They still trying to kill us, one in a series
According to the AP, police in London yesterday foiled a car-bombing attempt that could have killed hundreds:
Police in London's bustling nightclub and theater district on Friday defused a bomb that could have killed hundreds, after an ambulance crew spotted smoke coming from a Mercedes filled with a lethal mix of gasoline, propane and nails, authorities said.
The bomb near Piccadilly Circus was powerful enough to have caused "significant injury or loss of life" - possibly killing hundreds, British anti-terror police chief Peter Clarke said.
Britain's new home secretary, Jacqui Smith called an emergency meeting of top officials and later said the attempted attack was "international terrorism."
Londoners were lucky this time; it looks like the bomb failed to ignite properly, emitting instead a trail of smoke that was spotted by an alert ambulance crew called to a local nightclub. They called the police, who had time to disarm the bomb before it could finally go off.
The article mentions the possibility that criminals, rather than terrorists, might have been behind this, but I'm not buying it for several reasons. First, the timing is suspicious: new Prime Minister Gordon Brown took office only last Wednesday, and his new foreign minister is known to be much more skeptical of Britain's involvement in Iraq. This could have been an attempt to break Britain's will to continue, as happened in the Madrid bombings of 2004. The article also mentioned that the bomb resembled Improvised Explosive Devices used against Coalition forces in Iraq. Al-Qaeda has repeatedly threatened Britain with larger attacks than the subway bombings they experienced in 2005, and this type of target --a popular nightspot symbolic of "Western decadence", with the promise of mass casualties-- is just the kind of place al-Qaeda likes to hit. Finally, British authorities have revealed several times that they are tracking dozens of terrorist plots involving mass-casualty and suicide attacks. Following the "there's never just one roach theory," however many they're tracking, there are bound to be some they missed. This looks like one of them.
If this does turn out to be a terrorist attack, there are bound to be many, especially among the large anti-American and anti-war crowd in Britain, who will say this wouldn't have happened if Britain hadn't allied with the US in Iraq, and, if only Britain would get out and stop antagonizing them, al-Qaeda would go away.
Nonsense. What did the tourists at the Bali night club have to do with Iraq when al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah blew it to bits in 2002, before the liberation of Iraq? After the Madrid train bombings of 2004, Spain surrendered and pulled out of Iraq. They should be safe, right? Then why does al-Qaeda still threaten Spain? It couldn't be because Spain was once part of the Muslim empire, thousands of years before the invasion of Iraq, could it?
In the message broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahiri, second in command to Usama bin Laden, said that Al Qaeda now views "all the world as a battlefield open in front of us."
The Egyptian-born physician said that the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Palestinian militants would not be ended with "cease-fires or agreements."
"It is a Jihad for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," al-Zawahiri said. "We will attack everywhere." Spain was controlled by Arab Muslims until they were driven from power at the turn of the 16th century.
Like the tag line at Gates of Vienna says, "We are in a new phase of a very old war."
LINKS: New York Sun, Little Green Footballs (and here, too), Daily Kos (for the Moonbat-BDS view), Roger L. Simon, Power Line, Counterterrorism blog, Gateway Pundit, The Moderate Voice, and Blue Crab Boulevard. Captain's Quarters thinks this may have been a graduation test for Jihadi U. Lots more links at Pajamas Media.
UPDATE: Welcome Blue Star Chronicles readers! Another car-bomb was found in London. Multiple simultaneous bombings are an al-Qaeda trademark.
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