Wow, this may be the single most irresponsible reporting I've ever seen. An anonymous source who used to work for the CIA and has no knowledge besides what we've seen on the news says something, and you report it as fact.

Maybe next you can report that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 because some anonymous wacko -- or Vice Presidential assistant -- said that, too.

Oh, and I wouldn't need 20 people to coordinate these attacks. One person could have put gas and nails in abandoned cars in England, and there were two people in the car in Scotland. That's three people. What the hell do the other 17 do? Turn the ladder?

The amazing thing is that they didn't need to blow anything up or kill -- even hurt -- anyone in order to terrorize many of us. All they did was incompetently plant the bombs and fail to get past concrete posts with a flaming car and you all are filled with terror.

Well, they win again. Great job!

Wait, I thought this was ABC news, not the Daily Mail? What gives with the misleading lie of a headline and the one-sourced anonymous allegations from somebody who ain't even there?

Oh, wait...maybe you just came back from seeing Die Hard 4.

Why don't they broadcast a picture of the perpetrators in this case? Duh, is it me or are our intelligence agencies asleep at the wheel here? How are we supposed to be vigilant when they keep us in the dark about who this guy is? It might help if they showed us who stumbled out of the Benz, then we could provide tips.

Oh, and while we are at it, lets stop pulling the punches in Waziristan and go after Al Qaeda before they roll over Pakistan in an attempt to gain Nuclear Weapons. It may seem unlikely at this point, but why wait until they have the capabilities and determination. Lets zap Al Qaeda now and be over with it.

Oh, and why isn't the army going house to house looking for people building bombs in the UK and the US, or is that just something we have our boys doing half way around the world. Lets get these animals. I think it would be prudent to kick some doors in and check things out before this type of behavior gets to be a nuisance. House to house searches seem like the logical next step. No sense collecting all of this intelligence and spending all this money if we are not going to kick in some doors right here in our backyard.

Jon

Running a burning car into a concrete embankment (which may still prove to be an accident) and having 2 car bombs fail to even detonate isn't so much of a coordinated terrorist effort as it is an uncoordinated terror attack. Such has been the case now multiple times in Britain.
One can hardly call these three events "coordinated" when they were failures from the outset unless in fact, failure was the effort being coordinated.
There have been multiple "terrorist attacks" of this nature in Britain since 9/11 which didn't pan out for the authorities by the time all the evidence was presented.
Now you can call that coincidence if you like, or you can call these three most recent "attacks" a coincidence if you like.
But I'm taking a wait and see approach until we see how this all pans out as far as the evidence is concerned.
So far it could equally be an attempt on the establishment to create the appearance that even though Mr. Blair is gone from office, the British people still (none the less)need Mr. Brown every bit as much to ensure their safety from the mad scourge of Islamic extremists which wait like wolves at the door. This in spite of supporting evidence or the frequency of unsubstantiated events such as this that have preceded them.

I am off back to the UK for a 10 day vacation and am a bit worried about the flight. Britain needs to get its act together and deal with separatist Pakistani and other Muslim communities that will not integrate into wider society instead of worrying about offending people. Lives of ordinary Brtis are more important that a fw extremists who seek to cause havoc in a society that has accepted them into their own. And as a British expat who has lived in three of the UK´s largest cities, I think I am qualified to comment.

"Wow, this may be the single most irresponsible reporting I've ever seen. An anonymous source who used to work for the CIA and has no knowledge besides what we've seen on the news says something, and you report it as fact."--Nathan

Hi Nathan,

I doubt it.

While the article is not explicit about who the sources are and how many sources there are, it does say that "Counter-terrorism analysts estimate..." and then mentions the one former CIA official. This would suggest to me that the analysts are plural and the commentary from the former CIA guy or gal is singular. I think it is safe to infer that these are not the same sources, but the former spook (one former CIA official) is commenting on the information gained from some of the Blotter's other sources (the analysts).

I agree that it is hard to tell who is who among these anonomyous sources, but it doesn't seem so irresponsible as much as not well written.

Jon

For every terrorist, a vast infrastructure is needed. These maniacs didn't act alone.

When will the West wake up??? Islamism is a barbaric, racist, sexist, bigoted political movement that is murderously jealous of the West, NOT A RELIGION. It is national suicide to allow "immigrants" that hate democracy into one's country. May God protect America, Austrailia, Canada, England, France, Germany and Italy from this Trojan Horse of 'immigration'.

The world does not have the dull and boaring life of a newscaster. Way way way too too too much coverage. Terror Cells are not going to END THE WORLD even though they would like to. The more excessive coverage the more terror cells are encourage. Newscasters and producers have no real sense of ballance. Take a walk in the park and some waisting your time watching the tenth re-run of this worn out fear theme.

