NEW YORK - Authorities arrested a suspect in the attempted weekend car bombing in Times Square, NBC News' justice correspondent Pete Williams reported early Tuesday morning.
A U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, Shahzad Faisal, was arrested Monday night on Long Island, Williams reported.
Earlier, an official told The Associated Press that the potential suspect recently traveled to Pakistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was at a sensitive stage.
If you haven't read much on this yet, the above MSNBC link is pretty good background.
My thoughts?
1. The fact that the truck was parked at the front door of the Viacom building (Viacom owns Comedy Central) should strongly suggest, to anyone with a modicum of sense, that the recent South Park controversy might have had something to do with this.
2. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's warning against dismissing the threats of "nobodies" was spot-on.
3. I wonder if the idea of blaming "Hateful Racist Teabaggers" for violence will be slowed down at all by the arrest of a perp from a country that's 96% Muslim?
4. No one should take that much comfort in this guy's incompetence. All he needed was a little bit more skill with detonators to succeed in his mission, and then you'd have hundreds of dead New Yorkers.
5. If he bought the SUV before the South Park episodes aired (the MSNBC article describes it as "weeks ago", which doesn't make this clear) then what other targets did he have in mind?
UPDATE(1): Melissa Clouthier posts more details and analysis.
UPDATE(2): Dan Riehl suggests Faisal may have been selling real-estate on Craigslist.
UPDATE(3): And The Other McCain, with the fantastic title "NYC Bomb Suspect Faisal Shahzad Arrested at JFK; Glenn Beck Still at Large"
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