London Blasts Like Past al-Qaida Strikes (Timeline changed)

[GoBlue]

LONDON (AP) - The three bombs that ripped apart subway cars hundreds of feet below ground exploded just seconds apart, police said Saturday, drastically revising earlier estimates. The new timeline, coupled with the nature of the explosives bolstered theories that al-Qaida-linked terrorists carried out the attacks that killed at least 49 people.

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http://home.bellsouth.net/s/editorial.dll?bfromind=630&eeid=4616623&_sitecat=1505&dcatid=0&eetype=article&render=y&ck=&ch=ne&s=in

[ConfuZed]

1. How the hell would they know how much the bombs weight or look like?

[TahitiNut]

2. Explosives experts know how much does what amount of damage.

Once the forensic analyses are performed, the type of explosive used is known. The energy any explosive releases is known. By the sheer volume of debris displaced by whatever distance it's displaced, one can assess the total amount of energy released. That yields a good estimate (certainly well within an order of magnitude) of the volume of explosive.

[Benbow]

3. Please wait for the outcome of the criminal investigation

before giving any more "credit" to anything al Quaeda.

[allemand]

4. Passenger believes he saw bomber

A bus passenger says he may have seen one of those responsible for the bomb attacks in London.

Richard Jones, from Binfield, near Bracknell, Berks, had got off a bus just before it was blown up in Tavistock Square on Thursday. (...)

Mr Jones, who was forced to take the bus from Euston after Tube services were suspended, said: "He was standing next to me with a bag at his feet and he kept dipping into this bag and fiddling about with something.

"I was getting quite annoyed with this because it was a crowded bus. Everybody is standing face-to-face and this guy kept dipping into this bag."

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/berkshire/4663853.stm

Note that he doesn't describe how the guy actually looked like, but I'm sure that he did so in his statement to police. The BBC report intentionally left it out, but the police already knows exactly what to look for.

[daleo]

6. This would be more convincing if the witness hadn't left the bus

I have fiddled with my backpack on buses plenty of times. I have seen plenty of other people do the same. On its own, this means nothing.

[allemand]

12. I see your point, but "if the witness hadn't left the bus", there probably

wouldn't be any witness at all, as he "was standing next" to the guy who "kept dipping into this bag and fiddling about with something".

The bus was very crowded, they were standing face-to-face, so it's really a bit unusual to do something like that over a dozen times in a short period, without taking anything out. Also, the guy was "in an agitated state".

[daleo]

14. True, if he had a bomb a nearby witness wouldn't survive.

But that doesn't prove this particular man was fiddling with a bomb.

Someone looking to be in an agitated state is a very subjective bit of evidence as well. After the fact, the witness could very well think the man looked more agitated than he did at the time he first saw him. In medical research recall bias is a notorious problem, for example. Once people know of an event (e.g. they have cancer) they are much more likely to recall things they assume might have a connection. That could easily be the case here too.

At best, the man's behavior was consistent with having a bomb. But calmly and stoically doing nothing while waiting for the explosion would be consistent with having a bomb too. I think the Israelis have seen all kinds of behavior before suicide bombings.

Without anything further connecting this to the explosion, I would consider it a very nice example of what Alfred Hitchcock called a McGuffin.

[DS1]

8. How amazingly British

I say good chap, would you stop fiddling with your sack in front of others?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

16. Hey! I'm a backpack fiddler!

[daleo]

5. I don't like this revising the timeline

I don't see why the authorities would think the explosions occurred over the span of an hour one day, then suddenly decide they all happened within seconds. The time of explosions is hardly a small detail that the police should get drastically wrong on the first day.

It seems like they may be fitting the facts to fit the preferred suspects. It should be easy enough to get these times verified though. There were plenty of witnesses with watches.

[merwin]

7. There was evidence that the 3 subway explosions happened at the same

time. One of the people videotaping (on his cellphone) the one that supposedly happened 25 minutes after the other 2 panned down to his watch and it was the exact same time as the other two.

[daleo]

9. Well, like I say, there ought to be no shortage of witnesses.

Plenty of people would have heard an explosion and looked at their watches. So this should be very easy to determine one way or another. I just don't see how the police could have got it wrong yesterday. They must have interviewed hundreds of witnesses. If nothing else, it seems like pretty shoddy police work.

