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2007-07-01 Britain

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Posted by lotp 2007-07-01 14:41|| || Front Page|| [7 views ] Top
File under: al-Qaeda in Britain

#1 The WaPo article suggests the London bombers (at least) were trying to create a fuel-air explosive by letting the gas leak out of the cylinders -

According to some reports, the valves on the gas cylinders were left open, which Driver-Williams said was a strong indication that the bombers intended to create a "fuel-air" explosion. "What you're effectively creating is a thermobaric device," he said, referring to an explosion that relies on oxygen in the atmosphere to ignite a blast wave more powerful than many conventional explosives.

Fuel-air explosives are difficult to ignite, and the timing is especially tricky, Driver-Williams said. A mistake might result in two separate but minor explosions -- such as a burning car -- if the fuel-air mixture does not ignite properly. If it does, however, the result would be a "fireball the size of a house."

At the end of page 2 in the WaPo print article.

Posted by Bobby 2007-07-01 15:07|| 2007-07-01 15:07|| Front Page Top

#2 lotp, thanks for all the sleuthing and reporting today. Very valuable as the Burg is (again) a one-stop resource for the latest in the WoT.

Posted by Steve White">Steve White 2007-07-01 15:15|| 2007-07-01 15:15|| Front Page Top

#3 There need to be special enhancements for those who intentionally target emergency response personnel. ERT and EMS staff are a core component of a healthy and cohesive society. Striking at them is going for the jugular.

Absent capital punishment, permanent solitary confinement and subsistence rations spring to mind. Muslim terrorists are making increasing use of this vile strategy and it merits a dramatic escalation of the penalties attached to it.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-01 15:38|| 2007-07-01 15:38|| Front Page Top

#4 I agree Zen as long as the rations are a mix of bacon, pork loin, ham, with some good kosher wine to wash it down with.

Posted by Brett 2007-07-01 15:45|| 2007-07-01 15:45|| Front Page Top

#5 Drown them head-first in lard.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2007-07-01 15:48|| 2007-07-01 15:48|| Front Page Top

#6 *shakes head* Jeebus. maybe I need a break here

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2007-07-01 15:58|| 2007-07-01 15:58|| Front Page Top

#7 maybe I need a break here

No, Frank. You're doing fine. Civility will always be in style.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-01 16:00|| 2007-07-01 16:00|| Front Page Top

#8 Make no mistake, these people knew what they were doing.

Correction: While they might have had some vague idea of what they were trying to do they cocked it up very badly. We are not dealing with the cream of the jihadi crop here. These guys are frickin morons. Hey, Al Quaida!!! Is this the best you've got? Is this what you've been reduced to? This was a piss poor showing. You know that don't you? What, you mean the smart young men are turning their backs on your half-baked suicide missions? What a shame!

Posted by Jiggs Flung6221 2007-07-01 16:03|| 2007-07-01 16:03|| Front Page Top

#9 Uranium Anus

Posted by RD 2007-07-01 16:13|| 2007-07-01 16:13|| Front Page Top

#10 While they might have had some vague idea of what they were trying to do they cocked it up very badly.

Lack of competency in no way mitigates the monstrosity of their intent. This is much like the situation with Iran. While they clumsily attempt to assemble nuclear weapons, we are still not allowed to regard their lack of expertise as making the threat any less real.

Despite any lack of success, the would-be London bombers should face life in prison without any possibility of parole. One lesson the West has yet to learn is that we must always take Islam at its word. To date, that word has been "death to the Infidel" and we'd damn well better start taking them seriously.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-01 16:26|| 2007-07-01 16:26|| Front Page Top

#11 Folks, it's time to give the feed/wrap/drown them in/with lard/ham/bacon meme a rest.

It's a tired trope.

It won't have the effect you imagine.

It's an easy snark that begs the real question of how we can deter terrorism without compromising our fundamental values to the point of no return.

Good people, we are going to be faced with some really tough decisions over the next few years. We won't come to easy agreement on where the line is that we should cross. We need to gather facts -- not emotional overstatements, but facts -- and think this through.

Bullying others by endless repetition of demands for extreme action NOW!!!! isn't gonna cut it. Neither is the pork fat meme.

