Harrisburg Area Detectives are Investigating

The July bombings narrative is out today. BBC story here. Guardian here. Calling this description of the events of 7/7 a “narrative” seems to mean that it is just a consolidated set of notes regarding the events in question, a brain dump of every possible bit of information. Rumblings seem to suggest that it will say that the bombings were not “preventable”. The report is also expected to say that the bombers, although “inspired” by al-Qaida, were not aided by it and carried out a cheap attack using techniques they found on the internet. Not having read the report, I am not sure how this is couched in terms of its relevance to the prevention of future attacks but my immediate response is “well that makes it alright then” when I should really be thinking “Oh S***!” which is what I hope the security services are thinking. If anyone radicalised enough by whatever their favourite cause is, can go ahead and pick up some tips from www.beginnersguidetobigbangs.com, we have some problems in front of us. Of course this has already been done by David Copeland who, despite being a Nazi and prepared to kill and maim in the most horrible way, seemed only to have a level of anger one step up from getting annoyed at someone cutting him up on the motorway. Invade a country and this is bound to happen whatever your dear leader says. Actually Mr. Blair said that Iraq was “no excuse” for the 7/7 bombings rather than that there was “no link” and he is of course completely right but by the same line of cause and effect, the reasons that were used to justify going into Iraq were also “no excuse”. I don’t know if there is some collective ability in the population to somehow detect the truth of a situation – I am no expert in international affairs but without an in-depth analysis of the news regarding the situation, I felt that something was not quite right with the assertion that Iraq was developing WMD. Maybe you can spot the body language of the main players and subconsciously work out the truth – as beautifully summed-up in Andrew Motion’s poem.

I suppose I should read the narrative or at least the reports on it after it is published rather than rant on about it beforehand.