Whoever the CIA guy is he is a patronising fool. 'Fancy accents'? Get a grip, there's a time and place for that condescension (if ever) and it isn't now. For GOTCHAs information it was a serious terrorist attack. The guy who was driving the Jeep had to have a suicide belt taken off him and the car was loaded with gas canisters and petrol. I know, I live three miles from the airport.

Some of you are really idiotic. Conspiracies and coincidences explain the terror war. Brian Ross is respected in his field. Why are you apologizing to the terrorists? Ain't you got any huevos, hombre?

As a British national I feel i must comment further to the article above and some of the comments I have read on this page. I'm unsure of how clear your news reports have been but our reports indicate that the London bombs were not 'failed attempts', they were very real bombs which were subjected to controlled detonation and due to the reliable intelligence, thankfully, no people were hurt. As for the attack at Glasgow, this may be linked to the London bombs or could be another extremist group. We cannot ostracise Muslim communities and live in a state of fear because of the threat of very few, perhaps the 'source' used in this article would prefer it if when a person is arrested we keep them inprisoned without evidence just to be sure, forget any human rights??. My comments are not intended to belittle the situation that occurred on 9/11 which saddens me deeply but Britain and America has learned from previous experience, we have not forgotton 9/11 or the July bus bombings. I am very fond of America and consider it a great nation. However, I am saddened that at a time when we should be united together, we have to defend such trivial matters such as 'fancy accents'. At this moment the terror threat level has been raised to 'critical'. The latest news suggests we should expect a further attack with some airports closed and others on high alert suggesting this is being taken very seriously. Obviously this information would not be released without firm grounding and I hope more appropriate reports are made in future.

That's right, Mauisun. Ignorance is bliss...

"We cannot ostracise Muslim communities and live in a state of fear because of the threat of very few, perhaps the 'source' used in this article would prefer it if when a person is arrested we keep them inprisoned without evidence just to be sure, forget any human rights??. "--Julia

Hi Julia,

I don't think anyone reasonable is suggesting that we ostracise anybody. We should kill Al Qaeda and as nobody is handing them over to us, we must hunt them where they lurk. Islamic terrorists are among us and they seek to overthrow our governments while radically changing our way of life.

Please do not try to lull us into thinking we should live our lives as normal. Fear is a reasonable reaction to the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

Clearly the terrorists use the cover of the muslim community lay in wait and to prey on us. It is common sense that "we" look within the muslim community for the terrorists that are among us. We seek collaberation not resistence in this effort.

As for your other comments, the application of well used criminal precedents to the contemporary problems of terrorism seems to be a bit haphazard. We must look to set new precedents in an age of terror. I couldn't help but wonder if the bombers in glasgow were also the drivers in London?

Holding someone without evidence seems like a bit of stretch. There would be no reason to do so. However, holding someone with a shred of evidence without disclosing it seems reasonable. We hold mentally ill people because they are a threat to society on much much less evidence sometimes. A single threat from a paranoid schizophrenic is enough to hold someone for a long time in a type of non-punitive detention. "To protect society."

We live in a age of terror where Al Qaeda seeks to advance their agenda by acquiring Nuclear Weapons. If there is a shred of evidence then hold them. A little waterboarding might be ok in my book in the case of a tick tock bomb planted somewhere in a city, but in most cases we just hold them while we sort out the facts and either seek evidence against them or hold them until they are exhonerated.

I don't speak for the former CIA source in the article, but I think it unfair the way you extrapolate about what this source may or may not think. The CIA keeps American cities alive from around the world. Their craft is something of a wonder to us, but we shouldn't invent explanations for their supposed intentions without hearing from the proverbial horses mouth.

If they [the spooks] have to grab someone by the hair and dunk them in a tank so we can live another day then so be it. I trust they do it with the best of intentions in an impartial manner where they do not gain any pleasure from the ocassional torture and I would hope that they do it only to find that shred of intelligence that keeps us alive.

I don't intend to live under Sharia in my lifetime and as our liberty is threatened I must advise our good citizens that we must struggle with these forces of evil that lurk among us.

Jon

The boogieman image the intrepid British authorities captured 'crystal clear' on video from the first attack apparently wasn't photogenic enough to warrant publishing in the news. Are they afraid someone will recognize them? Watch very carefully what our respective governments propose to do in light of these recent "attacks on freedom". You can be sure it will have to do with further erosion of the few rights that remain to us. The true terror does not come from these clowns do, but from how we permit our government to respond at our expense.

Ahm a Scot. Lived in the U.S. for the last 30 years. None of these clowns will ever make us feart. They better watch their arses. Their clownish behaviour will bring an end to them all.

