More on Glasgow airport attack

Bit busy sorting the aftermath of a flood in my flat so I'll direct you to other people's stuff, if I may.

Hitchens makes the point that the London bombs were possibly designed to kill women in particular:

"Only at the tail end of the coverage was it admitted that a car bomb might have been parked outside a club in Piccadilly because it was "ladies night" and that this explosion might have been designed to lure people into to the street, the better to be burned and shredded by the succeeding explosion from the second car-borne cargo of gasoline and nails."

With regards to Glasgow, Jamie K is one of the few outside Scotland to have noted that the attacks were designed to coincide with the start of the school holidays here:

"[A]n airport terminal attacked during the first day of the school holidays. Mass casualty systems attack: al Qaeda classic. Ramming a VBIED into the target before exploding it is an Iraq insurgency classic, too."

Personally I'd also be inclined to agree that the situation has been improved slightly by the fact that John Reid is no longer Home Secretary.

Another hallmark of Al-Qaeda and their imitators we see here is that the perpetrators were not a) the dispossessed and the poor, b) their behaviour prior to the attacks was characterised by quiet piety, and c) their actions have astonished their families to the point of disbelief.

This last point is sometimes greeted with incredulity but while I can't say for sure, I don't think in general it should be. These appear to be disciplined revolutionaries prepared to do the unspeakable in the pursuit of the unattainable - concealing their true aims and beliefs from their peers and their families.

The blogosphere being what it is, there's some strong competition but I think the prize for the most paranoid and stupid post on the subject should surely go to this blogger who finds something fishy in a burning Reichstag sort of way about the whole thing:

"Similarly, the Glasgow driver gets it all wrong, catches fire, runs his jeep against the Airport entrance doors, abandons his vehicle and scarpers. So did he chicken out? Why didn't he ram the doors in order to drive into the main thoroughfare inside to cause maximum havoc? And if he couldn't manoeuvre outside so as to ram the doors at high speed, how come he or his handlers hadn't researched that beforehand?

Which suggests, in both cases, that the drivers had certainly not intended to suicide themselves in a blaze of glory. On the contrary, the behaviour of both suggests they were far too concerned to save their own lives."

Yes, dousing yourself with petrol and then lighting it just screams self-preservation, doesn't it?

Finally, here's something via Will, as ever in the best possible taste:



Update: Nearly missed this, which would never do. Freens notes the "[g]eneral astonishment that a doctor might be involved in the planning and carrying out of these attempted massacres of innocent passers-by.":

"You mean you've forgotten Harold Shipman this soon?"

Read the rest: it's a splendid riposte to those inclined to treat doctors as priests - a distressingly common tendency - as well as those inclined to treat clerics with more respect than they deserve, which is also a distressingly common tendency.

Update #2: Ooh, more on the idea that anyone should be surprised that doctors were apparently involved in these conspiracies, from Norm and Adam LeBor.