London Bombers Were Flying Solo

British authorities are beginning to believe that the Muslim terror cell that killed 52 innocent victims and wounded 700 was not connected to the July 21 terror cell which screwed its attack up. Neither cell is connected to Al Qaeda. There is no evidence that they were assisted by an outside mastermind.

The July 7 cell appears to have been organized and radicalized by the oldest member, Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30. The other three were young and dumb followers: Shahzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Germaine Lindsay, 19. It is not known where Khan acquired the skill to build bombs, but he could have picked it up on the Internet.

The good news is that it debunks the Al Qaeda boogeyman. Al Qaeda lacks the ability to run terror operations. Instead, it is lending its name to Islamist terror franchises like Zarqawi's in Iraq and opportunistically capitalizing on terror attacks such as the London Tube bombings to bolster the vigor of its brand, falsely claiming them as its own.

The bad news is that this means terror cells are spontaneously generating in the Pakistani Muslim population in England, something like poisonous mushrooms, rather than being seeded from outside. That points to a sickness in that dysfunctional population. While such isolation limits the damage the cells can do, it also makes them nearly impossible to detect and stop.