Someone – authorities don’t know yet whom he worked with– bombed the Boston Marathon today. At least two people died. More than twenty others (at last report) lost limbs or suffered other severe injury. Evidence thus far says this was a terrorist attack. But who did it?

The scene at the Boston Marathon

The Boston Globe has this live blog feed. The Boston Athletic Association, which runs the Boston Marathon, has a live-blog feed at its home site and its Facebook page. Other reports have already come out at The New York Times, Foxnews.com, The Atlantic Wire, and NBC News, among other outlets.

The first bomb went off in a third-floor meeting room in the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel, 671 Boylston Street, on the north side. Witnesses heard the thunderclap-like boom near the “photo bridge” that marks the finish line of the Boston Marathon. A second bomb went off at street level, a block away on Boylston Street, about twenty seconds later. Police found an unexploded bomb at 600 Boylston Street and had its Bomb Squad detonate it. (See the map.) That was not the only such unexploded bomb.

Two people are dead at time of posting. Authorities list at least twenty-three more with injuries. Massachusetts General Hospital has received at least nineteen of these. Some have traumatic amputations, the kind a soldier expects to risk in battle. (One witness told a Fox News reporter of lending his belt for use as a tourniquet in one such case.)

One witness described pellets, the size of bird shot, in his backpack. That fact alone means these bombs were anti-personnel bombs. Other witnesses described smelling cordite and seeing severed limbs lying about Boylston Street and Copley Square.

It looks like Tel Aviv.

The bombs went off after the fastest runners had already finished the Boston Marathon. The larger crowd, or “field,” of runners were just coming in. The BAA has re-routed those still in the race toward the Boston Common. The FAA has locked down the airspace over Boston.

At 4:54 p.m. ET, the Boston Police announced something with an almost certain connection. Another incident occurred at the John F. Kennedy Library at about 4:30 p.m.

Seek whom the crime would profit

Locator map showing two blasts and one UXB on Boylston Street. Graphic: Boston Globe

And now the speculation begins: who bombed the Boston Marathon? Fox News reported at about 4:15 p.m. ET that the Boston Police have a suspect at a hospital in Boston – they won’t say which one. The New York Post now identifies the suspect as a Saudi national. (At 6:00 p.m. ET, the Boston Police denied they had anyone in their hands.)

CNAV’s activist friend “The Eagle” named two likely sources:

1. Muslim terrorists. “We keep letting those guys in here, and they say all the time they want to wage jihad against us,” he said.
2. A “false flag” operation. “I hope I’m wrong about that. I pray I’m wrong,” The Eagle said.

But:

They want the people to panic, so they’ll give up more of their rights for the little bit of safety they think the government will give them….You watch. You’ll see young men patrolling the streets, armed with carbines and other semi-automatic weapons.

That would look like Tel Aviv – or Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights.

Aside from the “false flag” question, another question suggests itself: with 2700 Iraq War Marine surplus light tanks, and 1.6 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition, the Department of Homeland Security could not or did not prevent this?

Worse yet: Nicholas Kristof, columnist for The New York Times blamed Republicans in the US Senate for the Boston Marathon bombing. His theory: Republicans blocked the Senate from confirming a permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And on that account, the government could not stop a Saudi national from planting at least five bombs. Breitbart News caught his “tweet” on Twitter, and a follow-up as he “took it back.”

Developing…

[subscribe2]