Very disappointing: It may have been a given that Gordon Brown’s accession as Prime Minister of Great Britain would be greeted with some new terror plots. – After all, Brown’s being welcomed as new British Prime Minister has been reported around the world as a repudiation of Tony Blair’s ‘Bush-poodle’ support for the war against Iraq. It was probably inevitable that any parties with a vested interest in sowing dissension and keeping Britain in Iraq would react accordingly. But I have to admit, I was hoping that those foiled plots reported on Friday were the extent of immediate reactions.

Far from it, unhappily. Yesterday, a gasoline-loaded burning Jeep Cherokee was rammed into the terminal at Glasgow airport. Authorities have already arrested five suspects and have conducted what is described as a “controlled explosion” of a vehicle in the parking lot of a hospital near the airport where an injured terrorist is being treated.

This news is breaking, and as my late great editor Ben Franklin (different one) used to say, “Breaking news can break you.” Still, there are already a few interesting points.

1)      News accounts so far characterize the perpetrators in the airport attack as “South Asians” or “Asian men” rather than as Muslims or Saudis, etc. This may be just an abundance of caution. However, it also might suggest that these attacks in London and Scotland were not the usual “al-Qaeda” kind of attack.

2)      In an example of nuanced analysis at an early stage, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), interviewed on CBS’ Face the Nation by Bob Schieffer, pointed out that the terrorist attacks in Europe so far have occurred in sizable cities with large Muslim populations. Lugar said, interestingly, that one theory about the attacks is that they are designed to “inflame feeling against the Muslims” and “create greater dissension” in the general population, an observation that seems to be true in spades. Glasgow, for example, has elected a Muslim MP to the British Parliament, Britain’s first.

3)      George Stephanopoulos, interviewing Michael Chertoff – who made the round of the talk shows this morning – asked about news reports that US authorities had had an inkling of terror threats against the Glasgow airport, but that the Scots authorities have issued statements saying they had no word of same. Chertoff answered guardedly that all information the US gets is shared with the authorities elsewhere. Word that Brown was set to become the next British Prime Minister has floated around freely for months, of course. Meanwhile, the suspects in the Glasgow attack have been pretty definitively reported to be “Asians,” not locals, and only moved into the local area within recent weeks or months.

4)      Political expediency was on naked display elsewhere: incredibly, MSNBC chose to put on air Bernard Kerik – with the name of his private security company freely advertised in the crawl at the bottom of the screen – interviewing Kerik as a counterterrorism expert. Evidently MSNBC – a joint venture between NBC parent GE, one of the biggest military contractors in world history, and Microsoft, major beneficiary of shifting antitrust policy in the Bush DOJ – hasn’t yet been reliably informed that Step One in domestic security is to make sure your key personnel are as little blackmailable as possible. More on that later; meanwhile, also this morning Senator Joseph Lieberman, appearing on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos – who asked some good questions – seized the occasion to boost the administration’s use of electronic surveillance; to argue that violence is reduced in Iraq and “the surge is working” and “the enemy is on the run”; and to suggest that he may support the GOP nominee for president in 2008. Since it’s hard to imagine what clout Senator Lieberman cd have at this stage, that doesn’t seem like much of a threat.

Back to London and Glasgow: To the pride of Scotland, a Scotsman becomes Britain’s Prime Minister – and within a few short days, Scotland’s biggest airport gets its first-ever terrorist incident. What were the odds? Meanwhile, that selfsame PM was obviously poised to reduce British troop presence in Iraq – and back home in America, news reports for the week circulate widely that Senator Richard Lugar and other prominent Republicans are persuading against the “surge,” that the Democrats in Congress are set to “press” Bush on Iraq, and that Senator Warner (R-VA) numbers among congressional Republicans interested in rethinking Iraq strategy.