[NEWS] Explosions near Boston Marathon Finish Line (UPDATE: MIT/Watertown shootout w/ suspects)

must be this missing girl...

 

Yeah, the metal object was clearly already there to begin with...the guy that made the video says that the metal object has been left behind, as if it wasnt there to begin with.

Just seems that the guy walked in front of that at the perfect time.

 

no mention of Ricin in this thread yet- sent to Roger Wicker (R)Mississippi.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>RT @<a href="https://twitter.com/cnnbrk">cnnbrk</a> Sen. Roger <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23Wicker">#Wicker</a> has been assigned protective detail after discovery of <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23ricin">#ricin</a> letter addressed to him. <a href="http://t.co/U4SI8r9K2e" title="http://on.cnn.com/13dnPZf">on.cnn.com/13dnPZf</a></p>&mdash; Blogs of War (@BlogsofWar) <a href="https://twitter.com/BlogsofWar/status/324312587007303680">April 17, 2013</a></blockquote>
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Great, this better not be a domestic nut job

 

Walter white?

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Yankee Stadium just played Sweet Caroline to applause &amp; cheers to honor Fenway. Congrats terrorists, you brought NY &amp; Bos. fans together</p>&mdash; S.M (@redsteeze) <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/324318780098482177">April 17, 2013</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>A sea of people in Dorchester-- all in support of marathon victim, 8 year old Martin Richard, and his family. <a href="http://t.co/RObB0NBFWn" title="http://twitter.com/kathrynsotnik/status/324305713264463873/photo/1">twitter.com/kathrynsotnik/…</a></p>&mdash; Kathryn Sotnik (@kathrynsotnik) <a href="https://twitter.com/kathrynsotnik/status/324305713264463873">April 16, 2013</a></blockquote>
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Boston Marathon bombs had simple but harmful design, early clues indicate

By Joby Warrick and Sari Horwitz, Tuesday, April 16, 8:24 PM

The bombs that tore through a crowd of spectators at the Boston Marathon could have cost as little as $100 to build and were made of the most ordinary ingredients — so ordinary, in fact, that investigators could face a gargantuan challenge in attempting to use bomb forensics to find the culprit.

Investigators revealed Tuesday that fragments recovered at the blast scene suggest a simple design: a common pressure cooker of the kind found at most discount stores, packed with an explosive and armed with a simple detonator. A final ingredient — a few handfuls of BBs, nails and pellets — helped ensure widespread casualties when the two devices exploded on Monday near the race’s finish line, law enforcement officials said.

The devices’ design was immediately recognized by counterterrorism experts as a type touted by al-Qaeda for use by its operatives around the world. Similar devices have been used by terrorists in mass-casualty bombings in numerous countries, from the Middle East to South Asia to North Africa.

Yet the bomb’s simplicity and garden-variety ingredients complicate the task of determining whether the maker was an international terrorist, a homegrown extremist or a local citizen with a grudge, investigators and experts say.

“This is going to take a very long time,” said a federal law enforcement official involved in examining the deadliest bombing on U.S. soil in nearly two decades. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an active investigation.

The FBI agent leading the inquiry, Richard DesLauriers, said as much at a news conference Tuesday. “We are doing this methodically, carefully, yet with a sense of urgency,” he said.

The simple bomb design could imply that the maker was an amateur, incapable of acquiring more sophisticated materials, veteran investigators and forensics experts said. But they said it also could be the work of a sophisticated bomb maker taking great care to cover his tracks.

“He might deliberately choose to use a less sophisticated device because he knows the explosives will be harder to trace,” said Robert Liscouski, a former Homeland Security assistant secretary now with Implant Sciences, a company that makes bomb-detection devices. “It’s what you would expect of someone who wants to carry out more of these attacks.”

What appeared certain was that the bombs unleashed a relatively modest explosive force, compared with more lethal improvised explosive devices or suicide bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet the twin explosions were powerful enough to shatter windows and sever the limbs of multiple bystanders who were close to them.

