Yeah, God knows, Americans have absolutely no first-hand experience with terrorism. :rolleyes:
The most powerful bomb in the U.S. arsenal is a fuel-air explosive device, not a high explosive. If the gas cylinders in the bomb were designed to go off first, dispersing the fuel into a mist and then detonating it, that could be an absolutely devastating explosive device.
My understanding was that the guy who ‘drove erratically’ was most likely intending to be a suicide bomber. He accelerated, set off his detonator, and expected to be vaporized. Instead, it smouldered, the vehicle crashed, and he jumped out and ran away.
1am seems kind of a suboptimal time to detonate a car bomb. Do the London bars or theaters close at that time (so there’d be a lot of people on the street) or something.
In fairness, though the US has had several spectacularly ghastly events, you haven’t lived through decades and decades of bombs going off in your major cities, with dozens if not hundreds of individual incidents, and the constant paranoia that engenders.
Your impression is right, a bunch of cans of gasoline doesn’t make a great bomb. It does make a good incendiary device, can make a spectacular and horrific fireball, but it doesn’t generate high overpressures - the blast effect is relatively minor. It wouldn’t have been very effective in acclerating the nails, for example. So either there was more to this bomb than has been reported, or these guys didn’t know what they were doing.
The details of these devices are pretty sketchy and unconfirmed, but I’ve heard and read that the gas bottles had their valves open in the car. Which, coupled with the fact that something was on fire in the car suggests that the “detonation mechanism” was the hope that the escaping gas would eventually ignite. This doesn’t appear to have been a sophisticated device, it doesn’t even deserve to be called a crude device. This looks like the work of clueless misanthropic pricks who spent less than a hundred pounds in a DIY store. The Columbine kids were more sophisticated.
I can, if they didn’t know what they were doing.
True. But it’s not that easy, military FAE use ethylene oxide rather than gasoline for a reason. Fuel gas cylinders can’t explode from ignition of their contents, they don’t contain any oxygen. You’d need a charge of actual explosive to rupture the cylinders - the explosion of free gas in the car wouldn’t do it, nor would gasoline vapour. If the car was on fire they’d rupture eventually from internal pressure of course, but that would take some time.
Yes.
To justify their activities. Two years since the London train bombings, during which we’ve had a Brazilian immigrant shot dead by the police, people locked up without trial or even being told what evidence there was against them, a global change of airport policy towards liquids because of an email discussion of an unworkable plot based on Die Hard 3, thousands of people under surveillance, but no attacks and few arrests. So yes, you bet they’re hyping it up. It would have been better for them if a sophisticated device had been detected by intelligence work and disarmed by the bomb squad. Instead they have a few hateful morons they’ve never heard of bungling a fairly pathetic attempt at terrorism, but they’ll take what they can get.
I did not mean to derrograte Americans generally as being ignorant as to the effects of terrorism but there are some who are very complacent about the present situation as displayed by some of the posts. but I do not feel incredibly guilty as the I.R.A. terrorism Britain has experienced over the last 30 years ,tacitly supported by you Americans who were under the impresion the Irish terrorists were brave little leprechauns fighting against the fascist Brit occupying troops AND supplying them with money .
You had a one big hit plus a couple of home grown atrocities .
Did you roll your eyes when the people of Belfast and Londonderry and the rest of Ulster were having civilians blown up, abducted, tortured and murdered ?
Did you roll your eyes when British women ,children ,old people and all the other really dangerous imperial oppressors of the Irish were getting murdered in Manchester ,London and Guildford to mention just a few places .
I’ll bet you didn’t even know or could care less ,dont lecture us ,better spend your time getting used to the idea that its going to be happening to you now and thank your god that we will back you up instead of of the total lack of support we got from you guys (MIGHT LOSE THE IRISH VOTE DONT YER KNOW )
I respect your opinion but I must add that the news reports over here said that the bombs were using the the technology of I.E.D s being used in Iraq.
The 7/7 bombings were instigated by British Muslims using technology garnered from the internet ,the present case is totally different,I’ll say once more ,over here we are terrorist savy ,down to our old age pensioners ,if we see a bag ,suitcase anything at all really, abandoned we report it ,do you ?
You are under the impression that you know all about living with terrorism,I suspect that you know absoloutley fuck all about living with terrorism as a daily event .
Do tell me if I am operating under a false impression.
Still taking bets?
