Here's where we should be sending terrorist wannabes

Maybe we could rechannel some of this drive to blow things up. I refer to the New York Times report on an exciting new option: "Explosives Summer Camp."

Students with a passion for all things explosive and proof of United States citizenship pay a $450 fee that covers food, lodging and incidentals like dynamite. In the course of a week, the 22 students at this session set off a wall of fire, blasted water out of a pond, blew up a tree stump and obliterated a watermelon. They set off explosive charges in the school’s mine and finished off the week by creating their own fireworks show for their parents.

“We try to give them an absolute smorgasbord of explosives,” said Paul Worsey, a professor in the department of mining engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, the only university in the country that offers an academic minor in explosives engineering. More than six billion pounds of explosives are used each year in this country by civilian commercial industry for things like mining and demolition.

And look parents, there really aren't enough explosives experts out there - not outside of Iraq, that is:

Dr. Worsey said he created the camp, now in its fourth year, to try to boost the ranks of the aging population of mining and explosives engineers.

Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said the number of graduates of engineering schools with training in explosives cannot keep up with the demand in the mining industry, the leading employer of explosives engineers, and the current population of engineers in the field is aging toward retirement.

So all you little explosives freaks out there, terrorism is not your only career option.

Be sure to link on the story and check out all the photos and multi-media stuff.

Meanwhile back in Waziristan....

Saturday's geography lesson about Waziristan came just in time for today's news. The New York Times is reporting that Al Qaeda is once again running terrorist training camps in this autonomous region of Pakistan.

The Times sources, described as "American analysts," say that the camps are being operated by Arab, Pakistani, and Afghan "militants" who report to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who serves as Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man. Bin Laden himself is not believed to be playing an active management role.

While these new camps are reportedly smaller and less capable than Al Qaeda's camps were back in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule, the Times sources say that "the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature."

The Bush administration is reportedly debating about what to do about these camps. A Pentagon faction, not surprisingly, is recommending a military strike but these "hawks" are being opposed by those who are worried about collateral damage - i.e., civilian casualties.

The State Department is supposedly cautioning that any American military action would likely undermind, as the Times underscores, "President Musharraf’s military-led government."

The "militants" reportedly found a safe refuge in North Waziristan last year, after "military leader" President Musharraf agreed to withdraw his, yes, military from the region in exchange for tribal leaders ceasing their support of cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. The tribal leaders have it would appear failed to live up to their end of the bargain.

Pakistani-trained terrorists were fingered by the director general of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who said in November that terrorist plots in Britain “often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan [and that] through those links, Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”

Two of the four bombers who carried out the July 2005 subway and bus bombings in London, the reader may remember, were noted to have traveled to Pakistan prior to the attack, as have other British terrorism suspects, according to various trial transcripts.

While most of the Pakistani-trained "militants" are believed to be headed for Afghanistan, some, maybe an increasing number, may be training to attack American forces in Iraq.

The Times points ot the evidence of Al Qaeda's "increased international capability" (to use its phrase) that has surfaced recently in the attacks that its new franchisee, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, the Algerian-based group, has been able to carry out in Algeria. These included last week's bombing in Algiers and the December attack on a bus carrying Halliburton contractors.

Weren't these attacks supposed to have been about Iraq?

The Washington Post reports that about a week before the 9/11 attacks, members of the Turkish cell who carried out the Istanbul bombings in November 2003 - the four nearly-simultaneous truck and car bomb explosions that killed 58 people and wounded 750 that targeted Jewish and British interests - met with bin Laden and obtained Al Qaeda's support and blessing for the attacks.

The organization wanted to "take action against American and Israeli targets and break their dominance over Islamic countries," a suspect in the bombings told Turkish authorities. As the Post points out, this implies the attacks were being set in motion long before the U.S. even thought about sending troops into Iraq.

Like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's franchisee in Iraq, at least for most of his "substantial collaboration" with Al Qaeda (to use a 9/11 Commission phrase), the Turkish cell was not required to pledge their fealty to bin Laden in exchange for the financial, spiritual, and logistical support, and explosives training they received in Al Qaeda's terrorist training camps then still operating in Afghanistan.

As one of the cell members told the Turkish investigators, "We are different from al-Qaeda in terms of structure, but our views and our actions are in harmony."

We'll be following the news of this trial, about to commence in Istanbul.