The technology used for last week’s London car bombs and the attempted suicide car bomb attack on Glasgow airport is the same as that used on an almost daily basis in Iraq. Crude, but highly effective, bombs made of gas canisters and nails have become the calling card of radical Islamic groups throughout the world. The gruesome technology perfected on the streets of Baghdad has been exported to countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia. Now it is in Britain. — The Telegraph

[E]xperts are saying that the bomb outside of the Tiger Tiger club wasn’t large enough to destroy a building, as previously thought, but had an effective radius of about 100 meters. This has led to speculation that the attacks are meant to either divert resources from other targets or they are psychological operations designed to spread fear and panic. — Red Alerts

The nature of the attempted attacks in the capital in the early hours of Friday morning did not take senior Scotland Yard officers by surprise. One had spoken privately of his conviction that the next attacks in the UK would be “vehicle-borne bombs against iconic targets”. The two Mercedes loaded with gas cylinders, petrol cans and nails, parked yards from the Eros statue at Piccadilly Circus and Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square, appeared to be just that. — The Guardian

A few hours before the first car bomb was discovered, a contributor to the chatroom on the Islamist al-Hesbah website wrote: “Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed.” He gave his reasons for the murder plot he was clearly involved in: the Iraq war, and – just as important – the honouring of perhaps our greatest novelist, Salman Rushdie. The choice of target – a nightclub on Ladies’ Night – is also revealing. When a similar gang plotted to blow up the Ministry of Sound in 2004, they talked about their desire to burn alive the “slags dancing around”. — The Independent

With no politics, no aim, no dreams, no noble imperative, for these Islamicists and their ideological masters, the means is the end. They are at once satanic abusers of our faith and social misfits unloved by all except their own reject band of brothers. Scorned by those they claim to defend, the dreaded sociopaths now seem determined to wound fatally the social contract made between this country and Muslim citizens.. — Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent

“Of course we want to see greater peace and security in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I think anybody I talk to, a leader in any part of the world, knows we’re in the business of dealing with a long-term threat … one that is unrelated in detail to one specific point of conflict in the world.” — British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown