Car bombs found in the middle of London

Two London car bombs loaded with gas and nails were found today in London's West End.

Whole blocks of central London and famous landmarks like Piccadilly and Hyde Park were cleared after the first car bomb was found early today. Assistant Police Commissioner Peter Clarke linked the two bombs, and said that the cars, packed with gasoline cannisters, two gas cylinders and nails would have caused significant loss of life if it had detonated.

Hours before London's bomb squad dismantled them, a message appeared on one of the most widely used jihadist Internet forums,"al Hesbah" chat room, the saying: "Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed."

The posting mentioned the knighthood of Salmon Rushdie, along with other `grievances.'

"We say to Britain: The Emir of al Qaeda, Sheikh Osama, has once threatened you, and he carried out his threats. Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed," the message reads.

This attempted Islamist bombing in London's Haymarket area came one week before the second anniversary of the July 7 bombings that killed 52 people on London's transportation network...

Also a London jury was expected to hand down a verdict in the case against the five jihadis charged with trying to blow up city buses and trains in 2005. This was the second bombing, the one that failed to come off.

The car bomb devices were crude,but effective and had a fairly amateur look to them.

If that's true, I'd guess that they're the work of Britain's home grown jihadis, and not professionals.

One thing I noticed about a lot of the press reports, particularly in the Beeb and CNN was an attempt to connect this with Iraq, such as saying that devices of this type were `perfected in the Iraq insurgency.'

The context,of course, is that if we weren't in Iraq, none of this would be going on.

Actually, these reporters are wrong. Tactics like these, as well as virtually every tactic used by Islamic terrorists against civilians were first tried out against Israel, long before 9/11 or the Iraq invasion.