I suppose this aspect of things will become grist for a lot of debate over the coming weeks. It is hard to say whether that will clarify or confuse the issue, though.

There may be people on DU that even heard or saw some of the blasts in London.

On edit: I think there is plenty here to keep tin foil hat wearers busy.

[krkaufman]

11. Sync'd timeline helps the police...

... in that they wouldn't have to explain why tube services weren't shutdown before the 3rd explosion. FWIW, I hope the bombs *were* sync'd, so the focus can remain on the bombers.

[daleo]

13. I might also help with forging the Al-Quada link in the public mind.

Although, in truth the difference in the timing shouldn't really matter. The 911 attacks were not simultaneous, although they were fairly close in time (half an hour or so?). The African embassy bombings were more nearly simultaneous, if I recall correctly. So, Al Quada bombings have gone both ways, I think.

But there has been a lot of talk about "the hallmarks" of the attack being similar to this group or that group. So, revising something as basic as the timing the day after the attack makes one wonder if there is a political motivation to do so. In any case, it is unsettling to me.

Your idea that it makes the authorities look better has plenty of merit too. Revising the timeline could have multiple purposes. I think I will have a look at my newspapers from yesterday (the paper copies I mean), and see how this aspect of the story was being treated then.

[norml]

10. Pak interrogating suspect for links with London carnage

Pak interrogating suspect for links with London carnage

Peshawar: Pakistani authorities are interrogating a British national, Zeeshan Siddique, suspected of having links with al Qaeda and militants in the UK, for his possible role in Thursday’s serial bomb blasts in London. Security agencies had picked up the man from near Peshawar in May.

Though Sidddique’s links with some of the militants belonging with Al Muhajiroun, a radical Muslim group in the UK, have been established, his association with the group as such has not been proved. However, the interrogators have recovered several phone numbers from his possession allegedly linking him to al Qaeda operatives, and feel he may be the missing link in the plot.

The interrogators have also recovered from him a CD containing programmes regarding circuit works, aeronautical mapping and digital simulation. He has reportedly disclosed to the interrogators, that he was a suspect in a failed plot to bomb pubs, restaurants and rail stations in London.

According to The Dawn , they are now focusing on a note in which Siddique states that one of his comrades had informed him that ‘wagon’ had now been called off. According to the paper, the reference to ‘wagon’ has prompted security officials to take a fresh look at the whole case with particular reference to the bombings in London’s underground tubes.


snip


http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=5761

[Richard Steele]

15. Well that settles that! It must be Al-Quaida!

Certainly, no one else in the WORLD would be able to set three clocks
to within 50 seconds of each other....:sarcasm:

The notion that this "synchronization of the explosions"
points to any particular group is just SILLY.

[K-W]

17. More lies, this argument is complete bullshit.

It is completely based around the belief in a monolithic authoritarian terrorist organization.

That is not reality but a US projection basued upon its monolithic authoritarian terorist organization.

[Zorra]

18. Unfortunately, roving bands of vicious wild poodles ate all the videos

that were taken by the surveillance cameras that are everywhere in London.

So they had to fix the intelligence to fit the plans.

The "Secret Organisation of el CIAda in Europe (a branch of the OSP) calls this fixing of intelligence "changing the timeline".

[Zenlitened]

19. London police revise timeline of subway blasts

London police revise timeline of subway blasts

CTV.ca News Staff

The three bombs placed on the London subway system blew up nearly simultaneously, meaning the devices were likely detonated by timers -- and not by suicide bombers.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick held a news conference Saturday to outline new details of the investigation into Thursday's bombings.

The three bombs in the subway system exploded starting at about 8:50 a.m. local time Thursday, Paddick said, revising earlier accounts that the Underground bombs detonated within a 26-minute span.

"A slightly different picture has emerged around the timing of the incidents," Paddick said. "It would appear now that all three bombs on the London Underground system went off within seconds of each other."

Source:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1120913886059_111/?hub=TopStories

"Slightly different"? Uh, no, the whole profile of the terrorist operation was more sophisticated than we were initially led to believe, it seems to me. This suggests that the attackers were not the sort of "freelancers" the "Bush is making us safer" crowd would have us believe.

:scared:

[bpilgrim]

20. 8:46 a.m.: Flight 11 Hits the North Tower of the World Trade Center

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a846flight11hits

peace