BOMBING UPDATE – AT 7:34 P.M. ET:  Police in New York are treating the attempted Times Square bombing as a major event, although they are not ready to assign responsbility. 

The vehicle holding the large but amateurish bomb was parked in one of the most densely filled tourist locations of New York, the theater section of Times Square, about a block from where the ball comes down on New Year's Eve.  From the Washington Post:

Police said Sunday that they were reviewing surveillance video that may have captured a suspect in Saturday's failed car bombing in Times Square, describing him as a white man in his 40s who repeatedly looked back at the rigged SUV in a furtive manner and exhibited other suspicious behavior.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters at an afternoon press conference that the man was spotted near a Nissan Pathfinder packed with fireworks, propane and other materials. The vehicle aroused suspicion when it began smoking around 6:30 p.m. Saturday, prompting authorities to evacuate Midtown Manhattan for most of the night.

The man, whose involvement in the incident is unclear, was caught on video near the sport-utility vehicle removing a dark shirt and slipping it into a bag before walking away. Detectives, Kelly said, were in route to an unnamed town in Pennsylvania where a tourist who was in Times Square Saturday night "believes he may have captured the suspect's image on this video camera."

And...

"There is a high likelihood it would have been lethal," New York Police spokesman Paul Browne told reporters. "We just don't know to what degree how catastrophic it would have been."

A Taliban group took responsibility for the attempted bombing, but investigators quickly dismissed the claim as unlikely. Terik-i Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is one of the major Taliban groups battling U.S. and Pakistani forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. A statement released by the group said the attempted bombing was revenge for the killings of "Muslim martyrs," especially two senior leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq who were killed by U.S. and Iraqi forces last month.

It is common for multiple terrorist groups to seek credit for high-visibility terrorist incidents, and some terrorism experts on Sunday were skeptical that TTP could have organized a bombing attempt in Times Square to avenge deaths that occurred less than two weeks earlier.

COMMENT:  Television coverage of the event has been quite serious and responsible.  We came very close to an explosion. 

The police appear to have a great deal of physical evidence, some of which they're probably holding back from the public.

In general, attempts against New York have been made by Muslim extremists.  The militia types tend to concentrate on other parts of the country. 

May 2, 2010