Posted by lotp 2007-07-01 16:27|| 2007-07-01 16:27|| Front Page Top

#12 I agree that harsher measures are required. I suggest a "pebble in the pond" technique. Though you have to go through the legal motions with the jihadis themselves, the rest of their family, their friends, their associates, etc., are out of the limelight.

You can really put the blocks to them. Put the entire bureaucratic machine to making their lives a burden and a misery.

Administrative loss of all government support, public benefits, take their children out of school and declare the parents unfit guardians, adopting them off to other families.

The police and fire departments don't show up when they call, their taxes are fouled up, their cars get lots of citations, any businesses they have get shut down, and it goes on and on.

In other words, everything goes wrong in their lives all at once. Reduced to begging in the street from strangers, with an eye to being kicked out of the country.

A.k.a. when bureaucrats attack. Just for this alone, several hundred should be forced out of the country in poverty.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-07-01 16:27|| 2007-07-01 16:27|| Front Page Top

#13 Lack of competency in no way mitigates the monstrosity of their intent.

No, but it offers potential insight into the nature of the threat they represent and of responses we might make.

Posted by lotp 2007-07-01 16:28|| 2007-07-01 16:28|| Front Page Top

#14 Great post, 'moose. That's some truly innovative thinking. The kind we desperately need. Although the ACLU would descend en masse squalling about unequal protection under the law.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-01 16:31|| 2007-07-01 16:31|| Front Page Top

#15 Possibly, Jiggs, although maybe it was a deliberate cock-up, designed to waste security resources while something bigger is cooking.

Posted by Jeslar 2007-07-01 16:32|| 2007-07-01 16:32|| Front Page Top

#16 If your Average Joe catches a Jihadi running away from a fizzle and decides to drop him with a ham, I cheer him his actions. From a government level, I object. Its a complete waste of money. We already do enough of that.

Posted by Mike N. 2007-07-01 16:33|| 2007-07-01 16:33|| Front Page Top

#17 it offers potential insight into the nature of the threat they represent and of responses we might make.

lotp, the problem remains that despite temporary lack of success, we are not allowed to scale back the level of threat response required. That will only precipitate even more ghastly death tolls when these thugs actually do succeed. The point then remains that we need to consider responding as if these attacks really had gone through.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-01 16:37|| 2007-07-01 16:37|| Front Page Top

#18 For consideration;
1. The average jihadi (or wanna-be) is typicaly a social failure on several levels. One of these levels is a complete lack of any real technical competence.
2. The average jihadi cannon fodder lacks the motivation/discipline to think criticaly, as opposed to rote memorization. There is no reward for critical thinking in their social environment.
3. Passive popular entertainment is a major source of information.

Conclusions:
1. the incindiary bombs were not so much an attempt at a thermobaric device as "if we set fire to some gasoline with a few gas cyliders in them, there will be a large Hollywood type Kaboom, In'shallah!" In other words, a BLVE bomb.
2. the "tactics" displayed are clearly learned from popular reports. Thank you mass media. Fricken short-sighted traitors.
3. The whole bacon grease thing is ulitimately counterproductive. Ditto most of the other forms of petty legal harrassment.
4. Deportation/loss of citizenship/lifetime ban on re-entry for the extended family of any convicted domestic terrorist, if carried out consistently, will shut down the domestic jihad cold.

cold is hand, heart and stone/ Cold it hajji far from home...

Posted by N guard 2007-07-01 17:18|| 2007-07-01 17:18|| Front Page Top

#19 BLVE bomb

Definition, please? I'd rather not google it, and make the the nice men and women in their neat black suits nervous. Thank you! ;-)

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-01 17:30|| 2007-07-01 17:30|| Front Page Top

#20 Deportation/loss of citizenship/lifetime ban on re-entry for the extended family of any convicted domestic terrorist, if carried out consistently, will shut down the domestic jihad cold.

It would certainly represent a damn fine start.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-01 17:40|| 2007-07-01 17:40|| Front Page Top

#21 lotp is right. Hard decisions. But are they worth making? The kind of decision that is necessary to remove the threat of terrorism is one, I'm afraid, that wil make us give up our western values of freedom, justice, due process and fairness.

How so? Only the forced removal of Islam, it's doctrines, it's Mosques and it's adherents will eliminate terrorism. We have neither the will or the ability to do so, without becoming something completely different than what we are. Hell, our leaders won't even identify the problem by it's real name.

