The threat was made in Argentina. The downed flight was out of Brazil. The call-in threat could have been a diversion attempt for all we know.
We get ourselves into trouble when we put too much stock in our own ability to think like crazed islamists. I still have trouble reconciling Mohammed Salameh trying to get his deposit back on the Ryder truck he used to blow up the World Trade Center parking garage in 1993... but he did it. It made no sense whatsoever, but he did it.
I don't know why some jihadist would pick up the phone and threaten an Argentine Air France flight two days before he planned on blowing up a Brazilian Air France flight. But I'm not going to dismiss the possibility that he did it just because I can't figure out why.
And I don't get into the claiming responsibility stuff. That's never a consideration for me. Claims can surface days, weeks, months or years after an attack. Sometimes they never come. Sometimes they're not reported right away, sometimes they're not discovered for a while. There is no reliable pattern with these sorts of claims. And there are situations where it's in their interest to make no claim at all (9/11 and the ensuing anthrax attacks being the most obvious examples).
I find the timing of the incident just as compelling a clue as the bomb threat. It's Islam Week. Al Qaeda's shooting its mouth off again. OBL's back with another volume in his Lectures From the Fires of Hell series. Obama is giving an historic speech in the homeland of Ayman al-Zawahiri. There's badness in the air.
It is very possible that someone in the circle of ‘friends’ of terrorists bombers who found out about a plane bombing being planned mistakenly thought it would be from an Argentine airport (the terrorists may actually have been residing in Argentina or wanted to set a trap for someone they suspected who then ratted the plan but was mistaken) and called to report the threat. But it could also serve as a means to screen security prior to the actual planned targeting. Who knows at this stage? We have at least one n00b working hard to push the ‘plane downed by bad weather’ official statement in order to accomplish what?
I seem to recall quite a bit of difficulty in getting the Libyans to admit for lockerbee....