Are Experts Underestimating Boston Bombers?
Read Time:3 Minute, 35 Second
I’m not sure it’s wise to even raise this issue but it’s driving me nuts, and I readily admit I may be wrong, but I’ve been listening to the experts on national security discuss the Boston bombers and their bomb building ability.
All of them, and a few in particular, insist that these two had to have had special training by someone to know how to build the bombs they used. Fran Townsend mentioned the use of pipe bombs when the suspects encountered the police where suspect number one’ was killed.
This is the part I don’t understand. If one looks back about forty years ago there was a bunch of kids about their age in a group called the Weather Underground that bombed a number of federal buildings without much training at all. A few of them had slipped off to Cuba and received some “education” but we have to consider that there was no internet at the time, so information was scarce. If one were to check out their activities one would find that they blew up something about once a month. While there wasn’t as much government scrutiny, they did have the F.B.I chasing them for quite a while.
When I was about 10 years old, my cousin and I got into rockets. At the time my family lived in a large, rather run down house in Prichard, Alabama, and my cousin lived in one of the neighboring projects called Snug Harbor. He was 12 and taking a science course where he found a formula for gun powder. You know sulfur, potassium nitrate, and charcoal. We played around with that for a while and decided we might be able to make a rocket because by then we had seen Flash Gordon serials at the movies.
We started gathering our equipment, starting with a one and a half inch aluminum tube about a foot long, a flat piece of aluminum that we beat into a nose cone, and some fins, along with about a half pound mix of “gun powder,” that we knew, through experimentation, ignited quickly. So, we packed the tube with wet clay, let it dry, added the gunpowder, more clay and a small tube filled with match heads. Then we stood our rocket on its fins, poured a stream of gasoline about 25 feet to the match heads, and lit it.
Needless to say our rocket did not go to the moon, at least I don’t think it did. After the explosion we found pieces of aluminum about 75 feet away. What we had done was build a bomb. The clay was stronger than the aluminum so it just exploded. It scared the bejesus out of us at first, but then we began to have fun with it and started blowing up cans, trash cans, bottles, and etc. Later while living in one of the many housing projects, several other kids showed me how to make zip guns with .22 caliber ammunition.
The point I am trying to make is that if ten and twelve year old kids can figure out how to make a bomb without the internet, and if project kids can figure out out to make zip guns, why do these experts think that the two suspects couldn’t figure out how to make pipe bombs and bombs out of pressure cookers?
I don’t know about Boston but here in the South there are still kids who blow up mail boxes with M80’s. I know several who have taken the powder from the M80’s and essentially made small bombs. It’s really not that difficult if one understands the importance of keeping the explosion compressed. The only tricky part for the Boston bombers was the use of the cell phones. That, however, is easily mastered with most any device. For example, people can now turn lights on, alarm systems on and off, start their cars, and so forth with the use of a simple cell phone.
Given this information the experts need to tune into what is available, and how very creative young people can be.
What do you think?
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Bill, I am in total agreement with you! This is not to say that no one else helped (their mother possibly, for instance), but teenagers and young 20s can do and are willing to do amazing things! I think that the necessity that they had a formal trainer just is not giving them enough credit! Furthermore, it doesn’t give enough credit to other potential local terrorists!
Bonfire night could become very entertaining via the internet eh?
Raylan : Calm down a bit old bean. Certainly Islam is a wee bit invasive and alien to us but not all muslims want to strap a bit of dynamite around their gut and blow themselves and us to fuck.
It’s the extremists we need to worry about, not Islam per se.
If we keep slagging Islam per se then the sensible/moderate muslims will struggle all the more to speak out against their extremist element.
I do understand where you’re coming from mate – I live amongst a community that is now predominantly muslim. Many are my friends – some are just weird and scary.
I want my ‘friends’ to be my ‘friends’ and not to be afraid of me.
If they’re not afraid of me then they will say stuff they wouldn’t say if I’m as bad as their extremists.
It’s delicate Raylan and, I suspect, it will be for many many years, but let’s try and create a world were ‘moderate’ muslims KNOW they aren’t in danger from reprisals for the actions of their ‘extremists’.
If we can’t make progress then what’s the point?
Take care mate and control the fear eh? We all have it. We must control ‘it’ then we might arrive somewhere worth going to.
Very well put Norman. I have lived in the South all of my live and deal regularly with people who hate anything and anyone simply on the basis of the fact that they are different. Having taught at a major university I have dealt with students from around the globe and I have found accepting people for who they are not on the basis of stereotypes usually leads to a much better understanding of the people.
When are you Yanks going to realize that the Muslim is the enemy hell bent on destroying OUR way of life, with their twisted religious and cultural crap. Islam is behind this event no matter how you colour it.
Raylan, I think you are a bit of a paranoid, racist nut. Islam is one of the largest, if not the largest faiths in the world. They are no more intent in taking over or converting the world than any other faith. That is the way that most religions work. They are not happy unless everyone believes as they do. Over here the fundamentalist Christians are just as bad in my book.
The bombers used the internet for the act, and terrorist recruiters for the will. I would also bet $1000 that their crazy mother is somehow behind this. I would be surprised if it was part of some huge, worldwide conspiracy.
Baker I would not be surprised if the mother did push the boys toward the Islamic faith and they may well have become radicalized by some of the internet sites. My point was that they did not need any special training to learn how to build their bombs.
I agree James. I would have though that they would have relocated had they wanted to continue their “terrorist” activities.
As I said in another thread, you can learn how to build very sophisticated weapons from the internet.
There’s no doubt in my mind that at least the older brother was influenced by others, whether an organized group or simply the concept of blowing people up as a “sacrifice to Allah” it’s going to be difficult to determine.
Considering the amount of really amazing blunders they made, they certainly did not have real terrorist training or even decent planning abilities.
I agree they could have figured out how to build the bombs on their own. BUT, I do believe they were influenced in some way by a larger anti-American moement.
That could well be true Carol. Why they would be anti American is beyond me but it does seem that someone would have to convince then how a country that had been so good to them was now to be hated,
What you say may be true (I used to fly model rockets when I was a kid, but I bought the kits), but without presenting the Bomb Brothers as highly trained ruthless terrorists, how are the authorities going to maintin the level of fear among the populace?
I don’t for a minute think the “authorities” are attempting to “maintain a level of fear among the populace.”
E.A. I don’t know that it is the issue. I really think that they are just not aware of what some young people can do if the set their mind to it. I remember one guy in particular saying that he had worked with ATF every day to learn how to construct bombs and that there was no way someone without special training could do this.