Disclaimer time - I know that investigating the oddities of published reports puts me in the company of some real nuts and wackos. I also know that questioning or querying the official reports as they come in tends to aggravate some people, who don't even want to hear it. So be it, on both accounts.

Secondly, I have no idea who set up these bombs and I'm not saying I do. My job is to ask questions not to promulgate answers. If you think I'm pointing the finger at group X or group Y and saying "they did it" then you aren't reading what I'm writing.

Thirdly, I am fully aware the investigation is not over and I do hope that when it is completed a lot of these questions will be answered.

Furthermore, let me add something I read in a book. From Pattern Recognition pages 293-294:

There must always be room for coincidence. When there's not, you're probably well into apophenia, each thing perceived as a part of an overarching pattern of conspiracy. And while comforting yourself with the symmetry of it all, you stood all too real chance of missing the genuine threat, which was invariably less symmetrical, less perfect.

Fair enough?

The biggest story on everyone's mind is the ITV report about Menezes, the Brazilian electrician killed on July 22 by British police. I've seen reports about this in hundreds of media outlets yet curiously many of them crop the published photo.

If you're interested in such grisly things, click here to see Menezes shortly after he was killed by British security agents. Since ITV got the secret documents and photographs, let's look at their article first:

The crucial mistake that ultimately led to his death was made at 9.30am when Jean Charles left his flat in Scotia Road, South London.

Surveillance officers wrongly believed he could have been Hussain Osman, one of the prime suspects, or another terrorist suspect.

By 10am that morning, elite firearms officers were provided with what they describe as "positive identification" and shot De Menezes eight times in the head and upper body.

The documents and photographs confirm that Jean Charles was not carrying any bags, and was wearing a denim jacket, not a bulky winter coat, as had previously been claimed.

He was behaving normally, and did not vault the barriers, even stopping to pick up a free newspaper.

He started running when we saw a tube at the platform. Police had agreed they would shoot a suspect if he ran.

A document describes CCTV footage, which shows Mr de Menezes entered Stockwell station at a "normal walking pace" and descended slowly on an escalator.

The document said: "At some point near the bottom he is seen to run across the concourse and enter the carriage before sitting in an available seat.

"Almost simultaneously armed officers were provided with positive identification."

A member of the surveillance team is quoted in the report. He said: "I heard shouting which included the word `police' and turned to face the male in the denim jacket.

"He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the CO19 officers. I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side.

"I then pushed him back on to the seat where he had been previously sitting. I then heard a gun shot very close to my left ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage."

The report also said a post mortem examination showed Mr de Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder, but three other bullets missed, with the casings left lying in the tube carriage.

It looks like Menezes' cousin was right about everything. And as I speculated in earlier parts, surely the CCTV footage would reveal Menezes' (and the police) actions in the underground station.

Let's go over this again. The police are watching an apartment building on Scotia Road. Click here to see where it is in London and then click on the camera icon to see a satellite shot. Menezes' apartment building is in the lower left-hand corner and it's a "horseshoe" shaped building.

Menezes, wearing blue jeans and an ordinary blue denim jacket (neither bulky OR padded) and carrying absolutely no bag, no tools or anything else, walks a few streets (through Tulse Hill) then gets on a #2 bus. A number of undercover agents ("several") get on board with him, several other vehicles full of officers follow the bus. Menezes rides the bus for approximately 15 minutes down Brixton Road, a busy commercial roadway. He then descends somewhere near the Stockwell underground station. He enters and takes a free newspaper out of a rack. He then passes through the ticket barrier normally. He rides down the escalator at a normal pace and then, seeing the train he wanted is at the station, runs across the platform and into the carriage/car. He then sits down in an empty seat.

He is then shot 8 times, 7 in the head and once in the shoulder. Plus three other bullets missed, despite the fact he was shot at close range. As I speculated in an earlier section of this story, the police were clearly shooting in a panicked mode. Missing three shots and firing a total of 11 is not a controlled reactions regardless of what they thought Menezes was carrying or about to do.

According to the times mentioned both in this report as well as others, it looks like Menezes' lived about 30 minutes from the time he walked out the front door of his apartment, headed to work. That is 30 minutes in which the police, who began tailing him immediately, could have stopped him (either arrested him or shot him). What caused the delay?

