al Qaeda Masters Thesis

Remember a few weeks back when the al Qaeda "graduation" video came out concurrent with the story that the transnational terrorist network had dispatched fresh jihadi teams to open a new offensive in Europe and the U.S.?



Well, today we got a look at an AQ alumnus' first crack at graduate school.

The plot unfolded over the course of the day today as AQ plots always do. The London Daily Telegraph had the first report:

A car bomb left in London's West End would have caused "significant injury or loss of life" if it had not been defused by police.

The explosive device, consisting of gas cyclinders and nails, was discovered at 2am outside a packed nightclub in The Haymarket, near Piccadilly Circus. ...

One witness said that door staff at the nightclub Tiger, Tiger 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. The driver was not stopped.

Serious stuff, but initially not linked to AQ because the driver didn't appear to be eager to stay and commit suicide for Allah. However, that was before the second nearby car bomb was discovered:

Police in London's bustling nightclub and theater district on Friday defused a car bomb that could have killed hundreds after an ambulance crew spotted smoke coming from a Mercedes filled with a lethal mix of gasoline, propane and nails. Hours later, police confirmed a second explosives-rigged car was found nearby.

The first car bomb, found near Piccadilly Circus, was powerful enough to have caused "significant injury or loss of life" at a time when hundreds were in the area, British anti-terror police chief Peter Clarke said.

Clarke said Friday evening that the second car — another Mercedes — was originally parked illegally on nearby Cockspur Street, but had been towed from the West End to an impound lot near Hyde Park.

"The vehicle was found to contain very similar materials to those that had been found in the first car," he said. "There was a considerable amount of fuel and gas canisters. As in the first vehicle, there was also a quantity of nails. This like the first device was potentially viable."

Multiple simultaneous bombings are an al Qaeda trademark. So is bragging about them in advance, which an "abu Osama al-Hazeen," a regular on jihadi Internet bulletin boards, did profusely last night in the "al Hesbah" chat room, a cybervenue known as an AQ and Taliban propaganda outlet.

More, um, fuel on the fire came from the capture of the first car bomb driver on surveillance video. Turns out he's been dragneted before in connection with a known al Qaeda operative:

British police have a “crystal clear” picture of the man who drove the bomb-rigged silver Mercedes outside a London nightclub, and officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com he bears “a close resemblance” to a man arrested by police in connection with another bomb plot but released for lack of evidence.

Officials say the suspect had been taken into custody in connection with the case of al Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot, who was convicted of orchestrating a vehicle bomb plot involving targets in London, New York, Newark, N.J. and Washington, D.C.

The Barot connection, combined with an arrest of two other "Jihadi U." "graduates," in Germany, have effectively clinched that this was, indeed, an al Qaeda operation:

Last year, al Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot was convicted by a British court for a plot to use limousines to carry similar bombs as those defused today to similar targets as the nightclubs allegedly targeted today.

In his own personal manual, Barot described how the cylinders, "if carefully orchestrated can be as powerful as exploding TNT," and "are easily available to the general public," designed for a "synchronized, concurrent (back-to-back) execution on the same day and time." Videos posted on al Qaeda Web sites also show in full detail how to rig propane and butane cylinders as powerful bombs.

And today's explosive devices - composed of five or six propane and butane cylinders as well as thirty-three gallons of gasoline, all rigged to detonate with calls to two cell phones - followed Barot's manual and the al Qaeda videos closely. Officials say the cell phones failed to initiate the explosions, even after each phone had been called twice, preventing a shrapnel-filled fireball from launching and killing people in the surrounding area.

But the bombs were duds, so no big deal, right? And if they had gone off, well, it'd have been George W. Bush's fault anyway for invading Iraq, right? You know, the country in which American and British (well, American, anyway) troops are locked in lopsided mortal combat with....al Qaeda.

It's more than metaphorical to say that new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown dodged a bullet today. And thank God for it, of course, as hundreds of British civilians are still alive and whole who would have been maimed and dead otherwise. But there will always be a next attack, and one of them will succeed. Will this near miss inject the slightly shriveled version of Tony Blair with some Blairesque realism (vis-a-vie British forces staying in the fight in Iraq)? Or will it take another tsunami of Londoner blood and guts to re-teach the lesson?

Yes, that's another rhetorical question. At a time when Britain could really use another Churchill, or even another Blair, the UK has to make do with a guy who could have been Tobey Maguire's understudy. Only without the Spidey suit, powers, and courage. Even l'il Jackie Wright would have been an improvement.

Man, Londoners really had brace themselves for an Islamist "Blitz," hadn't they?