Richard Clarke on ABC now...

[Postman]

Brings up the "fight them there instead of here" policy as not really working....

Was asked why this hasn't happened in the US yet....

He said London has a much larger "jihadist community", there is a large Muslim population in London that sympathizes with Al-Qaeda...there is nothing of the sort in the US.

Also said Bush needs to "harden" potential targets in the US.

(I would assume this means subways, rail, power plants, chemical plants, etc., etc.)

[CTD]

1. Did anyone just see the segment on US transit security?

They discussed the ease of attacking our transit systems. They showed from their earlier investigative reporting how unattended backpacks went unnoticed on trains. Then they showed what explosives in a single backpack would do.

To a bus.

It was obliterated. Just obliterated.

I'm sure this was unintentional on ABC's part. But, it ties in with something I have been thinking. That bus in London wasn't damaged *that* badly.

4 bombs went off in densely packed areas and only 38 were killed (with less than an additional 45 seriously wounded). That's a VERY low number of casualties.

The tricky part of this bombing was getting the explosives in place and coordinating the timing for maximum impact. They did that. Why didn't they place more powerful explosives? We know al Quida (if it was al Quida) has much stronger stuff at their disposal.

As it was, the carnage was no worse than a typical bad day in Baghdad (BTW, I believe 21 died in attacks there today). That's not to make light of the incident or of any loss of life, but the death toll is far from staggering.

When you compare the death toll to 9/11 or even the Madrid 3/11 bombings, the loss of life is very very low. Considering the circumstances (poor access in tunnels - trapped victims - high smoke inhalation risk), it should have been at least as high as Madrid.

Why was it so low? It begs the question, IMO, who was behind this and what did they seek to accomplish?

[Gogi]

2. Terror, that's what they're after.

A small explosion can be just as effective as a large one. I walked around an IRA carbomb in 1974 (did'nt realize it, of course!) that did'nt have a detonator, the IRA wanted to make a 'statement', bastards.