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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The discovery of an unexploded bomb in a parked London car poses no specific threat to the United States, the FBI said Friday, although it's urging police and the public to remain vigilant.

The Department of Homeland Security said it has no plans to change the U.S. terrorism threat level in reaction to the incident, which involved a car police said was packed with nails and gasoline.

In a written statement, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said, "I have seen no specific, credible information suggesting that this incident is connected to a threat to the homeland."

Chertoff mentioned the upcoming Independence Day holiday but asked the public, "as always, that they be vigilant and report any suspicious activities to authorities."

He said Homeland Security officials have been in close contact with UK authorities.

The current "elevated" threat level -- color coded as yellow -- is defined as a "significant risk of terrorist attacks." Separate threat levels for New York City and U.S. aviation remain at "orange" or "high." (Watch British police appeal for tips linked to the explosive device )

Scotland Yard described the find as a "potentially viable explosive device" that was discovered in a silver Mercedes-Benz sedan near Piccadilly Circus in central London. (Read more about the device found in a car near a London nightclub)

President Bush has been briefed on the situation by national security adviser Stephen Hadley, and the White House also is monitoring, said spokesman Tony Snow.

At the Pentagon, the car bomb was mentioned during a scheduled meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where officials discussed making sure that necessary authorities would be informed of the incident.

An FBI statement said the agency plans to follow all appropriate leads, although "at this time we have no specific information on any threats related to this incident here in the U.S."

The statement appeals for the public to "remain vigilant and report suspicious activity to law enforcement."

Also, state, local and federal law enforcement officials in the United States are being urged to be alert.

New York City police said that as a precaution, they are assigning officers to subways and implementing additional vehicle checkpoints throughout the city.

"We'll take a little bit of extra precaution," said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "We're going to ramp up a little bit ... nothing dramatic ... some you'll notice, some you won't."

The mayor said the city has a police officer assigned full time to London who will keep authorities posted on the British investigation.

In Washington, a few extra police officers were added to the streets of the nation's capital, said Kenneth McCracken, spokesman for the city's Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.

Police in other U.S. cities including Los Angeles, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Miami, Florida; and New Orleans, Louisiana; said they also were monitoring the situation, although they had no plans to increase security.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said it was too soon to speculate on who was behind the car bomb and what the target might have been.

"In the car, they found significant quantities of [gasoline] together with a number of gas cylinders," Clarke said. While he could not immediately say how much fuel was there, one source told CNN it added up to about 50 gallons -- 100 liters in the front and 100 liters in the back.

"I can tell you it was in several large containers," Clarke said. "There were also a large number of nails in the vehicle."

Clarke said it's "obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been significant injury or loss of life."

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"In the car, they found significant quantities of [gasoline] together with a number of gas cylinders," Clarke said. While he could not immediately say how much fuel was there, one source told CNN it added up to about 50 gallons -- 100 liters in the front and 100 liters in the back.

No one could afford that here....or atleast their credit card/debit card would stop them from getting it all at once.......

http://www.dailygazette.com

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London plot leads NYC to heighten security
BY SARA KUGLER The Associated Press

   NEW YORK — The city is strengthening its already-tight security as a precaution by adding police in high profile areas after a bomb was discovered in a busy area of London, the mayor and police commissioner said Friday.
   “We’re going to ramp up a little bit, but nothing dramatic,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “We’ll take a little bit of extra precaution. Some of you will notice, some of you won’t — but we have to be cognizant.”
   “We want to just be on the safe side here and employ additional resources over the weekend,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said later at an unrelated news conference with the mayor.
   “We want to give people who visit this city and travel on the subways a higher level of comfort, and we do that to a large extent by increasing the number of uniformed police officers,” Kelly added.
   The commissioner said patrols were being increased at high profile tourist areas like Times Square and Herald Square. There also would be increased police presence on the subways for at least Friday evening’s rush hour, and perhaps longer.
   Police also were stepping up their patrol of parking garages to look for suspicious vehicles, Kelly said.
   A British security official told The Associated Press that Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 is examining whether there is any connection between the bomb attempt and at least two similar foiled plots — including a planned attack on a West End nightclub in 2004 and a thwarted attempt to use limousines packed with gas canisters to attack targets in London and New York.
   Kelly said the similarity between the bomb found in London Thursday night and the method of the limousine plot was partly responsible for the city’s heightened security.
   Earlier this month in London, seven men convicted of joining in a terrorist plot to bomb U.S. financial landmarks and London targets were handed prison sentences ranging up to 26 years.
   All were convicted of assisting in a plot led by Dhiren Barot, who was sentenced to life in prison last year.
   Barot, 35, a British convert to Islam, was convicted of planning to use vehicles packed with explosives to attack such targets as the International Monetary Fund in Washington and the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup headquarters in New York as well as London hotels and train stations.
   The U.S. government urged Americans to be vigilant about suspicious activity after British police defused the bomb in central London on Thursday, but officials said they saw no potential terrorist threat in the United States ahead of next week’s Fourth of July holiday.
   Bloomberg also noted that the New York Police Department has an officer assigned full time in London.
   “He is there and he’ll keep us posted,” the mayor said. “We will have our police offi cer give us a full report, because you want to know what happened.”

Yeah....like if the well trained "killing/protecting machine" would miss you and I during an incident....look at that weapon........we gotta stop hanging around together like a school full of minnows......

I'm afraid b4 long that a terrorist attack may be coming to a city near us.

Let's hope our area doesn't have a 'muslim' revolt...cause I'm not too sure if we'd win. They are everywhere. I'm not saying they are all terrorists...I must be politically correct here. But they really are everywhere. And if they hate this country so much and how the wicked, west, satan lives...why the heck are they here? GO HOME! And leave us to our depraved, sick, sinful, greedy, pathetic life!

They are just pandering to their own people with language like that......Hitler did it too.....they SAY they dont like it...but look---they live in a desert or are from a third world country---the only thing they hate is the fact they dont have what we have---we are the land flowing with milk and honey-----and we continue to complain and beat up peacocks calling them vampires and listen to Dr. Phil, Judge Judy and Rosie and Oprah.......then say "I dont know what is going on but did you see American Idol or the Sopranos, my cell phone isn't working darn, I wish I had a new one".....

Envy and covetousness are very bad......

I don't think they want what we have....I think they don't want 'us' to have what we have. We are the infidels, the west, the satan's...in their radical view anyways.

There was an article in the Sunday paper a few weeks ago that stated there was a Muslim training camp right in the heart of the Catskill Mtns. That's too close to home to suit me. The camp has even had very radicle visitors fro the middle east visit on occasion and the people who live near the campo are pretty nervous.

http://www.timesunion.com

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Cleric: Cryptic threat preceded attacks  
  
By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press
Wednesday, July 4, 2007

LONDON -- "Those who cure you are going to kill you." That, a British priest said Wednesday, was the cryptic warning made to him in Jordan by a purported al-Qaida chief months before the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow that have been linked to a group of foreign Muslims working as doctors in Britain.
    
British authorities have said the attacks bore the hallmarks of an al-Qaida operation, but security officials say investigators are still trying to determine whether there was any direct link between the alleged plotters and an outside mastermind.

Britain lowered the terrorism threat level on Wednesday. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that authorities will increase scrutiny of foreigners recruited for their skills, including doctors coming to work for the National Health Service, which employed all eight suspects in the failed car bombings.

Canon Andrew White, a senior Anglican priest who works in Baghdad, said he met the man privately with a translator and sheik after holding talks with Sunni Muslim tribal and religious leaders April 18 in the Jordanian capital, Amman. He meets regularly with extremists in an attempt to calm Iraq's sectarian violence.

He said religious leaders told him the man was an al-Qaida leader who traveled from Syria to the meeting. The man, an educated Iraqi in his 40s and dressed in Western clothes, warned of attacks on Britain and the United States, White said.

"It was like meeting the devil," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "He talked of destroying Britain and the United States and then said, 'Those who cure you are going to kill you.'"

White, who runs Baghdad's only Anglican parish and has been involved in several hostage negotiations in Iraq, said he did not understand the threat's significance at the time. He said he passed the general threat along to Britain's Foreign Office, but did not mention the comment that could be interpreted as hinting at the involvement of doctors in a terror plot.

Then came the news that six physicians were among the eight suspects detained in the failed attacks in Britain.

"As soon as I heard many of the suspects were doctors I remembered those words," he said. "I work with a lot of people who are not necessarily good people. It becomes very difficult to distinguish what threat is real and what is not."

White said he gave the man's identity to the Foreign Office but would not say publicly what it was. He also said he gave the same details to American authorities in Baghdad.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy, denied White relayed the man's identify but confirmed he reported his meeting with the alleged al-Qaida leader.

He also said that White did not pass on the reference alluding to medical practitioners and that because his information was vague it "didn't really merit further analysis." But White's report has now been given to British police in their investigation, the spokesman said.

The eight suspects include one doctor from Iraq and two from India. Also in custody are a physician from Lebanon and a Jordanian doctor and his medical assistant wife. Another doctor and a medical student are thought to be from the Middle East, possibly Saudi Arabia.

The attempted attacks have increased scrutiny of foreigners working as doctors or in other professions in Britain.
"We'll expand the background checks that have been done where there are highly skilled migrant workers coming into this country," Brown told the House of Commons in his first appearance at the weekly prime minister's questions.

The government also lowered its terrorism threat level one step to "severe" from "critical" -- the highest on a five-point scale. Officials said Tuesday that investigators believe the main plotters had been rounded up, though others on the periphery were still being hunted.

The reduction "does not mean the overall threat has gone away -- there remains a serious and real threat against the United Kingdom and I would again ask that the public remain vigilant," Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said in a statement.

A U.S.-based intelligence monitoring group said Wednesday that it obtained a copy of a video intended for posting on militant Internet sites in which al-Qaida's No. 2 leader urges Muslims to unite in a holy war against the West. But it did not mention the bombing attempts in Britain.

It was not possible to determine from the transcript released by the group SITE whether the video of Ayman al-Zawahri was recorded before the attacks.

Several of the arrested men in the British plot were on a watch list compiled by the domestic intelligence agency MI5, a British government security official said, indicating their identities previously had been logged by agents. The official did not say why they were put on the watch list.

"Some, but not all, have turned up in a check of the databases, but they are not linked to any previous incident," the security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the material.

The official said Britain's security services are watching about 1,600 people and have details logged about hundreds more.

The Evening Standard said one suspect on the list had posted a comment on an Internet chat room condemning Danish cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in a derogatory way. The newspaper, which cited unidentified intelligence sources for the information, did not say which suspect.

The Times of London said one of the eight people in custody, Iraqi-born physician Bilal Abdulla, reportedly had links to radical Islamic groups and several others were linked to extremist radicals listed on the MI5 database.

Abdulla was a passenger in the Jeep that smashed into Glasgow's airport. Investigators believe the same men who parked two explosives-laden Mercedes cars in London may have also driven the blazing SUV in Glasgow, officials say.

Shiraz Maher, a former member of a radical Islamic group, said he knew Abdulla at Cambridge University.
He was certainly very angry about what was happening in Iraq. ... He supported the insurgency in Iraq. He actively cheered the deaths of British and American troops in Iraq," Maher told BBC television's "Newsnight."
He said Abdulla berated a Muslim roommate for not being devout enough, showing him a beheading video and warning that could happen to him. Maher said Abdulla also claimed to have a number of videos of the then-leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike last year.

Abdulla had been disciplined by his employers at the Royal Alexandra Hospital outside Glasgow for spending too much time on the Internet, according to hospital staff, suggesting the plot may have been planned in cyberspace.

Police seized several computers from hospitals in Glasgow, Stoke-on-Kent and Liverpool.

British Broadcasting Corp., citing unidentified sources, said police in Scotland had identified a house rented by one of the suspects arrested in Glasgow as a potential bomb factory. Police could not comment on the report.

While information held on the MI5 database did not alert authorities to the attacks, it did help police to round up suspects quickly, the government security official said.

No one has yet been charged in the plot.

The family of one suspect -- Muhammad Haneef, a 27-year-old doctor from India arrested Monday in Australia -- professed his innocence. Haneef worked in 2005 at Halton Hospital near Liverpool in northern England, hospital spokesman Mark Shone has said.

"He is innocent," Qurat-ul-ain, Haneef's mother, told AP in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

Another Indian national arrested in Liverpool was Sabeel Ahmed, a 26-year-old doctor whose family in Bangalore said Wednesday that he was related to Haneef but did not say how.

"Both these boys are just caught in between," his mother, Zakia Ahmed, who also is a doctor, said in front of her home in an upscale neighborhood about 7.5 miles from Haneef's home.

http://www.dailygazette.com

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Terrorist attacks in Britain breed mistrust of even moderate Muslims
BY THEODORE DALRYMPLE For the Los Angeles Times