Oh wait! That is their plan. Civil war Iraq in Airdrie. Buckfast for all. There probably are not a sufficient amount of virgins at hand in my home town (unless you count the guys) right now. There is plenty of Bucky.

To the Moslems, integrate or naff off. Go naff up your own countries as you have been doing doing quite successfully for some time now.

I have many muslim friends (american spelling) They are no different from you or I. (Well ! the thing over their head is just repression.)

As a catholic our women wore hats to hide the glory and the lust that their hair would generate. We used to make them out as sluts if we seen their ankle in Victoria's days.

Lets just get along and help them figure out how to fix the stuff in their houses without deciding that the only honorable thing to do is to kill them or watch the telly as they kill themselves and a bunch of people who don't look like them.

They are just attention seekers, like the chav in your hood. They are not representative of anyone or any thing.

I could go out tomorrow and pay somebody to have a tatto on his/her forehead that said "Viagra" absolutely "Bucky". Our enemies always have look like our enemies of the past. My biological brothers look like me but they are also a hard road to travel. But we are brothers and it does count in the end. It is all that counts in the end. At sometime Abel has to deal with Cain, if Cain is just primitive. Ed.

These guys who threaten us and the whole free world are either technologically sophisticated, meticulously organized, methodical in their planning and formidable adversaries as the new world governments have been telling us they are for over 6 years now, or they are a renegade band on morons from F Troop and can't find their posteriors with both hands. Well what would it be then? Because we can't have it both ways.
Do we believe what we are told by the establishment or by what we see regularly in these botched attempts on the news?
Are these the same master minds who managed to plan and carry out the pulverization of 3 world trade towers with a minimum of flight training, box cutters and jet liners but can't pull off 3 attempts at using car bombs in two days in spite of having years of practice with car bombs?
Something doesn't jive here, folks.

The UK has troops fighting in Iraq and they have terrorist cells. Conservatives tell us by have troops fighting in a Iraqi Civil War so America won't have terrorist here.

This American veteran without let some terrorist frighten me to giving up my freedom willingly. I will live my life normally. Every generation of Americans have had the duty to stand up in the defense of freedom. Freedom is costly. Whether on the battlefield or at home in America freedom requires personal vengeance.

There is a inherent problem with parroting the terrorist's methodology of torture. You don't know if your victim is lying to avoid being tortured. All you have done is to stoop to their level of incivility.

I'm only human too. I do feel the frustration. The barbarian that resides within is fed out with these people.

I had wondered if they would get the point if we explained to them clearly and calmly: "You have forty-eight hours to stop this crap!" "If you don't you will not have anything to worship because we will turn Mecca into a sea of melted sand using a fifty megaton warhead." Doesn't are god demand that we not allow ourselves to be lead by evil to temptation?

and due to the reliable intelligence, thankfully, no people were hurt.
====================================

There was no reliable intelligence about any of this.

I take terrorism seriously, and want us to fight it properly. But pieces like this do not help us to fight it -- all they do is create more fear.

One person above said that the undetonated bombs in London weren't failed attempts! Maybe you can explain how a car bomb that is towed for illegal parking and winds up in the impound yard and never explodes is not a failure? Or how one left near a nightclub and is found by a bouncer and never explodes is not a failure? Or how one that is supposed to go into a crowded airport but can't and doesn't hurt anyone but the terrorists is not a failure?

These are FAILED terror plots except for one thing -- media reports like this cause people to react in failure.

Another person repeated exactly why this report is so bad. They said, "Brian Ross is respected in his field. Why are you apologizing to the terrorists? Ain't you got any huevos, hombre?"

First of all, being a respected journalist these days doesn't mean much. Judy Miller was respected, and it turned out none of her reporting was accurate. All of her reporting was garbage from anonymous sources who wanted to mislead the public into going to war in Iraq, a war that distracted us from the real enemies of our country.

As for huevos and apologizing for the enemy, who did that? Noting that a reporter is doing a lousy job is not being cowardly or on the side of the terrorists.

There are ways to fight terrorists by kicking the butts of existing terrorists and fixing the situations that help them recruit. But running around in fear based on anonymous sources that are not fact checked or backed up by other sources is not the way to win.

Instead it is the way to cause the public to cower under their beds and let the Scooter Libbys and Dick Cheneys of the world screw up our country.

I think with all this "Who is Who & what is what really boils down to one thing....If the politicians & Media would let the soldiers fight this war & stay the hell out of it in the first place it would have all been over with a long time ago... shame on all

Yes us Brit's may talk with a fancy accent but at end of the day we have good security and police force that know how to handle this. Anyway 9/11 was handled well but suppose to be an inside job and well end of the day i just ahve to say we would go stabbing our own citizens in the back not like most of your US leaders would. I think American people some how think they have a good hold over the war and terrorism but at end of the day no one does but it was funny that we got asked to go to war with you American's because at end of the day we have a good hold and well we wont be backing down to terrorism and we will fight as a country.

