A better question is: When is a deliberate bombing not an act of terrorism?
Last night around 8:30pm I was waiting for the 1 train at the 34th street station when the intercom said that all trains were bypassing 42nd street due to an "prior incident". No biggie, happens all the time. I decide to walk it to the Times Square shuttle. As I approached I noticed an inordinate amount of people packing the street corners. I was exhausted, wanted to get home and these false alarms happen so much in NYC these days I thought nothing of it. I had my headphones on pretty loud so I couldn't hear what anyone was saying but I do remember a certain amount of fear in their faces - but then I said to myself ahhh they're just a bunch of tourists making something out of nothing in the hopes they can tell their friend at home about their brush with death - I continued to push my grisled NY attitude through the crowd.
Clicking through the news tonight I see this headline:
NYPD Confirms Subway Explosive Was Crude Bomb
Joe Franklin, Television Personality: "It sounded to me like a bomb. I was hoping it was only a prank, that it was only a firecracker, but it sounded to me like a bomb. It sounded very scary. People were running out of restaurants. There's a school in this building, and a lot of mothers were running up, 'I want to get my kid out of the building.' They thought this was another 9/11, or another explosion. But happily, luckily, I think it was only something on the staircase. People were afraid it was something inside a subway car where people were being blown up and destroyed inside. Everybody was fearing the worst, people were trembling, they were shrieking, they were hysterical."
So my questions to you are:
Is this a terrorist attack?
If not then how large does a bomb need to be to be considered a terrorist attack?
Do people have to die for it to be considered an attack? If so, how many need to die? ( one person, a transit cop, was injured and is in stable condition from this attack.
If this turns out to be a homegrown terrorist can George Bush still claim that there hasn't been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. (In other words, can he claim that it's not really terror because we can't confirm dark skin people from the middle east plotted it or as I like to call it: the Anthrax defense.)
It's obvious that Bloomberg and the administration are going to want to dowplay this - they originally claimed it was just a fireworks explosion... Considering we are a month away from the Convention I'm sure this is the last thing they want but the fact remains, this was a bomb, albeit a crude one, set off with intent to hurt people.