Nuclear power, terrorism, and Obama's order to target Anwar al-Awlaki

References:
Detained Al-Qaeda Suspect Worked at U.S. Nuclear Plants

A round of arrests this month targeting suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen netted a U.S. citizen who had been employed by contractors at five East Coast nuclear power sites from 2002 to 2008, the Associated Press reported Friday (see GSN, Jan. 8).
Sharif Mobley, 26, provided labor at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland; the Salem and Hope Creek complex in New Jersey; and the Peach Bottom, Limerick and Three Mile Island plants in Pennsylvania.
Mobley handled relatively low-level operations at the New Jersey site with hundreds of other contract workers, according to PSEG Nuclear. Records of his tenure at the complex contained no references to rule violations or suspicious incidents, said Mike Drewniak, a spokesman for New Jersey Governor Christopher Christie.
Such laborers seldom deal with information that could pose a threat in the wrong hands, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicated. Investigators, though, were looking into the possibility that he obtained sensitive knowledge in his work that could aid violent extremists...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7089899.ece
April 7, 2010
Obama targets US citizen for 'kill or capture'

The Obama Administration has authorised the targeted killing of an American citizen in what is believed to be an unprecedented move in the War against Terror.
According to US media reports, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been linked to last November's attack on Fort Hood, Texas, and the failed Christmas day airline bomb plot, has been approved for capture or killing.
Mr Awlaki, who is in hiding in Yemen, is understood to have moved from encouraging attacks on the United States to participating in them directly, The New York Times reports.
He has been directly linked to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and to Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up a Detroit bound plane with a bomb in his underwear on Christmas Day...

“The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words,” said an American official, who was not named. “He’s gotten involved in plots.”...

Mr Awlaki was born in New Mexico of Yemeni descent. ...

On Tuesday, Jane Harman, the chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security described Mr Awlaki as: “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist Number One in terms of threat against us.”


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/13/AR2010031301532.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Colorado woman linked to Swedish murder plot, 'JihadJane'

I included this to demonstrate that the potential actors in a plot to target nuclear power plants need not fit the normal "terrorist profile". It is interesting that this article also saw a connection to Mobley.

Only the Mobley stories have anything to do with nuclear energy. It seems he was a janitor at some reactor construction sites, and he was in the USA fleeing from Yemeni justice.

The other two suspects are not at all involved. You appear to have used them to pad out a tissue-thin case of non-existent nuclear terrorism.

You are again desperately trying to indict Mobley for nuclear terrorism, in spite of the fact that the investigators can't even say so. You have no evidence; no one does.

In the 1960s, my Dad worked at a Nike missile base. The Nike program was supposed to be able to intercept incoming nuclear missiles. Small nuclear warheads were used in one of the Nike series. My Dad took me and my brothers to the base on Family Day. Does that now mean I'm a nuclear terrorist?

About Sharif Mobley, the absolutely-real-for-sure-certain nuclear terrorist:

This is some pretty audacious fear-mongering. I don't think most people would consider that to be a good thing.

If nuclear energy is so self-evidently bad, why do you have to argue on the borderline of deceit? It just doesn't make any sense.

--d!

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."

--d!

We have no idea what Mobley was trying to accomplish with his activities at those plants, but what we do know is that he is a very dangerous individual (he killed one guard and wounded another attempting to escape) and that he is a directly connected to Anwar al-Awlaki.


Mobley was detained in early March 2010 in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, one of 11 suspected al-Qaeda militants.
Following his arrest, he was transferred to the Republican Hospital and treated for a week, while he befriended the guards assigned to him asking them to teach him Arabic. Mobley fooled his two guards into unshackling him by asking to join them for prayers, then attempted to escape and shot them, seriously wounding one and killing the other.

One senior official said Mobley’s targeting indicates he is highly trained in the use of firearms and criticized the negligence of the guards.

Mobley’s capture is the latest in a string of Yemeni counterterrorism efforts aimed at disrupting al-Qaida. Mobley was in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda former imam now based in Yemen who was also in contact with three of the September 11 attacks hijackers, Christmas Day Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan.
http://njtoday.net/2010/03/14/15633/


I would also be interested in how you came to believe that Mobley was "in the US fleeing Yemeni justice" since he is a native US citizen who was arrested in Yemen as a suspected AlQ member, not because of previous encounters with the law there.


N.J. Terror Suspect Sharif Mobley Tied to Radical Yemeni Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki
"Mobley studied at Dar al-Hadith Dammaj institute in Saada, a well-known Salafist school in Yemen's northern province, which was decried as a "known terrorist training center" during tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

"Reports say that between 3,000 and 5,000 foreign students live and study there," said Abdul-Salam al-Korary, a local journalist who has covered Yemen for several decades. "It is a very radical school."

Abubaker Abdulla Al-Qirbi, Yemen's minister of foreign affairs, said foreign students have been under scrutiny since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian who had studied Arabic and trained with al-Qaida in Yemen, attempted to ignite explosives in his underwear on an airline landing in Detroit on Christmas Day."
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PULITZER/5e6ef52ef73572b951ad29f819156d29.htm

So a young and stupid janitor at a nuclear plant killed Guard in Yemen by grabbing his gun and somehow that makes him a threat to reactor safety.

Lots of criminals attempt to kill people to avoid arrest and confinement for their crimes.

TERRA TERRA TERRA

Papa Bush would be so proud to see this "Ebil Muslims are out to killzz us" drivel on DU of all places.

This move by Obama is an extremely unusual one. Since al-Awlaki is a US citizen, there must have been something that prompted him to take this action at this time.

The most reasonable interpretation is that it is related to the capture of Mobley 26 days ago.

I refer you to the comments quoted in post #4.