribal region with militants with militants who persuaded him to turn back and launch an attach inside America.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/05/11/times-square-suspect-originally-wanted-to-fight-americans-in-south-asia.aspx

[elmerdem]

3. I wish he would have

been this concerned when Dick Cheney was on the Sunday television shows.

[Viking12]

4. just becasue the Obama administration is overplaying this incident

does not make Bond the 'voice of reason'. Bond is merely playing politics to try to discredit the administration; he could care less about the accuracy of the intelligence.