A few posts deal with the description of the scumbags as “Asian.” Isn’t this just a PC way of avoiding the term “Muslim?”
I asked about this a while back . It does not really deal with why it happened but offers some related info FWIW
No, the asian description was from on-lookers, I doubt they would be able to discern the drivers religion just by looking at them, unless one was wearing one of those iconic “I love the Ayatollah” T-shirts. I imagine they were just trying to describe the ethnicity of the people they saw in the car. And from the discussion above, I think most of the people that would fall under the British word “asian” would be Hindus.
Of course I’d hardly be suprised if they were Muslim terrorist (or wannabe terrorists), but I don’t think the onlookers who gave the “asian” description would know one way or the other.
How do you know the onlookers said that? It seems to me just as likely that they described them as middle eastern terrorists, and the BBC substituted the word ‘Asian’ to avoid offending Muslims. In fact, I seem to recall that they’ve done that before.
Reports now suggesting one of the scottish lads had a suicide belt (of sorts) on him.
The london “bombs” were rubbish… the nails would have been zapped into the floor rather than outwards, there would have been a lot of smoke and fire but not a huge blast.
Very amateurish, but no less scary for that.
I’m a Brit. I was a student in Manchester when the IRA blew the heart out of the city. You are indeed operating under a false impression.
“Asian” is a direct quote attributed to one of the onlookers in the story. Do you have a cite for the BBC changing a direct quote to replace the word “Middle-Eastern” with “asian”.
I mean, if they’re going to change what the onlooker said, why quote him at all. Hell, how do we know the crash happened at all, maybe the BBC fabricated the whole thing.
Cite? The bombs were found early on Friday. Nearly 48 hours later the BBC is still reporting that the “bombs” used petrol, gas cylinders and nails. Iraqi I.E.D.s typically use rigged munitions - military explosives, and they’re detonated remotely by wire or radio.
FWIW CNN has a Middle Eastern looking woman on right now saying that ‘Asian’ in this context generally means ‘Pakistani’.
For the most part we haven’t. The only two I can think of are Oklahoma and 911. London has been being bombed regularly for the last 100 years. Or at least Joseph Conrad was writing about it being regularly bombed, as of 1907 (by Anarchists.) Since then they’ve had WWI, WWII, the IRA, and now Muslim terrorists. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they’ve not had any five year period in the last 100 where there wasn’t at least one bombing in London.
Very few Americans supported the IRA, and even fewer actually contributed to it at all. And those that did were, no surprise, almost entirely Irish immigrants and their descendents. You exported your political problems to us, and them try to blame us for it? Nice.
I think I was about nine or ten the last time there was a major outbreak of trouble over there, but I assure you, I disapproved of it as much as was possible, to the extent I was aware that Ireland existed at all.
It was an internal political problem! What the hell did you expect us to do about it? Send the 7th carrier fleet to bomb Dublin?
1907, eh? In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan would be reformed in America, and grow to control a significant portion of the country for the next fifteen years, and would remain a violent part of the American political landscape for a further three decades.
Since 1993, there have been no less than 21 seperate terroristic attacks on abortion clincs, providers, and lobbying organizations, ranging from vandalism, to murder, to biological warfare.
America has never been a stranger to terrorist violence.
It’s true we have the KKK, Aryan Nation, fundies who bomb clinics, etc. But I don’t think they compare to the IRA. The IRA were an organised paramilitary group seeking to remove Britain from Northern Ireland. The KKK held marches and rallies, but my impression is that for the most part their attacks were confined to targets of opportunity. The clinic bombers are pretty much lone guns.
According to Wiki the IRA killed around 1,100 members of security forces and 600 to 650 civilians, and injured 6,000 British Army, Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Defence Regiment members and 14,000 civilians. The Provisional IRA lost about 300 members during the Troubles. According to Wiki, quoting a report from Tuskegee University, ‘a total of 4,733 persons had died as a result of lynching since 1882.’ So racist attacks have killed more people (according to the quick looks at Wiki), but 20,000 non-fatal casualties is more than I’ve heard of happening here.
We have had very few bombings in this country directed toward masses of people. The Centennial Park bombing comes to mind, and the truck bombing of the WTC in '93. Timothy McVeigh is there of course. But most other bombings, such as clinic bombings and the Unibomber bombings, were targeted. In England they have had many more terror bombings. In the '80s a week before I went to London there was a bombing. There are signs warning of unattended packages. That’s just not the kind of thing we see here.