Apparently there was a lot of survellance involved with the attack. Tho I loved Blair's speech. Nearly sounded like Churchill "When they seek to intimidate us we will not be intimidated".

"We will fight them on the Beaches!"

Myeah, the speech was good, but it was a crappy acting job. Where Bush was underdoing it in terms of emotion after 9/11, Blair was overdoing it. All imho, of course.






You just typed my new sig.

Blair always talks like he's gonna cry. Haven't seen the speech by the way.

Blair pNz j00!

There are some poeple that believe that the CIA caused the bombing so that that Britiain would keep troops in Iraq. Credible to some extent - yes. I believe this is not that case.

Oh yeah, sure.
What moron made that up?

yea, that'd be pretty dumb. If something came out on that, we'd alienate one of our staunchest and long-time allies. Now, I could see us doing it to France.

This notion of secret merciless political strategy should not be entirely shrugged off. It does exist to some extent (most probably in larger quantities in the past Cold War). Therefore its not moronic. However, i do reject its application to the CIA and what happened in London, i believe the risk and damage that a leak of such information could result in greater damage than what its worth (as Satis said).

oh, most certainly the government is capable of some despicable things...all our governments, for that matter. Anyone interested, look up COINTELPRO. It was a collection of 'anti-insurgency' operations the US government carried out on its own people. All kinds of illegal shit was done, up to and including assassination. But anyway, I doubt the CIA had anything to do with the London bombing. Or any other outright terrorist action. The chance for leaks is too great in today's wired world, and with the hoopla our governments have made out of terrorism, they'd be committing suicide if they were linked with any kind of terrorist action.

A separate note on this subject:

Ive just realised the sheer stupidity in futility of the actions of terrorism today. Can someone please indicate to me an example of where terrorism has succeeded in chaning the favour of policy? These poeple should realise that terrorism is not tolerated and fiercely opposed (in the US and UK anyway).

Therefore i come to 2 evaluations:

1) Perhaps it is not the goal of terrorists to inflluence policy, but simply kill who opposes them in a rage of murder. Nothing more ideologically complex than killing your neighbour for screwing your wife.

2) Terroism will eventially become obsolete. Extremists and minorities may come to realisation that with the ever increasing risk of failure, capture and detection, other methods will need to be used.

it worked in Spain. As long as it works once, it will continue to be used.

Besides, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. IF you were fighting for your freedom against oppressors, would you stop? Of course, a freedom fighter doesn't target the populace, but that concept is beyond hte conception of hte average terrorits.

just what i was gonna say Satis. Sure I'm kinda against the Iraq thing, although to be honest I dont really care anymore. But like you say, I'm sure people in Al-Quida feel they are the ones in the right, and America are the terrorists, and of course America think they are the ones that are right etc. Any killing in order to get your point across is wrong, but its in human nature and lets face it, even if we all stop waging 'war' on terrorists, the people who have the right frame of mind to do things like 9/11 or the london bombings aren't gonna adhere to it.

edit: btw Birmingham is being evacuated right now, though no one knows why. The main entertainment street (Broad Street) is the one that is being evacuated. And also Kings Cross was apparently evacuated this morning.

I think the London bombings haven't had the impact the terrorists would have hoped. The people in London seem to carry on with their normal lives and most financial markets have already recovered.

yea, I think they were hoping for something more along the lines of the 9/11 attack.

Thing is, our economy was already fucked up. 9/11 only gave it the nudge it needed. Now that we're in a time of economic recovery, there aren't going to be any long-lasting negative consequences. Unless they manage to pop a nuke in a major city.

Not a nuke, but a dirty bomb is a possibility.

But still, a valid point raised, I wonder how the £ compares to the $ right now, lemme go check.

$1 = £ 1.73774

So it's still at about it's average, but last time i checked, it was more like 1.9, but still, I don't feel this a big enough drop to be concidered related to the attack.

At the end of the day, we are british, and a british spirit is never broken easy, so I'll sit here with my tea and crumpets you terrorist bitches.