The discovery of a car bomb in London is awful. What can one say? The fact that the U.S. has avoided another domestic attack since 2001, especially considering our misguided homeland security and foreign policy efforts since then, borders on the miraculous.
Sometimes these things are foiled by good police work, sometimes by informants, and sometimes, as appears the case here, by dumb luck and/or the incompetence of the enemy. The car, laden with gasoline, nails, and gas canisters, was found in the West End, an entertainment district of central London, at 2 a.m. According to the police statement, they were "called to reports of a suspicious vehicle." They disarmed ("made safe") the device, cordoned off the area, and began an investigation.
Information is still coming in, of course, but the most interesting element of the story is this: "Sky News quoted an eyewitness as saying the car had been driven erratically before it collided with garbage bins and the driver ran off." If true, this could mean one of several things. It could simply be a grossly unprofessional operation, in which the driver attracted attention (driving erratically), risked accidental detonation (by crashing into the garbage), and then abandoned the operation by running away. So perhaps a botched effort at a traditional car bombing, thankfully ruined by an idiotic perpetrator.
Or, another possibility: this sounds a lot like the behavior sometimes seen in the pre-detonation driving of suicide car attacks (often referred to as SVBIED, for Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device). Perhaps that was the plan, with the driver changing his mind at the last minute. Or it could be something else entirely. The eyewitness report is unconfirmed, and trying to extrapolate from there is absolutely speculative, so I'm very curious to see the results of the investigation.
England has a massive domestic video surveillance system, and the CCTV footage should shed some light on the details. Despite how the Bush administration has perverted and politicized efforts against terrorism, it obviously remains a threat -- certainly even more so because of the continuing debacle in Iraq. Hopefully more answers are forthcoming.
UPDATE: John emails me to note that CNN now reports police went to the club when an ambulance crew, there for an (apparently unrelated) injury, "noticed a smoke-filled car" and alerted authorities. If true, that could indicate an attempt to create a larger crowd for an attack . . . or just dumb luck that somebody saw the car before it detonated. Obviously conflicting reports indicate different possibilities . . . developing, as they say.
