Jan
30
Fawlty Terrorists
ByI sometimes wonder whether the single biggest factor preventing a terror attack in the UK today isn’t so much the skill of Britain’s counter-terrorism auhtorities but the ineptitude of the UK’s home-grown jihadists. First, there was the shoe bomber Richard Reid, whose shoe failed to go off. Then there was the car bomb attack on Glasgow airport in which the only fatality was the driver. And now the sentencing of Nicky “the least cunning person ever to have been charged with terrorism” Reilly, whose nail bomb detonated while he was assembling it in a restaurant toilet. I mean, you really couldn’t make it up.
3 Comments
February 1st, 2009 at 11:10 am
Not that I want to defend Richard Reid’s intellect AT ALL, but, in his case, wasn’t it that other passengers on the plane wrestled him to the ground when they understood what he was trying to do? Or is that an urban myth created to cancel out the nasty taste humanity left in the mouth knowing that Richard Reid was a member of it too?
February 2nd, 2009 at 9:22 pm
No, you’re right. It was the flight attendants who http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid_(terrorist)#Bombing_attempt_on_American_Airlines_63: rel=”nofollow”>foiled the bombing. But if you are going to go to the trouble of smuggling a bomb aboard a plane inside your shoe, you should at least work out a way of setting it off that does not involve precious minutes fiddling with matches.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:56 am
True. Though let us give thanks, on this occasion, for his spectacular dimness.