If Menezes' was suspected of being dangerous, either carrying a bomb or a gun or something else, then the police should've stopped him immediately. If they suspected he was carrying a bomb, then letting him travel on a bus down a major roadway and then entering the subway was utter foolishness as every moment that passed he grew closer to large groups of people. If Menezes was suspected of just carrying a gun or something similar, then why did they wait 30 minutes to stop him?

If perhaps they thought he was unarmed, they might have been following him to see where he went, thinking perhaps he would lead them to other conspirators in the bombing or something similar. Except that if that was the case, they could've entered the train and continued their surveillance.

What makes this so ominous is that Menezes was killed on July 22 and nearly a month later the police have not retracted several false items - that Menezes was wearing a "bulky" or "winter" jacket, that he jumped over the ticket barrier, there were "wires" somewhere on him, and that he "ran" from the police at the entrance to the subway station.

What's also ominous and shameful is that the police have failed to identify the officers who shot Menezes, not even which department or team they came from. An analysis of the undercover officers by the Times seems to confirm reports I've seen in other media that at least some of the officers were soldiers:

Press photographs of members of the armed response team taken in the immediate aftermath of the killing show at least one man carrying a special forces weapon that is not issued to SO19, the Metropolitan police firearms unit.

The man, wearing civilian clothes with a blue cap marked “Police”, was carrying a specially modified Heckler & Koch G3K rifle with a shortened barrel and a butt from a PSG-1 sniper rifle fitted to it — a combination used by the SAS.

Another man, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and trainers, was carrying a Heckler & Koch G36C. Although this weapon is used on occasion by SO19 it appears to be fitted with a target illuminator purchased as an “urgent operational requirement” for UK special forces involved in the war on terror.

"Trainers" is British speak for "athletic" or "sports" shoes. I've added links in the excerpt above if you want to see photographs of the guns they're talking about. They are both extremely intimidating looking and capable of fully automatic fire. The G3K is a custom made weapon and is not available for purchase by the public.

The Times says that these men were from a secret undercover unit formerly stationed in Northern Ireland, a division of the SAS, the British special forces. Yet again the police have stated that the military was only involved in the bombings investigation as giving "technical assistance". Far more troubling is the fact that they are described as being "urban surveillance experts" yet clearly expertise wasn't used to trail an innocent man for 30 minutes before shooting at him 11 times.

Earlier reports showed that not only did Menezes' cousin know he wasn't wearing a bulky jacket, but people in the neighborhood said Menezes' always wore the same jacket, a blue "Levi's" model. And we already know Menezes' spoke perfect English, so why didn't the police just order him to stop if they had a reason to arrest him or detain him?

Piecing together my instinct and the media reports, it looks like the police were watching the house. They see Menezes exit and begin tailing him and follow him down to the train in the Stockwell station. It was then, and only then, that someone "confirmed" that he was indeed a bombing suspect. I don't think they felt they were sure he was a suspect before then. And once they had "positively identified" him, they tackled him in the train car and pinned him to the floor. And someone, perhaps an SAS officer perhaps someone else, fired 11 times at the detained and harmless Menezes.

I think someone not only "positively identified" him, but also said something along the lines of "he's got a bomb". And that's why they shot him so many times in the head so close to a train car full of passengers. By the way, the "CO19" in the ITV report above is what the police call the "SO19", which is the armed unit of the London police.

In other news, it seems that at least two countries "warned" Britain ahead of the 7/7 bombings. According to here:

A confidential report by France's intelligence service that was finalised days before the July 7 London bombings pointed to the threat of an Al-Qaeda attack on Britain, the French daily Le Figaro said.

The conservative daily said the report by the DCRG intelligence agency also highlighted the need to closely observe France's Pakistani community with a view to preventing an attack on French soil.

An official at the interior ministry confirmed the existence of the report, but cautioned it was "a very technical study on the Pakistani community in France."

He said it was not aimed at lecturing Britain on what might happen on its own soil.

Le Figaro said the report, which focused on France's Pakistani community, was completed just before the July 7 attacks on London in which 56 people were killed, including the four suicide bombers.

According to the report quoted by Le Figaro, "the United Kingdom remains under the threat of plans decided at the highest level of Al-Qaeda".

"These (plans) would be put into practice by operatives, with support of Jihadists within the large Pakistani community in Britain," it said.

Well that makes it seem like it was a fairly general warning, of which I'm sure hundreds get passed along of a similar nature. Except it fails to explain the discrepancy of French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's remarks:

At a July 13 press conference, Sarkozy said he had been told at the European Union terrorism meeting convened at Britain’s request following the July 7 bombings that some of the London bomb suspects were arrested last year and then released in order to break a wider network. The BBC web site quotes Sarkozy as saying “It seems that part of this team had been subject to partial arrest.”