Here's the thing about the so-called "ticking bomb" scenario that Jon and some others who want Jack Bauer to be real never do explain... How would it be that we know where to find the terrorist, all of his friends and family, where he works, plays, prays and drinks. Every detail of his travel for the past decade is known, his phone calls are listened to, and yet that one all-important fact - the location of the supposed "ticking bomb" needs to be tortured from the terrorist?

One needn't go through all these logical gymnastics to manufacture a "reason" to torture people. One need only admit that everything that is supposedly superior about being a thinking person doesn't apply to them.

Anyone who's ever worked in counterintelligence will tell you that torture is useless as an interrogation method. Just ask the Germans to look over their records to see what useful information was gained by doing it 1939-1945.

"Anyone who's ever worked in counterintelligence will tell you that torture is useless as an interrogation method."--Greg

I doubt it.

Then why does the US Army have a course for their Special Forces called SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape), which teaches soldiers how to resist torture. Weak minded people sucumb to torture. Not all terrorists can resist. I don't expect to turn on the television and hear that all of our techniques for human intelligence, especially controversial techniques, work. High Minded people are willing to do anything for their cause. Including inventing research to show that torture does not work. This is a "Fabulous Load of Balls."

Why does the US Navy and US Air Force train pilots to resist torture? Torture works on some people, especially those who haven't been taught to resist it. Truth is that torture works (sometimes). The Vietnamese were especially good at torturing people and the hunt for good information should include all of the tools at our disposal. Listen to the parade of fools (all those kooky counter-intelligence people you mention) who failed to use the tools at their disposal properly if you must, but I will not listen to them. I have heard anecdotes from Vietnam Veterans that torture works. Intellectuals in Washington and elsewhere have time to debate the effectiveness of torture. The ticking bomb I spoke of is a metaphor for any critical shred of intelligence that means life and death for some of our people. One of the chief criticisms of the 9/11 failure was that we used too much technical intelligence and not enough human intelligence. There is a mix of valuable information out there. Some of it is in computers and some of it only resides within people's minds.

It stands to reason that human intelligence will include a number of techniques that are obviously controversial. Among them torture. Picking peoples pockets is not an easy task.

I would broaden the use of torture and I would not just restrict torture based on the high minded "Logical Gymnastics" of people who watch too much This Week and haven't heard any shots fired in anger themselves. Not sure if this applies to you Greg, but it probably applies to many among us. There are people who use the torture tradecraft effectively and don't want to reveal the nature of their craft because it tips off the terrorists to our techniques. I am not one who thinks this matters much and I feel that if the technique is harsh enough then it will work even if the enemy is prepared to endure it. Prolonged torture is something even the best are not trained to endure.

Jon

Hi Greg,

I just wanted to add that the biggest problem with torture is not that it is not effective, but that it is illegal in some places. Go figure you can shoot a terrorist and he can blow up a building full of stock brockers and analysts, but you can't legally pluck his eye out with an awl or cut his finger off with a pair of pruning shears, not to mention the more tender areas of the our anatomy (gonads etc..).

As I previously alluded to, I would revise the statutes and give commanders and intelligence officers more latitude in exercising good judgement on these matters. It is controversial and illegal that is why people are hesitent to speak out about the success of torture. I wouldn't listen to anyone who says it doesn't work.

Jon

I can only say this... judging from some comments... Liberals sure hate their OWN news reporters.

There are a lot of deluded misled people posting on this board.

I wonder what would happen to US and UK economies if the Middle East and Africa could successfully kick them away from their oil,like we read is happening in the Niger Delta ? What would happen ?

Hi Mabrie,

It is not so easy to "kick them away from their oil." They need a market for their product which is in America and without oil revenue they have squat to feed themselves with. America is developing alternative energy resources and I suspect that we would accelerate development and deployment of alternative energy (hydrogen, nuclear, ethanol, etc...) to react to such a foolish move.

I suspect that energy independence would be a boon to US Economic Growth. Not to mention we would wouldn't have to trade with people who hate us so much. It would also be good for the environment. We could easily convert to Hydrogen in a matter of a few years by building a great many pebble bed nuclear reactors and converting salt water to hyrdogen with the electric capacity from nuclear. A form of alloy hydrogen would be a great source of energy for fuel cell vehicles.

By all means if you want the Arabs and Persians to choke on their sand then please help us limit the supply of oil. I would be buying oil futures if there was any hint that this might happen. A fundamental shift in the supply of oil during a period where we were converting to alternative fuel sources would make me a rich futures trader.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Jon :)