metavac wrote:What can we say today about the tradecraft proficiency of the major jihadi groups given Western efforts to roll back their international networks?
Revolutionary warfare, AKA terrorism is a brutally Darwinian process. Typically, there are large numbers of insurgents of marginal competence who get killed off early. What happens then is that expertise gets better and better but cencentrated in fewer and fewer people. Eventually, that process gets to the point where the elimination of small numbers of those operatives has a catastrophic effect on the terrorist movement and it implodes.
As a result, the pattern is usually that incidents become more and more lethal and reach a peak just before the insurgency collapses completely. The best comparison with a soap bubble - it grows and grows until it suddnly goes pop and vanishes.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Sea Skimmer wrote:I’m wondering if any real explosives have been found; a bunch of fuel piled inside a car suggests a very crude and relatively ineffective bomb. Propane cans wont explode until the propane has literally boiled, and that would only happen after the gasoline had burned for a while in a not particularly death spewing manner.
The device possibly was meant to be an explosive-actuated incendiary device. Such firebombs work by using a relatively small low-intensity explosive charge to ignite a more volatile flammable material. This results in an intense, rapidly spreading fire that can quickly engulf a confined space such as a building, rail car, subway car or airplane. Such a device was used in a bombing of a train in India recently and effectively took out an entire carriage along with everybody inside. The bodies were so carbonized we're still not sure how many people were in there. That was a confined space, a firebomb would not be as dangerous in an open outdoor space like the one in this case.
These powerful explosive-actuated incendiary devices are extremely difficult to make, and getting the explosive charge to ignite the fuel is challenging. In many cases, the initial explosion merely hurls the tanks or otherwise fails to puncture the containers or ignite the gas -- or it damages the tanks to the point that the gas leaks out harmlessly. The amount of flammable gas apparently recovered in this incident would have been sufficient to create a massive fireball, though in order for the device to reach its full explosive potential, it would have to have been carefully designed with a precise mixture of fuel and air.
The inclusion of nails seems a deliberate effort to injure people so that they can't escape the fire should it not be sufficiently dramatic to consume them immediately outright, so it seems that they were aware of the possibility that the bomb would misfire and had a backup pain for getting some fatalities out of it regardless.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
It could be a fairly primitive bomb, but it is also a good way to dodge the monitoring of more obvious explosives. Petrol and gastubes are available at any gas station anywhere they sell camping gear. Set of the fuel and blowing up the responding firefighters would be a very simple operation. Blowing the gastubes would be more troublesome but would spray the street in burning petrol. I remember a few exploding tubes blasting a house to hell when I was younger, you don't need C4 to blow things to hell.
I thought Roman candles meant they were imported. - Kelly Bundy
12 yards long, two lanes wide it's 65 tons of American pride, Canyonero! - Simpsons
Support the KKK environmental program - keep the Arctic white!
Stuart wrote:Revolutionary warfare, AKA terrorism is a brutally Darwinian process. Typically, there are large numbers of insurgents of marginal competence who get killed off early. What happens then is that expertise gets better and better but cencentrated in fewer and fewer people. Eventually, that process gets to the point where the elimination of small numbers of those operatives has a catastrophic effect on the terrorist movement and it implodes.
As a result, the pattern is usually that incidents become more and more lethal and reach a peak just before the insurgency collapses completely. The best comparison with a soap bubble - it grows and grows until it suddnly goes pop and vanishes.
Yeah, I know the model. I'm just curious if there's anything quantifiable--even dispositional--we can say about the impact of post-2001 counter-terrorism efforts on the proficiency in which attacks are carried out. For example, using State's Patterns of Global Terrorism lethality and incidence have gone up together a quarter, so for at least that interval proficiency arguably remained roughly constant. Of course, since 2003 we also have the Iraq casualty figures included (which account for at least half of the increase). I can't say how insurgents engaged in a daily war with Coalition forces skews the figures, but it does make me question whether my initial approach for testing the model is sufficient.
