Reasonable Doubt

What if the four London bombers didn’t know they were bombers?

By James K. Galbraith
Web Exclusive: 07.27.05

Anywhere else, the police killing of the young Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in the London Underground on July 22 would be called a gangland-style murder. Yet the authorities are unmoved. Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of Scotland Yard, stiffly warned that more shootings might follow. Home Secretary Charles Clarke stated “full support” for the police. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw gave the reason: Police must “have effective discretion to deal with what could be terrorist suicide outrages about to take place.”

But this raises a question. Have any “terrorist suicide outrages” actually taken place? Outrages, certainly. But were the bombs of July 7 suicide bombs, as every commentator has accepted?

In judging this question, we can rely only on information that has come from the police. So let’s do that. Let’s assume that every fact asserted by British security forces with respect to the July 7 bombings is true. We may have to relax that assumption later, as economists say. But let’s accept them all to begin with. And that includes some statements that were later retracted, but which are arguably more credible than the revised versions. What do we have?

[Read the rest at the above link.]