A police officer in a bomb suit examined a Nissan Pathfinder sport utility vehicle.

If you haven’t been following, a pretty poor VBIED was found in Times Square today after a t-shirt vendor notified a horse cop that there was a smoking SUV parked at a strange angle. Quick evac of the area and speedy response from the NYPD. Turns out it was in the midst of detonating, but was shoddily constructed and thus never actually went off. Possibly a downside to open-source warfare, etc. : you can have the plans and the equipment, but actually following those instructions may prove difficult. Ever try to assemble something from Ikea?

But so far, the reaction from Bloomberg and the NYPD has been pretty stellar. And no one is panicking a la the Pants Bomber. In this case, at least, failure as a strategy has proven to be no more than just a plain failure.

The vendor who found the bomb is absolutely Mr. Cool:

He said that he was reluctant to speak with members of the media because they had twisted his words when they interviewed him in recent years.

He got into the back seat of the taxi, took off his hat and used it to fan his face.

Before he left, he was asked what he had to say to New Yorkers.

“See something, say something,” he said.