There is no way to know how many innocent people might have been murdered if a terrorist car bomb parked in busy New York City had gone off Saturday as the perpetrator or perpetrators intended. But most fortunately, the bomb fizzled.
One of many surveillance cameras placed among the streets of New York City made a picture of a white man in his 40s, taking off his shirt, with another shirt of a different color underneath, and looking back in the direction of a parked sports utility vehicle — that was smoking!
Was he the perpetrator? Can he be identified and caught?
The car bomb was made of three ordinary grill propane tanks, two 5-gallon cans of gasoline, fireworks, alarm clocks, lots of wires and 100 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer — but not of a grade that could explode.
The timing and location indicated a bomber intended to kill many people and create terror in a busy theater and restaurant area of New York.
How could anyone entertain such potential evil?
Was it just some deranged would-be killer — or was it an effort by a Pakistan Taliban terrorist individual or group as was suggested by an unidentified voice speaking Urdu that was posted on an Internet recording? Or …?
The militant message suggested the intended explosion was devised as revenge for the deaths of some specifically named terrorists killed in Iraq and a Pakistani scientist who was convicted in the United States for trying to kill American military service personnel in Afghanistan.
It is shocking to consider that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan might have been extended to Manhattan — with only the faulty construction of a terrorist bomb having saved the lives of many American civilians.