Major British terror attack thwarted

Sheer luck prevented a car bomb from killiing and wounding hundreds of Londoners today.

Officers inspecting the car found 60 litres of petrol on the back seat, gas cylinders and containers holding nails inside, which could have caused “significant injury or loss of life”. The bomb was defused.

One witness said that door staff at the nightclub alerted police after the car was driven into bins last night and the driver ran off.

The witness said the large silver saloon car was being driven “erratically” before the minor crash and that the driver then ran off.

Mr Clarke said that some aspects of today’s bomb attempt “resonated with previous plots” and mentioned nightclubs as a potential target.

But he also said detectives are keeping “an entirely open mind” as to who is responsible and called on the public to remain vigilant.

Yeah, let’s think. Who would want to murder hundreds of people in the nightclub district? Hm. Wait, wait, let me think about it a minute….

LONDON — A judge sentenced five men to life in prison Monday for plotting to attack targets in London, including a popular nightclub, power plants and shopping mall, with bombs made from a half-ton stockpile of fertilizer.

The trial for the first time exposed connections between the defendants and the deadly 2005 al-Qaida-linked attack on the city’s transit system.

That’s right. Keep an “open mind,” because it’s obvious that it could have been the IRA. Or maybe those legendary Jewish terrorists, mad about the way their coreligionists are being treated in England.

What’s that? There are no Jewish terrorists? Well, then it must be one of those Christian terrorists. What? There aren’t any Christian terrorists, either?

Why then, who could it be?

An ICM poll last year indicated that a fifth of Muslims had sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the suicide bombers in the July 7 2005 attack, although 99% thought they were wrong to carry out the attack.

Of course. It’s that tiny minority of extremists!

Sheer luck stopped the murder of many Brits today. Not MI5. Not the police investigations. Not all of Britain’s work at preventing another major bombing. Luck, and only luck.

They will not be able to rely on luck as a means to prevent more attacks.

Update: Three car bombs have been found so far. There will most likely be a fourth. Classic Al Qaeda methodology.

Update 2: No, only two so far. But really, really dangerous, if they’d been made correctly.