Snakes (I mean bombs) on a plane

I once again have access to an internet connection after my short little road trip down to Arizona. Not sure how long it will last so after this my next update may not be until the weekend when I can leech off my parents' connection.

So anyway, I'm going to fall back on a topic that's a couple of weeks old. I find the recent attempt to set off bombs on FEDEX and UPS planes rather interesting. It's actually a fairly good plan assuming the companies don't screen the packages for explosives, which I wonder why they wouldn't. Set the explosives off with the a cell phone and if it's timed right you have a plan destroyed mid-flight. Even if the plane is on the ground that's still a powerful image.

Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the attacks and has also stated they plan on continuing attacks targeting the U.S. economy.

All this makes perfect sense to a terrorist organization. What I don't understand is why AQAP? AQAP fled Saudi Arabia to Yemen and has been under pressure from a combination of the Saudi and Yemenese security forces. If I were to guess, AQAP was ordered by Osama Bin Laden or some other high level Al Qaida leader to conduct these attacks in order to help recruit new members as well as take some pressure off Al Qaida prime (my own name, has a better ring to it than Al Qaida Was In Afghanistan But Is Now In Pakistan).

Al Qaida prime, while not exactly on the run in Pakistan, can't exactly expand and is forced to use affiliate organizations to attempt attacks. Al Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb appears to be focused on gathering resources such as money and weapons and may not be currently capable of conducting attacks such as bombing airplanes...or may just have other priorities like expanding its influence in Africa.

Why hasn't any Al Qaida affiliate attempted an attack from Europe or central Asia? Was AQAP the only group who had the resources or ability to conduct these attacks? That doesn't seem to make sense since the attacks only really require some explosives, some cell phones, and American planes. Perhaps there are not any regular flights of American package transportation planes in central western Africa or central Asia.

This falls right along with the overall plan of Al Qaida: drag the west (U.S.) into guerrilla warfare that saps the willpower and morale of the military and population, disrupt the economy of the west, expand influence in Africa and Asia, remove the goverments of those countries Al Qaida has influence in, establish a caliphate, and then take down the West. Simple.