Among them: (in chronological order)

• 7/7 suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer met Osama Nazir, the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) member who killed two Americans during an al-Qaeda attack on a church in Islamabad in 2002, while attending a Deobandi mosque in Faisalabad.

• The Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, a member of bin Laden's terrorist coalition, appears to have trained 7/7 bombers Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer.

• 7/7 ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan attended services at the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque. 7/21 bombers Yasin Hassan Omar and Mukhtar Said Ibrahim were also members of the Finsbury congregation.

• 7/21 ringleader Mukhtat Said Ibrahim visited Saudi Arabia in 2003, telling friends that he was going there to receive training.

• 7/7 bomber Hasib Hussain transited Riyadh in 2004 on his way to Karachi.

• Saudi authorities arrested an al-Qaeda member who had just returned from fighting in Iraq and was raising funds for a terrorist attack in the UK last December. According to his interrogation, the terrorist had traveled from Iraq to Iran and then the UAE and told the Saudis that he was raising funds for a terrorist attack to be carried out in London in about 6 months. He said that the plan was to use explosives provided by Shamil Basayev and set them off in a crowded area like a nightclub in London. He further claimed that a Libyan businessman based in London had already setting up safe houses and cars for the operation and that as soon as he finished collecting money from al-Qaeda's Gulf donors he was to call a Syrian telephone number where someone would tell him what to do with it.

• The French intelligence agency DCRG warned the UK that al-Qaeda had decided to carry out attacks in Britain using one of its Pakistani satellite groups, in particular the LeT.

• Saudi Moroccan al-Qaeda figures Abdul Karim Mejati and Younis Mohammed Ibrahim Hayari both made calls and sent text messages on prepaid cell phones to al-Qaeda members in Britain authorizing hawala money transfers in the spring of 2005.

• Haroon Rashid Aswat, an al-Qaeda emissary working for Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri ("Captain Hook") who previously tried to set up al-Qaeda training camps in rural Oregon with the Ujamaa brothers had arrived in the UK two weeks prior to 7/7 and left the morning of the attacks. Aswat took part at an al-Qaeda leadership summit in Waziristan in the spring of 2004 where a list of future targets were drawn up. Aswat made 20 calls to the 7/7 bombers on his South African cell phone prior to the bombings and was later arrested in Zambia, though I'd still like to know what exactly he was doing there.

• 7/21 bomber Isaac Hamdi (Osman Hussein), who fled to Rome after the attacks with the apparent assistance of members of the East African immigrant community. He also tried to call someone in Saudi Arabia prior to his arrest in Italy, at which point he denied being a member of al-Qaeda.

• Arrested Turkish al-Qaeda leader Luai Sakra claims to have had prior knowledge of the 7/7 bombings, though he also claims that the 7/21 attacks were an "unauthorized" operation.

• The recent videotape released by al-Qaeda shows both Mohammed Sidique Khan and the organization's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. It was made by al-Sahab Productions, the official al-Qaeda video company, and was likely recorded at one of the Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps in Pakistan.

• An al-Qaeda member was recently captured near the Syrian border with a USB drive port that contained planning information on the 7/7 bombings.

Now if you add this all up just based on what's available in the open-source data, it becomes quite clear to most people that the London bombings were carried out by al-Qaeda rather than some isolated group of Islamists. The evidence that al-Qaeda was involved in the Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh bombings is equally clear, though most of it is being suppressed by the Egyptian government for fear of it disrupting the lucrative tourist trade. Now we expect this to a certain extent from Egypt because it's a police state that has been under martial law for more than 20 years. Moreover, I think the Egyptian government knows damned well that al-Qaeda was behind Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh but is choosing to cover up that information in what is a very understandable case of national interest.

Britain, however, is not a police state and such it is generally expected that the investigation be up-front with the public about the level and scale of the threat. The threat assessments put out as to the number of al-Qaeda members and supporters living in the UK (~10-15,000 out of a Muslim population of about ~1.5 million) are indeed concerning and thus far only miniscule steps have been taken against these individuals. While it looked like the UK had wised up after 7/7 (and their approach now is certainly better than what it was), they still have a long way to go. These are not new problems - the French, Spanish, Italians, and likely every Middle Eastern government have been complaining about "Londonistan" for upwards of a decade now. But unless the opposition is willing to hold Blair's feet to the fire on this one, I don't see much happening to clean it up. And I certainly see a domestic constituency for that in the current UK.