The fact that the bombs were not powerful enough to gouge craters in the sidewalk or inflict structural damage on nearby buildings suggested to some investigators that they used a common explosive such as black gunpowder, rather than something like plastic explosive. Black powder is widely sold at sporting goods and discount stores.

DesLauriers said pieces of the bombs and residue have been sent for testing at the bureau’s laboratory at Quantico, Va.

“The black powder, or smokeless powder, you can buy in Wal-Mart or gun shops. It’s used for hobbies,” said Michael Bouchard, a former assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “All you need is a fuel and an oxidizer, and the Internet is great for explaining how to do this.”

Bouchard said the shock wave and hail of shrapnel might have caused more casualties, except for the fact that the bombs were probably placed on the ground and surrounded by tightly packed crowds of spectators who absorbed the worst of the impact.

“There were so many people around it, they took the brunt of the blast,” Bouchard said. “They shielded the runners.”

Other experts said they suspect that a single person or small group was likely behind the attack, in part because there has been no claim of responsibility. Several international terrorist groups, including the Pakistani Taliban, have so far disavowed having any role in Monday’s bombing.

“The location of the explosive devices in the crowd at the finish line indicates that the intent was to cause mass casualties rather than targeting specific individuals or assets,” said Alexia Ash, head of North America forecasting for Exclusive Analysis, a security consulting firm. Ash said the culprit clearly achieved “effective operational security. . . as well as the capability to construct several small but effective IEDs.”

Other clues to the design of the bombs emerged when emergency room physicians in Boston confirmed that many victims suffered shrapnel wounds. Some who were standing near the bombs were struck dozens of times by what appeared to be BB-like pellets and carpenter’s nails.

Federal investigators confirmed that the shrapnel had been inside pressure-cooker devices. They said fragments of black nylon indicated at least one of the bombs was concealed in a bag or backpack.

The pressure-cooker bomb is a standard part of al-Qaeda’s repertoire and has been hailed as cheap and effective in articles and handbooks written by veterans of the terrorist group. In 2010, the al-Qaeda-linked publication “Inspire” offered instructions for building a pressure-cooker bomb in an article titled, “Making a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.”

Faisal Shahzad, a 31-year-old Pakistani living in Connecticut, used a pressure cooker as part of a bomb that he tried to set off inside a vehicle in New York’s Times Square on May 1, 2010. He had trained with extremists in Pakistan and was sentenced to life in prison.

In 2006, in one of India’s deadliest terrorist attacks in recent years, terrorists planted similar devices on trains along Mumbai’s regional rail network, killing 209 people and wounding more than 700 others. The lethality of the devices has prompted warnings by U.S. agencies urging vigilance in watching for bombs concealed inside the ubiquitous aluminum pots.

“The presence of a pressure cooker in an unusual location, such as a building lobby or busy street corner should be treated as suspicious,” warned a Homeland Security brochure issued in 2010.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...b061cc-a6d8-11e2-8302-3c7e0ea97057_story.html

 

Wouldn't the pressure cooker absorb some of that blast since they are kind of thick?

 

http://www.3news.co.nz/Why-do-press...ombs/tabid/1160/articleID/294590/Default.aspx

 

Wicker is conservative but the crowd at the Boston marathon would be mostly liberal.

if they're connected I'd speculate it's the work of a pro second ammendment nutter. The letter's either a feeble attempt to throw the authorities off the track or at creating a martyr.

 

This video is just hard to watch. It's like you are there watching the finish line along with everyone else.

 

I hadn't even thought about conservatives vs liberals until yesterday evening, when the president told me not to.

 

wow! that sound is so loud! I cant imagine being there just running or watching, and then the bomb explodes.

 

unfreakingbelievable. it's like a disaster movie.. sickening to think about

 

Probably is.

