We Interrupt this Peaceful Christmas Day With a Terrorism Attempt

Looks like this could have been very, very bad:

A Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria, who said he was acting on al-Qaida’s instructions, tried to blow up the plane today as it was landing in Detroit, law enforcement and national security officials said.

A senior U.S. counterterror official says a passenger aboard a Delta Air Lines flight in Detroit was planning to blow up the plane but the explosive device failed, the Associated Press reported today.

Passengers subdued the man and may have prevented him from detonating the explosives, the officials said.

A White House official said the incident was an attempted act of terrorism.

Federal officials imposed stricter screening measures after the incident.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., ranking GOP member of the House Homeland Security Committee, identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit. There were 278 passengers aboard the Airbus 330.

There was nothing out of the ordinary until the flight was on final approach to Detroit, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory.

That is when the pilot declared an emergency and landed without incident shortly thereafter, Cory said in an e-mail message. The plane landed at 11:51 a.m.

One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

The counterterror official said the passenger was being questioned this evening.

The passenger created a disturbance by lighting what was reported to be firecrackers -- or perhaps a "powdery substance" -- onboard the flight, injuring himself and several other passengers, according to Delta Airlines.

When Richard Reid decided to try and light a shoe bomb a few years ago the FAA started making us all take off our shoes when going through security. I wonder what new intrusion on our privacy this incident will cause?

Couldn't we just start profiling people from countries with large Muslim populations instead? I'm no detective, but there does seem to be a pattern to these attacks.