Blasts in London

Multiple explosions in London this morning -- the subway, and one bus, it looks like.

Given the timing, you have to wonder about the source, but it's apparently awful inside the subway.

Update: MS is taking the feed of the British television network, and their commentator just speculated -- al Queda. They've threatened London before, G-8 is a target they'd love to hit, and simultaneous attacks is a trademark of theirs.

All true. ITV is now saying six explosions, twenty deaths confirmed but that's an early number.

Update: Reports of hundreds of walking wounded.

Update: Tony Blair to speak at 7 AM Eastern.

Update: I am absolutely fascinated by the fact that MSNBC, developed to give NBC News a 24 hour cable outlet, and having access to NBC's London bureau, has chosen to take the feed from the British network ITN.

Not much of a statement of confidence, is it?

Meanwhile, speaking of NBC's London bureau, Today is continuously looping the same 20 seconds or so of footage, as if we won't notice that the same three people are being shown over and over and over.

Tony Blair has since spoken, in a short statement taken by all the networks. Here are the powerful words Katie Couric had the nerve to label "rattled."

It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world.

Somebody, I think, just made a big, big mistake.

Hitler's Blitz didn't shake the will of the British people.

But someone thinks that attacks today on the same tube system will? That's based on an assumption that the people of the Western democracies have gotten soft.

I think that's a bad bet.

Update: Good catch: Although she ignores it other than to read it, a note is passed to Katie Couric from their Justice Department reporter Pete Williams, who's very good, reminding that there was a roundup of a terror cell in London last year.

How's this for an official being far too honest for his own good:

The raids came after Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens warned, in the wake of the Madrid bombings, that an attack on the United Kingdom by Al Qaeda was inevitable.

"We do know that we have actually stopped terrorist attacks happening in London but ... there is an inevitability that some sort of attack will get through, but my job is to make sure that does not happen," Stevens said, British news outlets reported.

If he's still in office, that's a comment that will come back to haunt him.

(No sooner do I hear that then the ITN interviewer is saying to some poor bastard, "you must admit, this appears to be a coordinated terror attack of the type your boss and his predecessor said was inevitable." Oh, boy.)

That, of course, is aside from the international ricin gang the Brits busted, centered on Great Britain, which people never remember.

Update: A group has claimed responsibility. Be very, very skeptical. It's practically a matter of doctrine with al Queda proper to not take responsibility, but to let the act speak for itself. Remember that Osama bin Laden never took responsibility for September 11th except obliquely.

Something else: on Today it is noted that this is the 8th time that an attack follows the release of a tape from al Queda number 2 al Zawahiri.

Yes, that's why it makes some sense to pay those tapes some attention when they're released. They actually matter.

Update: A second, very short statement from Tony Blair, given with the apparent purpose of allowing him to give a statement with the world leaders attending the G-8 standing behind him, figuratively, and therefore literally.

That is not a bad purpose.

When he's done, he gives a nod to the flunkies, who step in and remove the podium so that he can step back and allow photos to be taken of the entire line of leaders all in a row, he having taken his spot and no podium in the way. Probably superfluous, and now giving photo editors an additional choice that will compete with the choice that the leaders would likely prefer. But that's a small thing.

Update: Yes, yes, NBC/MSNBC's are all over this video/audiotape link now. Can we take that as a promise the next tape will bump whichever missing person story they're obsessing over when it's released?

The question is raised: IRA?

There's a very famous line (so famous I can't remember who said it first): the IRA want "a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead." This just isn't their style.

Update: I love Steve Emerson.

G-8, schme-8, how's this for timing: this is the week that the trial of abu Hamza al-Mazri began.

You can see this has received an enormous amount of press attention; take a peek at this fine article.

Don't remember al-Masri? Oh, enjoy.

Update: Here we go again. Israel is denying that their embassy officials were tipped before the explosion. The original rumour according to MS (which means according to AP) came from a "Foreign Ministry official," but they don't say which Foreign Ministry, British or Israeli. What are the chances an Israeli official would start us all down this road again? Because what is this but a revised and updated version of the insidious 9/11 story -- someone tipped the Jews!

Update: CNN says in one breath that it is far too soon to say with any certainty who might be responsible, and that they have the statement from this group no one's ever heard of and that they're happy to read it.

Great. Now a group doesn't necessarily have to go to the trouble of actually planning and executing a terrorist attack. All they have to do is wait for someone else to commit terrorism, get in there early when the media has little hard information, and they can get their propaganda read on TV.

Back in the day -- back, ironically, when fewer lives were at stake because terrorists thought if they killed too many people they risked losing sympathy and therefore leverage, including over the media -- media outlets agonized step by step over what they did, attempting to balance news coverage with not upsetting terrorists making demands that typically included having their demands publicized to the point of endangering lives, with never disseminating terrorist propaganda -- which they seemed to define as something other than newsworthy, something other than journalism.

Yet here's Nic Robertson reading what may or may not even be the statement of the group responsible. Here's our philosophy! Here's our position! Here's why we killed people!

If journalism now includes happily disseminating the propaganda of those who have yet to even demonstrate their terrorist bona fides, standards have certainly changed in twenty years.

Comments

[davod]

The Ricin terrorists - As I recall they were found not guilty because the castor beans were not considered reasonable evidence. The police were also severely critized as biased. A problem with the criminal system being involoved with the war on terror.