Random Pensées

Madrid Bombings

I was reading this morning an article from the New Yorker online about the bombings in Madrid and found the following observation very interesting. It just sort of jumped off the page at me:

The case broke open in the middle of the night, when a young police officer, sorting through belongings recovered from the trains, opened a sports bag and discovered twenty-two pounds of Goma-2, surrounded by nails and screws. Two wires ran from a blue mobile phone to a detonator. It wasn’t clear why the bomb had failed to explode.

Police officers realized that a chip inside the phone would contain a record of recently dialled numbers. By tracing these calls, they were quickly able to map out a network of young Arab immigrants, many of whom were known to Spanish intelligence. Data stored on the chip revealed that a calling plan had been set up at a small telephone and copy shop in Lavapiés, a working-class neighborhood near the Atocha station. The store was owned by Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan who had previously been under surveillance because of alleged connections to Al Qaeda. He was soon arrested.

I recommend going to read the whole article. It deals extensively with the political developments and consequences that the Jihadi movement expected would eventuate from a bombing in Madrid near the election. We have to ask ourselves what will happen here closer to November. Of course, I suppose that even if there is a bombing here, nothing would change for the US in terms of policy. There is no choice here between socialists and right wingers as there was in Spain.

The article is chilling.