Well…. the original website claim for the London attack was made by a group calling itself ?The Secret Organisation of Al Qaeda in Europe?.

More evidence?

Yes I’d seen the Juan Cole piece (he’s daily reading as far as I am converned). I would say two things. Firstly his conjecture is interesting *if* the text in the end is valid. I have refrained from using this since I think there are still plenty of doubts. Also Cole suggests Egypt or al-Zawahiri’s environment as a possible background for the person who wrote the text (I don’t imagine it was a typo). Well……. note that Mustafa Nasar comes from Syria. I won’t go further, since I’m already out of my depth.

Secondly I think Juan is a bit too ready to dismiss UK-born involvement. Remember the guy who had Daniel Pearle’s throat slit live on video was UK born (and went to my university, the LSE) so nothing here should surprise us or be ruled out. Prudence is warranted, and we need to await more info.

Regarding the murder of Theo van Gogh I’d also appreciate your assessment of this based on what you know or have read. The suggestion here is that there is once more a Spanish connection. I don’t know.

Therefore whatever Blair’s government claims today about who might be behind the bombings is highly suspect ; it is very important to watch closely what will happen next.

Will these bombings be used to rally the British populace into backing another attack on another innocent country ?

Will the British back another mass murder campaign that will lead to the deaths of another 100,000 civilians in say Iran ?

The first step the Brits should take now is to arrest Blair and all those who were behind deceiving the British people with the illegal Iraq campaign and all the false claims about WMD etc.

Once Blair is in jail (Guantanamo Bay would be a good place to lock him up as Blair’s buddy Bush claims that prisoners are well treated there) then you can start to have a serious investigation of who was behind the London bombings.

“Juan Cole has noticed something odd about the communique from the alleged perpetrators of the London bombing, Qaida al-Jihad in Europe: It includes a not-so-veiled appeal to Arab nationalism as well as to Islamic fundamentalism.

This may be nothing more than a blunder by a gang of Bin Ladin wannabes who know a hell of a lot more about killing innocent people with explosives than they do about the theology of the movement they claim to represent. But it could also be a sign that the tactical alliance between secular nationalists and religious fanatics formed to fight the Americans in Iraq is now being mirrored elsewhere ? or, alternatively, that the jihadis now operating under the Al Qaeda brand hope to mirror it elsewhere, even if it means abandoning the doctrinal purity of the movement’s founders.

Here’s the key line from the communique, as translated by Dr. Cole:

Community of Islam: rejoice at the good news! Community of Arabism: rejoice at the good news! The time of revenge has come for the crusader, Zionist British government.”