Remember after 911, when some of the apologists for the terrorists were saying that they couldn't have pulled it off, because Arabs are too incompetent and dumb to do anything like that?

Well, here's some evidence for that proposition:

The calls made on the phones allowed police to trace those behind the failed attacks last Friday, the London daily evening newspaper said, without giving sources.

The phones were meant to set off blasts when they were called, but the devices failed to detonate the mixture of gas canisters and nails in the two Mercedes cars parked in London's entertainment district.

In a very real sense, this is no doubt part of the reason that we haven't had more attacks, at least successful ones (remember moron Richard Reid?). The intersection of the sets between people who want to pull something like this off, and people who are capable of it, is fortunately not very large. Unfortunately, though, with advancing technology, it's going to get easier and easier to do more and more damage.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Were they amateurish by design?

As far as enemies go, Islam is really quite weak. When fighting against a society that is convinced of its own value, they would not stand a chance.

Take away their western weapons, and they would probably be wiped out by a society like the roman empire.

The real problem is the self-hatred of large parts of western civilization. Once we get over that, dealing with islam will be a piece of cake. Unfortunately that is a much more difficult problem...

Sometimes they can be quite clever and weaponize items which westerners would not think of as weapons such as airliners. More recently, they have learned to weaponize tall buildings in the Gaza strip.

Islams strenght is their casual willingness to go beyond the pale. rat poison and beheading children. At some point that will also be their undoing.

Jardinero: the idea that planes could be weapons was by no means an astonishing new notion that had never before occurred to Western authorities. In fact, the scenario of someone crashing a plane into the World Trade Center had entered the lexicon of popular culture -- for one thing, it was the plot of the pilot episode of the X-Files series spinoff The Lone Gunmen. The plane crashing was to be done by clever computer hackers via remote control instead of on-board hijackers armed with office supply equipment, but then again the hijacking of planes was also not unknown in life.

PS -- warning: the last link leads to a Truther weirdo, but I saw the show in question so I can say that at least his account of the show is real.

I think the commenters here are confusing a religion with a race in terms of intelligence or smarts. It makes no sense to me to say something like "Islam is weak" or "They can be quite clever."

The people of the Middle East are clearly very smart if one wants to view them in a historical context. Cradle of civilization and all that, you know.

Of course you may argue that Islam has stupefied / stupidified them. I don't quite buy that either. You would probably agree that South Asian Indians are smart. So then are the South Asian Indian Moslems stupid? What about the chairman of WIPRO?

That reminds me of the stuff silly Prince Philip is known to mouth about Indians, notwithstanding that there are more British millionaires named Patel than Smith.

I do agree that this ameuterish stuff in the UK is odd. Maybe they just flipped on the daily diet of MSM news about Iraq.

It's not the people, it's the culture.

Any culture that forces half of their population to live in virtual slavery forfeits half of their production, creativity, optimism, etc.

Fundamentalist Islam is a culture built on stagnation and repression. On submission.

They may use others' technology where it suits them: warfare and oil production. But what they lack is the drive for day-to-day quality of life improvements from the common citizen.

This, in my opinion, is why the most of the Islamic countries are virtually bereft of home-grown industries, cutting edge R&D, and nobel prize winners. They are a middle-ages culture that is falling further and further behind.

I disagree that this was amateurish and that is a bad way of looking at it. They guys were rushed because the police were on to them. Either that or it was a dry run for something bigger.

Toast_n_Tea: I do not think race is a factor. If you put a caucasian child into a madrassa in pakistan where he spends all day rote-memorizing the koran and listening to how jews are the sons of apes and pigs, he will be just as braindead. There is plenty of evidence of that.

I think the commenters here are confusing a religion with a race in terms of intelligence or smarts.

Islam is not the enemy. The enemy is those subverting the tenets of Islam to their own needs. Those that hate on their own and are willing to sacrifice untold thousands of followers by getting them to believe strapping a bomb on yourself gets you closer to God. The leaders of AQ are not practicing religion, they are professional hucksters that hate self-governing societies.

Mac: Sorry. But Islam _is_ the enemy. Just a small quote from a famous hadith:

“The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.”

There are hundreds of similar quotes in the quran and in the hadiths. Please tell me how it is possible to believe in this without being an extremist.

There are hundreds of similar quotes in the quran and in the hadiths.

That's nice. When were they written? Remember the idea of the devil was added into the bible some 115 years AFTER Christ. But that's not the point.

If the people directing the violence truly believed in the Quran (sp?) they would not have other blow themselves up, they would do it themselves. This is about power hungry individuals getting weaker individuals to commit acts of violence in the name of religion. Religion was created by man as a guide for his actions of faith. Those men could write any darn thing they wanted to. If somebody had written that God demands you to paint your toenails pink on every third Thursday, you are supposed to follow the doctrine and not question, but that is the failing of religion, because with faith, there are always questions, as there should be. With strong faith, you will have answers. With religion, you don't get answers, you get strife and discord, proving once again that religion is a thing of man, not God.

Re: Max

Mohammed himself had several hundred jews beheaded . It is all in the quran and in the hadiths (basically eyewitness accounts about the life of mohammed). It was not added a century later. If you want to make an informed decision about islam, just read the quran. It is a tiny book. Much smaller than the bible. You will be able to read it in less than a day.

I don't buy the idea that people like ahmadinejad, khomenei or bin laden just use religion as a tool to control people and gain power. I think they genuinely believe in islam and would be willing to die for it. Why is that so hard to believe?

Just because you and most people you know are rational and materialistic does not mean that everybody is.

I think they genuinely believe in islam and would be willing to die for it. Why is that so hard to believe?

I don't believe it because its other people dying for the cause, and not them. If you believe in a religious cause and are willing to die for it, do it already and plead your case as a martyr. Getting others to do these things and organizing a terrorist network shows a grasping of power.