AND THE BEAT GOES ON – AT 8:10 A.M. ET:  The terror attack launched against that Danish cartoonist who dared to draw a sketch of the prophet Muhammad gets a new angle this morning.  From The Christian Science Monitor:

Now a Danish newspaper is reporting that Denmark's security and intelligence agency, PET, knew that the young Somali man who on Friday tried to kill a Danish cartoonist was held in Kenya in September for allegedly helping to plot an attack against US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Mrs. Clinton stopped in Kenya during an 11-day-tour of Africa in August.)

The man who burst into Kurt Westergaard's house on New Year's Day wielding an axe and a knife and shouting "revenge" for Mr. Westergaard's controversial 2005 depiction of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban was released earlier this fall by Kenyan authorities due to lack of evidence, reports the Politiken.

And apparently, as was the case with the airline bomber, there were no alerts sent out about this dedicated chap.

Denmark's ambassador to Kenya told the news agency Ritzau, however, that the Somali man was arrested in Kenya for incomplete travel documents, adding that Kenyan authorities never told the embassy that he was suspected in a terror plot.

Still, the PET did admit in a statement that Westergaard's attacker - who cannot be named due to Danish privacy laws – has "close ties to the Somali terror organization Al Shabab as well as to Al Qaeda leaders in East Africa."

COMMENT:  The cartoonist survived only because he'd planned for the possibility of an attack.  As soon as his home was broken into, he and his five-year-old granddaughter rushed to a "panic room" that had been prepared.  An alarm summoned the police.

Once again, it was quick action by a citizen that foiled an attack.  But, like the airline bombing over Detroit, the plot should never have gone that far.

January 4, 2009