HEY JIHADISTS, THIS IS THE BEST YOU CAN DO?

I don't want to be flip about this, but I'm actually somewhat relieved to learn that authorities now think the failed Times Square car bombing "appears to have been coordinated by more than one person in a plot with international links," as The Washington Post puts it.

I say this because -- even though the authorities say this bomb could have done quite a bit of damage -- it's nice to know that the best terrorist minds of our generation can't do better than this:

The vehicle identification number on the 1993 dark-colored Nissan Pathfinder had been removed from the dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine and axle. (AP)

A federal law enforcement official who is an expert on explosives noted that the propane tanks had not been twisted open, meaning that it would have taken longer for the fire in the car to heat up to the degree needed to ignite the fuel. (WaPo)

"This is moving very fast because they left behind a treasure trove of evidence in the unexploded car," one US official told ABC News. (ABC)

The would-be bomber packed the car with more than 100 pounds of fertilizer, but not the kind that would explode, police said.

Had the bomber chosen the right kind of fertilizer, the bomb would have had the force of more than 100 pounds of TNT. But instead of ammonium nitrate, the kind of fertilizer used by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the bomber used a harmless fertilizer, New York City Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said. (ABC)

At first a lot of us thought, Well, this isn't the terrorist A Team -- this is just some dumb mooks. But no -- apparently this is the terrorist A Team. And they're incompetent. Even if this had worked, horrible though the outcome would have been, it would have fallen far short of what was intended. TERROR FAIL. Again.

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AND MAY I ADD ... that I suspected all along that the bomber wasn't a red-state Beck-loving teabagger because an American heartlander would know how to build a proper fertilizer bomb?