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Preliminary, unconfirmed reports indicate a nuclear blast has occurred at Glasgow's international airport. No one has seen the mushroom cloud or heard the blast, but something by God is happening and it must be terrible. There is smoke and fire. In fact, a car is on fire. It must be Al Qaeda. Only Al Qaeda knows how to set themselves on fire inside a car. Please. Flee to the hills (leave you doors unlocked). Oh the humanity!As events unfold I'm simply asking that folks take a big deep breath and try to keep things in perspective. Are there jihadist extremists in the world who are willing to kill innocents? Absolutely. Are they amenable to negotiation? No. I am not in the, "have you hugged a terrorist today" camp. However, we need to stop equating their hatred with actual capability.
If today's events at Glasgow prove to be linked to the two non-events yesterday in London, then we should heave a sigh of relief. We may be witnessing the implosion of takfiri jihadists — religious fanatics who are incredibly inept. While I am not an explosives expert I am good friends with one of the world's foremost explosives experts. Propane tanks and petrol (gas for us Americans) can produce a dandy flame and a mighty boom but these are not the tools for making a car bomb long the lines of what we see detonating on a daily basis in Iraq.
My main beef remains that much of the cable news media reacts to this nonsense like a fifty year old guy on Viagra or Cialis — they pop major wood. And the same warnings are appropriate — an erection lasting more than four hours may be harmful. Amen.
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a guest
said:
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... While I do agree with you that the media, in general, has turned these attacks into much larger events than they really are- there is some value to this ridiculous amount of press; if the goal of the attacks revolved around creating fear (let's face it, the design of these "bombs" were far from professional) they have succeeded, by doing so, there will be less attempts to gain the attention of the media- which, for the time being, makes similar attacks superfluous and only put the individuals at greater risk- is it better to have one large attack or a constant threat that it could happen at anytime any place? (it would have been a much stronger statement if the systems actually worked) Fuel Air Explosives, even with gasoline, can be quite damaging- and we must assume that the security services have not released all the details of weapon's assembly- they could have been attempting to create a home made thermobaric explosive (some of the more devastating bombs in current military arsenals) or an ANFO system (between 70-80% as effective as TNT). I would have expected your buddy the explosives expert would be familiar with the use of these weapons over the past 70 years; while there is a high failure rate, it is still addressed in the Army's 'unconventional warfare devices and techniques' manual- a college grade chemistry student would be able to correct the system for the needed ratios. I do agree that there are many more ideal explosives, but because of the simplicity (of these incidents) it creates a much greater sense of fear; the population would have been less concerned if a more exotic explosive was used- because they are just harder to acquire, less available and more expensive. (the bombs in Iraq are composed of (slightly) repurposed military explosives- you aren't going to walk into your local DIY store and pick up PETN or RDX) |
a guest
said:
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... they were attempting to build a fuel air device- they fell into common mistakes when trying to build this system. There attack in Scotland was a joke. |
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