The best we can hope for is reduction.

Posted by mcsegeek1 2007-07-01 18:11|| 2007-07-01 18:11|| Front Page Top

#22 Deportation/loss of citizenship/lifetime ban on re-entry for the extended family of any convicted domestic terrorist, if carried out consistently, will shut down the domestic jihad cold.

Unless they're born here, which most of them apparently are. And of course the proportion of jihadis born here will only increase over time.

Posted by Phaeno 2007-07-01 18:30|| 2007-07-01 18:30|| Front Page Top

#23 Only the forced removal of Islam, it's doctrines, it's Mosques and it's adherents will eliminate terrorism. We have neither the will or the ability to do so, without becoming something completely different than what we are.

Islam is so inimical to Constitutional law that allowing it to remain will make us into "something completely different than what we are". This is the no-win situation Islam routinely puts its victims into. Either you acquiesce to being overrun demographically or finally become obliged to go Medieval.

I believe that an America which found the courage to neutralize the danger of its Muslim population would retain far more of its original character intact than if it were to allow the Islamic threat to go uncountered.

More and more people seem to be agreeing that the banning of Shari'a law would be advisable. This should be an important first step in marginalizing Islam so that any opposition by Muslim immigrants could populate the first round of deportations. The more we make our nation unfriendly to fundamentalist Islam, the safer it is.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-01 18:44|| 2007-07-01 18:44|| Front Page Top

#24 Definition, please?
It should be BLEVE:

Boiling
Liquid
Expanding
Vapor
Explosion

You see it happen a lot in railway accidents, LP tanker get heated by a fire until it bursts. Same principle as a fuel air explosive bomb.

Posted by Steve">Steve 2007-07-01 19:12|| 2007-07-01 19:12|| Front Page Top

#25 wife, BLVE?? BLEV is boiling liquid, explosive vapor, a common haz mat problem.

Basicly, these guys knew that gasoline and patio gas [propane] can blow up. Their creative thinking stopped at the light a match and it will explode stage. It doesn't, necessarily.

Posted by Chuck Simmins">Chuck Simmins 2007-07-01 19:17|| http://northshorejournal.org]">[http://northshorejournal.org] 2007-07-01 19:17|| Front Page Top

#26 Sorry, can't type today.
BLVE ==> BLEVE. Working with commercial gasses can teach you all sorts of interesting things...

Posted by N guard 2007-07-01 19:22|| 2007-07-01 19:22|| Front Page Top

#27 Working with commercial gasses can teach you all sorts of interesting things...

Yeah, like crack the valve on a silane (SiH₄ Silicon Tetrahydride) tank and out shoots flame.

In the memorable words of a facility supervisor I once worked with:

"If you see me running ... try to keep up."

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-01 19:40|| 2007-07-01 19:40|| Front Page Top

#28 Wasn't it in the Philippines where muslim terrorists where shot and buried with pig remains?

If they are tainted with pork, they think they will not receive their sexual reward (the thing that REALLY motivates them).

Use your enemies weaknesses against them. It is not counterproductive.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2007-07-01 20:01|| 2007-07-01 20:01|| Front Page Top

#29 #11 Any system of values that is not derived from the Golden Rule is garbage.

Posted by gromgoru 2007-07-01 20:08|| 2007-07-01 20:08|| Front Page Top

#30 Bright Pebbles, the story was about (I think) General Black Pete [something] when he finally defeated the Moros that the Spaniards had been fighting for generations. The same people the Filipinos are fighting again today. It's not clear whether the bullets really were dipped in lard (it seems to me in my ignorance that would screw up the rifles something fierce), or the captives were just told so and believed it.

As I understand it, the Muslims believe that if they or their carcasses are tainted, pork or otherwise, they won't go to Paradise at all, never mind the various virgins.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-01 22:13|| 2007-07-01 22:13|| Front Page Top

#31 "Black Jack" Pershing, TW.

And, according to Kipling---The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief, last stanza---the Brits were using it in India before that.

Posted by gromgoru 2007-07-01 23:06|| 2007-07-01 23:06|| Front Page Top

23:57 Mike N.
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23:56 Zenster
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