 

Prescient:


America’s New Bomb Threat
by Eli LakeJul 13, 2012 4:45 am EDT
Some of the deadliest weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan—improvised explosive devices, or IEDs—are heading to U.S. shores, warns a top general.
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In Iraq and Afghanistan, homemade, low-tech bombs, often hidden along roadsides, have been some of the deadliest threats to United States soldiers. In Afghanistan alone, these improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were responsible for 1,290 of the 2,477 U.S. and coalition casualties since 2001, according to iCasualties.org, which tracks troop deaths.

Now, IEDs could be coming to U.S. shores.

According to Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, head of the military’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, some of the same terrorists who amassed the know-how on building IEDs are setting their sights on the U.S.

“Today’s IEDs are relatively simple, low-tech devices, which routinely use command wire, pressure plates, or radio-controlled triggers,” Barbero wrote in written testimony released Thursday ahead of a closed hearing of a subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee. “Many readily available components such as cellphones, agricultural fertilizers and simple electronic transmitters and receivers have legitimate commercial uses, but are easily and increasingly adapted for illicit purposes in manufacturing IEDs.”

Barbero cited the case of an Iraqi named Waad Ramadan Alwan who moved to Kentucky in 2009 after winning a visa as a political refugee. According to a December 16, 2011, plea agreement, Alwan was an Iraqi insurgent working between 2003 and 2006 to plant IEDs on roads traveled by U.S. troops. In 2010, in Bowling Green, Ken., Alwan began to train another man in how to make them, making diagrams of the bombs and giving oral instructions on how to assemble the devices, according to the document.

In his testimony, Barbero said the military provided key intelligence to the FBI in the Alwan case. He said their cooperation was an example of weapons technical intelligence, a process of identifying the markings of signatures of explosives and matching with other kinds of data, working to neutralize a threat.

“The domestic IED threat from both homegrown extremists and global threat networks is real and presents a significant security challenge for the United States and our international partners,” Barbero said in his written testimony. He said that since 2007, on average there are 500 attempted IED detonations per month outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. After those countries, IEDs are most prevalent in Colombia, a country that has fought against a drug-fueled insurgency since the 1990s.


Rafiq Maqbool
After opening statements on Thursday, the committee went into closed session, citing the sensitivity of intelligence surrounding the IED threat to the U.S.

After killing Osama bin Laden, the CIA and U.S. military knocked out a succession of senior al Qaeda leaders with the intelligence haul from his compound. In his State of the Union speech this year, President Obama said, “For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken.”

Nonetheless, al Qaeda has adapted, according to congressional testimony from the Director of National Intelligence. Instead of relying on seasoned veterans to plan elaborate attacks, the group’s new tactics emphasize recruiting Americans and Westerners and planning lower-tech attacks, say experts. Today, al Qaeda shares best practices for terrorism through online chat rooms and an Internet publication known as Inspire.

One homegrown threat was Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, who pled guilty to assembling a homemade bomb that nearly exploded in Times Square on May 1, 2010. Shahzad, who was sentenced to life in prison, had reportedly attended a terrorist training camp in the province of Waziristan.

Shahzad and another would-be bomber, Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American who attempted to blow up the New York City subway in 2009, were able to obtain the ingredients for their bombs over the counter, according to court documents.

The military and Department of Homeland Security are particularly concerned about the availability of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that was also the primary ingredient of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The title of the hearing Thursday was “Securing Ammonium Nitrate: Using Lessons Learned in Afghanistan to Protect the Homeland from IEDs.”

Rep. Dan Lungren, a California Republican and chairman of the subcommittee that held the hearing, said in an interview that he did not yet endorse tighter restrictions on selling the fertilizer. For now, he said, he wanted to work with the chemical industry and law enforcement to figure out ways track its sale so it wouldn’t be used for terrorism.

“The IED is the most deadly form of attack on our troops in the war zone,” Lungren said. “That has increased over time. Is there any question that those who are dedicated to killing Americans would not exploit vulnerabilities in the United States to use IEDs here?”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/13/america-s-new-bomb-threat.html

 

trying to catch a lot of flies with that web you're weaving?