"Yuppie Terrorists" Attack Glasgow Airport With (Failed) Car Bomb

Yuppie terrorists, as Larry C. Johnson dubs them, owing to the fact that they owned Mercedes, which were probably stolen, but what do facts matter to a super-tough CIA dude who can improvise a shiv out of his toenail clippings and earwax? (Incidentally, why would the fact that the terrorists were wealthy or well-funded enough to buy Mercedes comfort us? Does anyone take comfort in the fact that Osama bin Ladin, with his $100 million family trust fund, is a Saudi "yuppie"?)

In one minor sense, he has a small point -- these bombers are not particularly good at building bombs, and he maybe quite right that it's overstated that these bombs could have killed "hundreds" as police officials said. They could have killed hundreds, had they been constructed properly -- but they weren't. At most, if they got somewhat lucky, they could have killed a few dozen.

But this is such a jackass point it borders on insanity to even concede it. Because we know Al Qaeda regularly sends in bomb-making experts to assist local terrorist cells. Are we to take mighty comfort in the fact that these guys weren't able to reach Al Qaeda's bomb-making Geek Squad, or that the guy who was sent was inexperienced? We know that there are thousands of radical Islamists who wish to kill Western civilians via suicide car-bomb; we know there are dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of fairly expert jihadist bomb-makers willing to assit in this endeavor. We're supposed to laugh this all off, as Larry "terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States" Johnson does, because in this particular case Group One was unable to successfully work with Group Two?

Here's his post on today's attack:

Preliminary, unconfirmed reports indicate a nuclear blast has occurred at Glasgow's international airport. No one has seen the mushroom cloud or heard the blast, but something by God is happening and it must be terrible. There is smoke and fire. In fact, a car is on fire. It must be Al Qaeda. Only Al Qaeda knows how to set themselves on fire inside a car. Please. Flee to the hills (leave you doors unlocked). Oh the humanity!

Oh how terribly droll! He's a super-tough guy, you can see, because he laughs at the threat of terrorism, as does the entire left. They're the brave.

They're also the exact sort that got 3000 Americans killed on 9/11 by downplaying, understating, and even giggling at the threat posted by jihadi terrorists, but never mind that. They're right that some terrorists are technically incompetent; what's the big deal if, on occasion, some terrorists have a bit more technical acumen and manage to kill 54 in the London tubes or 3000 in the World Trade Ceneter and Pentagon? We can live with those occasional mass-slaughters, I guess.

If we take the threat terrorism seriously, then the terrorists have surely won. So have a giggle at the fact that London and parts of England are partially paralyzed today, and merely dozens of people very nearly got killed. Ha, ha. It's almost a knock-knock joke.

Here's a recent account of today's attack:

A blazing vehicle was driven into the main Glasgow airport terminal today. Two people were arrested and flights halted as all roads around the airport were shut.

Witnesses said two men crashed it into the doors of the main terminal building.

A man with his clothes on fire got out of the vehicle and was restrained by passengers while others put out the flames with a fire extinguisher.

...

A spokesman for BAA, the operators of Glasgow Airport, said: "At 15.11 today a vehicle drove into a front door at the check-in area of Glasgow Airport's terminal building.

"The vehicle caught fire on impact with the building and is currently outside the terminal building. A police investigation is under way and emergency crews are at the scene."

...

"What he says he saw is a Cherokee jeep drive into the glass frontage of the airport," she told BBC News 24.

"A man got out of it on fire - he said there were actually two Asian-looking [this means Pakistani in England] men but this guy was the one that was on fire.

"Some holidaymaker tried to restrain him, then the police came over and wrestled him to the ground - the fire was burning through his clothes - and finally put him out with a fire extinguisher."

I'm glad that "holidaymaker" was a bit more alarmed by the threat of jihadi terrorism than Larry "Americans are bedeviled by fantasies of terrorism" Johnson.

And it's not clear that this bomb wouldn't have gone off. Sometimes, you know, dynamite explodes accidentally:

"I spoke to an airport official who seemed to think it was not an accident. [It was no accident, we now know, of course.] He was very angry. He said the men in the car got out and started throwing petrol about - that must be how it caught fire.

"Luckily my colleague and his family were delayed or they could have been coming out of that door at exactly that time."

Eye witness James Edgar said an ordinary car fire burns itself out quickly, " but this went on and on".

He told Sky News: "There were a few pops, obviously the fuel tanks would have gone, but it was as if there was maybe more accelerant in the vehicle."

He thought some of the building had caught fire as well, so that may have added to the effect.

Referred to a picture of the blazing jeep, he said: "He's trying to get through the main door frame, but the bollards have stopped him from going through. If he'd got through, he'd have killed hundreds, obviously."

Allah liveblogged throughout the incident. The most precious part must, of course, be AP's Larry Johnson-ish early claims that this was all just some sort of mundane car accident.

It's too bad Keith Olbermann doesn't work on Saturdays, too. It would have been fun to see him with Larry "The Declining Terrorist Threat" talking about how brave and even-keeled and "skeptical" they both are for deeming terrorist attacks "non-events" and car-bombs laden with fuel and propane tanks and nails "non-bombs."

It's simply shocking that a man who wrote an NYT op-ed called "The Declining Threat of Terrorism" which denigrated the terrorist threat and wrote that "Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism" on July 10, 2001 not only is so shameless to continue peddling the same "Don't Worry, Be Happy" advice he disasterously gave to the government as a CIA agent, but has a legion of liberal hacks eager to entertain his catastrophically wrong mindset for partisan reasons.

If I were a CIA agent who'd made that pronouncement about the silliness of worrying about terrorism a scant three months before 9/11, I'd be "living quietly" about such issues, out of simple respect for the dead I'd helped to kill.

posted by Ace at 03:46 PM

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