I'm confused: Were these cars parked next to the nightclub?
If so, and if Stuart's right about the type of "bomb", then maybe their goal was to burn the place to the ground like that fire at a White Lion concert that killed a hundred people.
Elfdart wrote:I'm confused: Were these cars parked next to the nightclub?
One was parked outside a night club. The second car was found a couple blocks away, but was towed off for a parking violation by authorities before anyone realized it was a bomb. I’ve yet to find any article which specifies what building it was parked outside of when first noticed.
If so, and if Stuart's right about the type of "bomb", then maybe their goal was to burn the place to the ground like that fire at a White Lion concert that killed a hundred people.
More details have been given about the bombs, each had a fuse linked to several gallons of gasoline arranged around six to eight propane tanks. No mention of real explosives, like RDX, which could have trigged an incredibly effective firebomb. Still, would have been very easy for any building in the surrounding area to catch fire.
I strongly suspect this was the work of pure amateurs who really thought that simply igniting the fuel would easily cause a massive explosion in its own right. The club reportly had 2000 people in it at the time. A panic after the bomb went off could have led to dozens of people being crushed to death alone.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
A car on fire has been driven at the main terminal building at Glasgow Airport, police have confirmed. Eyewitnesses have described a Jeep Cherokee being driven at speed towards the building with flames coming out from underneath.
They have also described seeing two Asian men, one of whom was on fire, who had been in the car. Strathclyde Police said two people had been arrested and detained in connection with the incident.
The airport has been evacuated and all flights suspended following the incident at 1515 BST.
A Whitehall spokesman said the incident was not being treated as a national security threat.
One eyewitness said: "I heard the sound of a car's wheels spinning and smoke coming out. "I saw a Jeep Cherokee apparently as if it was trying to get right through the doors into the terminal building.
"There were flames coming out from underneath then some men appeared from in amongst the flames. "The police ran over and the people started fighting with the police. I then heard what sounded like an explosion."
Eye-witness Richard Gray told BBC News 24: "A green Jeep was in the middle of the doorway burning.
"There was an Asian guy who was pulled out of the car by two police officers, who he was trying to fight off. They've got him on the ground.
"The car didn't actually explode. There were a few pops and bangs which presumably was the petrol."
Stephen Clarkson said he saw people running towards him and "panicking" then noticed a crashed Cherokee jeep.
He said he helped police restrain one of the men.
"It was lucky that I was there," he said.
"I managed to knock the man to the ground with my forearm and the police got on top of him and restrained him and put handcuffs on him."
Dr Rak Nandwani was at the airport building to pick up relatives when he saw a plume of black smoke. He said: "The whole place has come to a standstill, the terminal building has been evacuated. I have spoken to my relatives and they have been moved to outside the building.
"They were told they could not pick their baggage up from the baggage collection area.
"There must be about 50 police cars at the airport. Me and my son, along with everyone else, have been moved to the car rental area."
Taxi driver Ian Crosby said: "This was no accident. This was a deliberate attack on Glasgow Airport."
The reaction of members of the public was not to help the men in the car, but to restrain them, he told the BBC.
Mr Crosby, who said he served in Northern Ireland, told how he shepherded people away from the scene in case of a secondary explosion or a nail-bomb.
Two men, one of whom was reported to be badly burned, were seen being led away in handcuffs.
EBC|Fucking Metal|Artist|Androgynous Sexfiend|Gozer Kvltist|
Listen to my music! http://www.soundclick.com/nihilanth "America is, now, the most powerful and economically prosperous nation in the country." - Master of Ossus
My theory is the Muslim extremists that we love oh-so-much just recruited a couple of idiots who shared their ideals and gave them this as a "qualifier", essentially like in food service, going up from cleaning to working the drive-thru. And when they failed and the bombs were found, it's not the police they'll be running from; it'll be their employers punishing them for failing.
