Persons claiming to speak on behalf of the Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for the failed car bombing in Times Square last night. Pakistani intelligence officials are now knocking down that claim, as you’d expect them to do, frankly, whether it was genuine or not. But CBS has another “Western diplomat” similarly casting doubt on the idea that the Pakistani Taliban has the global reach to mount such an attack.
When news first broke yesterday evening I was at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and in eyeshot of several top administration officials. So when my iPhone pinged me about the situation I was started monitoring it closely, not simply as a news story, but far more because my kids were at home only about 20 blocks from where it was all happening.
I watched the administration folks to get a sense of how seriously I should be taking it.
What seems most striking at the moment is the crudeness of the ‘bomb’ which apparently, if it had gone off, would have been more of an incendiary than an explosive device. It seems crude even given the limitations of a terrorist group trying to mount an attack half way around the globe. But the Times say it is actually similar to the 2007 attack in Edinburgh, Scotland, where a similar device also failed to detonate.