   Arriving in Britain by air the day after two men crashed a gasoline-laden Jeep Cherokee into the main terminal at Glasgow’s international airport, and a couple of days after two car bombs were discovered in the heart of London, I was surprised by how calm everybody was.
   Apart from the prohibition of passenger drop-off and pickup next to the terminal building at Birmingham Airport, everything was as usual. Men and women in Muslim garb mingled in the crowd with perfect tranquillity, expecting neither violence nor even verbal reproach.
   Was this a sign of the admirable tolerance of British society, or of its bovine complacency born of an inability, or unwillingness, to make the effort to defend itself? Was it decency, cowardice or stupidity?
   A friend who met me at the airport said something that must by now be true of many ordinary British people. Just as we used to wonder, on meeting Germans of a certain age, what they had done during World War II, so she wondered, when she found herself next to a young Muslim on a bus or a train, what he thought of the various bombings perpetrated by his co-religionists and whether he might be a bomber.
   She found herself looking for the nearest exit, as we are all enjoined to do by flight attendants before the plane takes off, in case of the need for swift exit.
   There are reasonable grounds for suspicion, of course. Surveys — for whatever they are worth — show a surprising, and horrifying, degree of sympathy, if not outright support, for the bombers on the part of the young Muslim population of Britain. They show that a large number of Muslims in Britain want the implementation of Sharia law and think that murdering British Jews is justified simply because they are Jews. And when an atrocity is perpetrated by a Muslim, they evince no passion remotely comparable to that aroused by, say, the work of Salman Rushdie.
   On the other hand, day-to-day relations with Muslims are often polite and friendly, and large numbers of Muslim small-business men depend upon such relations with their non-Muslim customers for a living. This could change.
   One of the most sinister effects of the efforts of the bombers and would-be bombers is that they have undermined trust completely. This is because those under investigation turn out not to be cranks or marginals but people who are either well-integrated into society, superficially at least, or who have good career prospects. They are not the ignorant and uneducated; quite the reverse. Seven people detained in the latest plot worked in the medical profession.
   The perpetrators do not bomb because of personal grievance but because they have allowed themselves to be gripped by a stupid, though apparently quite popular, ideology: radical Islam. Nor are they of one ethnic or national group only: We have had Somali, Pakistani, Arab, Jamaican, Algerian and British Muslim terrorists. This means, unfortunately, that no one can ever be quite sure whether a Muslim who appears polite and accommodating is not simultaneously contemplating mass murder. Deceit, after all, is one of the terrorists’ deadliest weapons.
INITIAL REACTION
   Despite friendly and long-lasting relations with many Muslims, my first reaction on seeing Muslims in the street is now mistrust; my prejudice, far from having been inherited or inculcated early in life, developed late in response to events.
   The fundamental problem is this: There is an asymmetry between the good that many moderate Muslims can do for Britain and the harm that a few fanatics can do to it. The 1-in-1,000 chance that a man is a murderous fanatic is more important to me than the 999-in-1,000 chance that he is not a murderous fanatic: If, that is, he is not especially valuable or indispensable to me in some way.
   And the plain fact is that British society could get by perfectly well without the contribution even of moderate Muslims. The only thing we really want from Muslims is their oil money for bank deposits, to prop up London property prices and to sustain the luxury market; their cheap labor that we imported in the 1960s in a vain effort to bolster the dying textile industry is now redundant.
   In other words, one of the achievements of the bombers and would-be bombers is to make discrimination against most Muslims who wish to enter Britain a perfectly rational policy. This is not to say that the government would espouse it, other than surreptitiously by giving secret directions to visa offi ces around the world. But why should a country take an unnecessary risk without a compensatory benefit?
   The problem causes deep philosophical discomfort to everyone who believes in a tolerant society. On the one hand we believe that every individual should be judged on his merits, while, on the other, we know it would be absurd and dangerous to pretend that the threat of terrorism comes from sections of the population equally.
TERRIBLE DILEMMA
   History is full of the most terrible examples of what happens when governments and peoples ascribe undesirable traits to minorities, and no decent person would wish to participate in the crimes to which this ascription can give rise; yet it would also be folly to ignore sociological reality.
   All that is needed, then, to deal with the present situation is the wisdom of Solomon.

Again they're in a situation where you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys.

And half of the people will give all Muslim's the benefit of the doubt....and the other half will trust none! I personally can't help but believe that it is the culture of the Muslims, to perhaps be a peaceful people....however....their religion teaches otherwise....and that aspect of the muslim culture is very dangerous.

Got this in an E-mail and it's interesting reading.
*****************************************************************************
. . . Can a good Muslim be a good American?
I forwarded that question to a friend who worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years .
Susan

The following is his forwarded reply:

Theologically - no.
. . . Because his allegiance is to Allah, the moon God of Arabia.
Religiously - no.
. . . Because no other religion is accepted by his Allah except Islam (Quran, 2:256)
Scripturally - no.
. . . Because his allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam and the Quran (Koran).
Geographically - no.
. . . Because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.
Socially - no.
. . . Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews.
Politically - no.
. . . Because he must submit to the mullah (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and Destruction of America, the great Satan.
Domestically - no.
. . . Because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34 ).
Intellectually - no.
. . . Because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.
Philosophically - no.
. . . Because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran do not allow freedom of religion and expression.
. . Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist. Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic.
Spiritually - no.
. . . Because when we declare "one nation under God," the Christian's God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in The Quran's 99 excellent names.
- - - Therefore after much study and deliberation.... perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country.
- - - They obviously cannot be both "good" Muslims and good Americans.
* * * Call it what you wish..it's still the truth. * * * You had better believe it.
If you find yourself intellectually in agreement with the above statements, perhaps you will share this with your friends.
+ + + The more who understand this, the better it will be for our country and our future.

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Again they're in a situation where you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys.

Never can....and never could.......we cant even decide what is good or bad for ourselves without being PC'd to death.......