Hello:

Brit Hume, that bastion of intellect, asked the question "What have WE learned about the London bombing?"

I'd like to answer. We've learned that the billions we spent hassling Americans at our airports was wasted. We learned that violating Americans privacy by listening to their phone calls and reading their mail didn't work. We learned that the 3,000 dead Americans in Iraq didn't work. We learned that taking away our right to Habeas Corpus didn't work. We learned that torture didn't work. We learned that the jillions we are about to spend on borders is going to be wasted. We learned that hassling Mexicans isn't going to make us safer. There's more, but that's enough for now.

At least that what I got from the London bombings. I'll bet you got something else. Ok, spill it!

excon

Excon, which London bombings are you referring to, do you mean the July 2006 tube bombings ?

Cheers for clarifing that excon.
Oddly enough the UK has lived with the threat of terrorism for the last 30+ years and we have adapted.
The recent rash of religious motivated attacks is a departure from the "norm", but apart from causing some inconvience, seeming increased security measures and other actions, we have adjusted.

The problem with terrorism is that it is conducted by seemingly normal members of the community and as such there is no real defence against it.

Yes you have lived with the added security measures that excon is complaining about. Do you feel your rights have been terribly violated by these additional measures ? I strangely do not feel put out by being asked to remove my shoes at the airport.

Its funny, excon, that you can look at the same event as I do and come to exactly the opposite conclusion fom me.

In the UK, there is no equivalent of the Patriot Act. There is no wiretapping. There is no monitoring of terrorist groups. They spend their time looking at EVERYONE so as not to seem biased against a specific group. They play by PC rules. They also have a strong wall between external and internal security forces, the same as we had before the Patriot Act broke that wall. And because of that, they have suffered numerous attacks... the underground bombings, the recent attempted car bomb attacks.

By contrast, we have the Patriot Act. And as I mentioned in another post, it has been 2,127 days since our last attack, compared to an average of 1-2 per year for the 40 years before that.

Seems to me that what we are doing WORKS.

I don't feel at all threatened by this latest spate of bomb attempts. I think it shows whatever our intelligence people are doing is working as they are generally thwarting these attempts before they do any harm. In fact we had more bomb threats during the IRA terrorist campaign than we do now. I guess here we have always had to watch out for suspect packages and suspicious people and so its no different.

I don't think it is fair to conclude that these added measures don't work, we realistically as members of the public will never know how many other attempts have been made and thwarted before they came to fruition based on the work that is carried out. We have just had a terrorist who planned the 21/7 bombings here prosecuted, he did a runner to Rome after the plot failed and he was found hiding out in a flat after his phone calls were traced. These are nccesary measures under the current threats, maybe an inconvinience to the majority of law abiding citizens, but if it goes some way to helping save lives, which is does, then it can only be a good thing.

I can honestly say these extra measures are welcomed by me. I am in the UK though!

Ex,

I've learned from such incidents that we should develop a "non-emotive lexicon for discussing the issues in order to avoid linking them to terrorism." I've learned it's entirely inappropriate to describe terrorist atrocities using such terms as "Jihadist," "Islamist," or "Fundamentalist." I've learned "It's the British's fault; it's the Americans' fault," that by golly it's George Bush's fault that all these kindly Muslims are forced to pack explosives in cars and drive them into markets, police stations, weddings and funerals. I've also heard there are like a gazillion surveillance cameras in the UK watching your every move. That's a little bit of what I've learned.

Oh, and I've also learned there have been zero fundamentalist/Jihadist/Islamist terrorist attacks in the US for almost 6 years now. Something must be working.

Steve

The same people that attempted these recent bombings also threatened to bomb the base where the USS John F. Kennedy is kept, which happens to be the same base my husband works at. Everyone was scared and it was a giant mess. The party that threatened this was 45 strong and they caught only 3. I hope nothing happens here! :)