Clarke immediately denied that any such conversation had taken place, either in private or in the full meeting.

“Mr. Sarkozy was inaccurate, shall I put it gently, in suggesting that there had been a discussion of this kind because there was not,” Reuters quotes Clarke.

“There is absolutely no foundation in them,” Clarke continued. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but that is the state of affairs.”

The French minister stuck by his remarks for the entire day, before a French government spokesman finally issued a different story. He said that Sarkozy had not been quoting Clarke and that he had not been referring to any of the four suspected bombers, but to other members of a network to which they belonged.

That's an awfully strange remark for Sarkozy to make, especially since it's been so rigorously denied by the British ever since. Of course Sarkozy also said that "military grade" explosives were used on 7/7 from the Balkans but so far that seems to have been denied as well.

I say "seem" to have been denied because so far nothing official has been stated. What we do know is that is that on August 10, the Egyptian "chemist" (actually biochemistry graduate student), Magdy al-Nashar, was released from custody in Egypt and cleared of all charges.

Except that the police reports say that "traces" of explosive material were found in Nashar's apartment. But obviously now those reports are considered "unconfirmed". So were there illicit chemicals in his apartment or not? According to reports, this is how Nashar became considered a suspect:

The 33-year-old chemist said he met one of the bombers, Jamaican-born Jermaine Lindsay, in Leeds during the last month of the Muslim period of fasting, Ramadan, which was in October and November.

El-Nashar said that in June, Lindsay asked for help finding a place to live in Leeds, saying he wanted to move there from London with his wife and child.

He said he located quarters for Lindsay through his landlord and was then introduced by Lindsay to a man called Mohammed, who turned out to be Hasib Hussain, another of the July 7 bombers.

Hussain said he had a van and would help Lindsay move his belongings from London.

El-Nashar, a Muslim, said he helped Lindsay because he was a "new convert (to Islam). He was very kind and very nice."

Ok so it was just a bad coincidence that Nashar, who was a biochemist, met at least two of the 7/7 bombers in a casual way and then left England shortly before the blasts. And it would seem natural that the police would investigate that lead. Yet here's the kicker, from the New York Times:

He met a young man through his mosque who needed a place to live. He likes to help people, so he arranged for the man to have an apartment. The man turned out to be Germaine Lindsay, 19, whom the British authorities suspect of blowing up a subway train at Russell Square. Mr. Nashar said that investigators had found his phone number on at least one of the bombers' cellphones and, perhaps, in papers connected to the apartment that he had helped find.

If the bombers were carrying their wallets, cash and other normal items, why wouldn't they also be carrying their cell phones on the day they died? How on earth could police find Nashar's number on "at least one" of their cell phones?

In other news, our mysterious man Haroon Rashid Aswat has disappeared entirely from the media. That's because he was remanded into custody (no bail) until September 8. Was he put in jail because of any related links to the 7/7 or 7/21 bombings? No. He's there because the United States wants him extradicted to allegedly face charges about the 2000 Oregon "training camp" for terrorists.

Of course we already know that the U.S. government never charged him for over four years and that Harat has apparently moved all over the world from South Africa to Pakistan to Britain without being arrested for anything. What's even more interesting is that reports say that Aswat was arrested in Zambia before being extradicted to Britain. That's not true.

He was detained in Zambia but then simply deported. In other words, he was never charged with a crime by either Britain or Zambia. And this is despite the fact that Britain has wide ranging powers under the Terrorism Act of 2000 to arrest people even suspected of terrorism. Keep in mind that there are multiple reports that Aswat phoned all four of the bombers shortly before the 7/7 attacks.

So Nashar was arrested at the behest of the British for an extremely casual link to just two of the bombers and interrogated and not released for weeks. Yet Aswat, whom the British had to pay for a flight to bring him "home", has not arrested him for anything. The only reason he's in jail is because the U.S. wants to extradite him on a case wherein they've failed to indict him for nearly five years.

Interesting indeed...

And last but not least, the city of London lost approximately 1.4 billion dollars in revenue due to the bombings. While we tend to focus on the 52 people killed and 700 injured, it must be remembered that terrorism also strikes an economic blow against its targets.

As always, the investigation continues...

Peace