Peroxide bombs beyond the pale

If the police and FBI are right about Najibullah Zazi, his barbaric plans are worrisome on several levels.

The 24-year-old shuttle driver at the Denver airport is believed to have been working on a homemade bomb recipe he learned in an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan.

The war in Afghanistan is being fought primarily to keep terrorists from rebuilding camps there. If similar training is available in neighboring Pakistan, will victory in Afghanistan make us measurably safer? It's something to think about.

Not much training is needed to concoct a peroxide bomb, and it doesn't have to be accomplished in a remote camp. Information about bomb-building is all over the Internet. Authorities say Zazi was going to use bottled beauty supplies widely available, including acetone and hydrogen peroxide.

The result, when properly combined with acid, is an unstable, explosive mixture that's deadly in a confined space. It's the same kind of stuff carried in backpacks that killed more than 50 people and injured 700 in the 2005 bus and subway bombings in London.

The possibility of a bomb being mixed on a passenger jet from carry-on items is why air travelers are allowed to pack only tiny bottles. Dangerous levels of potentially explosive liquids can by kept off airplanes, but there is no easy way to protect buses, trains, subways and other public spaces, including airport terminals - something else to worry about.

One assumption in the war in Afghanistan is that if U.S. and NATO forces can drive the Taliban fighters into the remote hills, and if at the same time we can provide safety and jobs to the Afghan population, we will win their hearts and minds.

So what about Zazi? He had a job. He was in no danger of being pressured by al-Qaida in his home in Aurora, Colorado.

Yet surveillance evidence suggests his mind was on finding something to bomb in New York City.

The only comfort to be found is that nobody got hurt, this time.

As this case progresses, it will be instructive to learn how much of the investigation was made possible by the Patriot Act, how well the FBI and New York police worked together, and what additional changes in federal law might be appropriate to defeat would-be bombers who might be living among us and might even be driving us to the airport.