Cable Newsers Go Ga-Ga over Undetonated Car Bombs in London
Are you scared yet? As you have undoubtedly heard by now, a pair of car bombs were discovered in London yesterday. Authorities said both cars were Mercedes and the apparatus in both was the same: Canisters of propane and gasoline and nails. “These vehicles are clearly linked,” said a London police commissioner.
MSNBC covered it extensively yesterday, giving it nearly the whole hour during its Tucker Carlson and Chris Matthews shows and their late afternoon repeats. The story continues to lead on both CNN and MSNBC this morning.
(As I write this, MSNBC is reporting that a burning Jeep Cherokee just burst through the doors at an airport in Scotland. One source says that one of two Asian men in the car was also on fire. Another source says there was only one man in the car and he was apprehended by police. Here’s a link to the story on CNN.)
On MSNBC’s “Countdown” last night, Keith Olbermann was having none of it. His guest for the segment was Larry Johnson, one of the former Republican CIA agents that Bush scared straight with the Iraq war and outing of secret agent Valerie Plame Wilson.
Johnson portrayed the would-be bombers as amateurs and doubted that the bombs could have caused the sort of catastrophic damage being hyped by the newsers. He also said that whether the would-be terrorists were Al Qaeda or just wanna-bes was nearly irrelevant.
In either case, and despite the fact the attacks were bungled, the attempts in London put the lie to the ridiculous theory that by attacking the terrorists “over there” (Iraq), we’re preventing them from attacking us “over here” — if “here” is defined as any English-speaking country that invaded Iraq.
Here’s a flavor what Johnson had to say about the thwarted bombings on his website, No Quarter:
