Another Islamic effort

Anahad O'Connor has an article in The New York Times about a different problem with Islamic jihad in the city:

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Tuesday that the failed Times Square car bomber, Faisal Shahzad, deliberately purchased weak bomb ingredients in an effort to avoid detection by the authorities. Speaking at the Center for National Policy, a Washington research organization, Mr. Kelly addressed a question that had loomed over the case from the beginning: why a terrorist trained in bomb-making constructed such a relatively weak device. Mr. Shahzad, it turns out, was worried that buying more-potent ingredients would have caught the attention of the authorities, Mr. Kelly said.
Instead of exploding, the bomb fizzled in the back of Mr. Shahzad’s 1993 Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square on 21 June. He was arrested two days later.
In an interview, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that because law enforcement officials had made it more difficult to buy ingredients for a bomb without being detected, Mr. Shahzad did his best to go unnoticed. Mr. Shahzad ended up buying nonexplosive fertilizer instead of the more volatile ammonium-nitrate-grade fertilizer commonly used in terrorist bombings, as well as legally available M-88 fireworks instead of more potent ones. “The positive side is it’s become more difficult to acquire what once were readily available ingredients for devastating bombs,” Mr. Browne said.