Everybody is trying to find an angle on the events in the UK over the weekend. The SMH Headline has a good shot at it: Absence of suicide bombers made plan more complex. The truth of that is self evdient, if you don't have to plan for an escape, it simplifies the process enormously, and you can theoretically make sure that the damned thing goes off. But even so, the reporting leaves many questions unasked and makes contradictory assertions without caveat.
FORENSIC scientists are poring over two "goldmines" - the Mercedes cars filled with petrol, gas and nails that failed to explode in central London.
Scores of specialists were taking the vehicles apart at secret locations, confident that they would find crucial clues to the identity of the terrorists.
So, despite all the surveillance and invasions of privacy, infiltration of disaffected groups and endless CCTV (The UK has more than any country on earth) the police had no idea who the perps are. Since the Mercs were not identified as stolen, the first clues might be really wealthy people who can afford a pair of matching Mercedes bombs and who have already left the country.
Police expect to find DNA from the bombers and to secure evidence about where the bomb material came from.
The bomb material came from garages (petrol and gas cylinders) telephone shops (phones - probably imported with roaming enabled) and from hardware stores (nails). No word on detonators yet.
The car bombs are of the kind used daily in Iraq but,
BS. Car bombs in Iraq use military explosives and HE shells and run 400 kilos per vehicle. This wasn't close
unlike attacks there, the militants operating in London were not suicide bombers prepared to sacrifice themselves for their "cause".
Except that the media is reporting a "link" with the Glasgow attack, which WAS a suicide attempt. Now, why would you use your highest value weapons (suicide volunteers) to attack (forgive me Scotland) a low level target like Glasgow airport terminal, rather than the VERY high value target of London's west end?
It is the first time that so-called "vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices"
Oh give me a break, try "car bombs". The purpose of jargon is to obfuscate.
have been used in an attack in Britain since the Irish Republican Army abandoned its terrorist campaign. The IRA, however, always tested its bombs before a mission. It appeared the London bombers had been unable to try theirs out, as both failed to explode.
So, despite having plenty of money for cars, they have no time or money to spend on testing, and not enough expertise to ensure a first-time success.
The decision not to use suicide bombers is regarded as noteworthy because it makes the planning of operations far more complex. It may also suggest a shortage of volunteers prepared to die in al-Qaeda's pursuit of global holy war.
Or it MAY suggest that this has nothing to do with said global holy war or Al Qaeda. And what, then, are we to make of the Glasgow attack that is "linked"? Does that "suggest" that the supply of suicide bombers is limited rather than run out?
As the search for the bombers continued, some reports said it was focusing on Birmingham, home to 140,000 Muslims.
Have "Muslims" become the "white van" or terror investigations? What evidence is there to link this bomb with Muslims (apart from the lack of volunteers)?
In May, the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, spoke of a "growing problem of cultural separatism" between the city's whites and Muslims, after he spent 24 hours with a family in a largely Muslim suburb.
Mr Cameron said that while visiting a Birmingham mosque he had been asked "some depressing questions about who was really responsible for 9/11 and even 7/7 - that it was a CIA plot, that Jews had been told to leave the twin towers".
Excellent point. And since then he has done what precisely to bridge that gap? And BTW, has he checked lately on the tinfoil, prejudice, ignorance and hatred levels among his white anglo constitutients?
The two Mercedes involved in Friday's failed attacks were left near the Tiger Tiger nightclub on Haymarket, and in nearby Cockspur Street.
The type of bombs used suggests that al-Qaeda militants have been unable to get hold of Semtex, the high explosive that was commonly used by the IRA.
More "suggestions" but notice that the suggested AQ connection has now been subtly confirmed without providing further evidence. And again, they have money for cars but not even for reliable explosives from a quarry for example.
Had the car bombs detonated, however, they would have created a fireball the size of a large house and spread a shockwave for hundreds of metres.
Plenty of petrol apparently, so a serious fireball, and gas canisters for the bang, but to use them as a primary explosive you need to know what you are doing and all evidence so far is that, once again, attacks on the west are in the hands of the not very clever. And Anderson cooper's 360 report had a replication of the bomb which showed one thing very clearly. The design is crap.
Scotland Yard said it had hundreds of images of both cars from closed-circuit TV and the fact that the bombs did not go off would provide "first-class information".
And the value of those hundreds of images would be ex post facto at
best. All they detected ahead of the event is a couple of DOCTORS
parking their Mercs in the West End on a Friday night.
Security sources said mobile phones found in the cars were to be used to detonate the bombs. Each phone had been called twice but, due to technical failings, the devices had not exploded.
The technical failing started with failing to have a clue about building and detonating explosives and went down hill from there. As the level of British mockery and vicious humour reaches a crescendo, all we are doing is demonstrating that flying below the radar is ridiculously easy even for a bunch of total incompetents; that relentless surveillance is meaningless, that people with half an ounce of curiosity and a clue about hinkyness trumps all the civil rights destruction you can engineer.
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