04-10-2008, 10:26 AM
Myra Bronstein Wrote:...while I doubt that a pile of fertilizer can do that kind of damage to a building...
Type "Manchester Bomb fertiliser" into Google for just one example (Canary Wharf, Baltic Exchange are others). Seriously, read how very simply these things can be constructed for devastating use. I don't know the amount of fertiliser used in Oklahoma but around 3000lbs was packed into a van for the Manchester bomb and only a few pounds of Semtex.
Fertiliser is cheap, can be purchased and stockpiled easily without suspicion, finally it can be turned into explosive grade material with ease. It can be transported relatively easily and is super stable.
The percussion wave of the blast is what causes the damage and it can and does blow out most structures nearby (it is not the actual explosion per se). The Manchester bomb had a damage radius of approximately 1 mile and the crater left where the van was, was quite huge. Anything within the first couple of hundred yards is obliterated.
The point of the post - there is absolutely no doubt that a pile of fertiliser (assisted by various parts such as detonator) can cause the Oklahoma damage.
Now why McVeigh did what he did, or in fact, why, his and the other bombs noted above weren't prevented, you or I won't know, definitively, the whole answer. There is more than one right answer and it varies with each layer. Usually quite base and crude fundamentalism at the operator level rising to a complex gaming scenario at the highest level. It goes beyond terrorism (in it's commonly understood form) and the fear factor and leverage it gives to the people and the politicos et. al. respectively.
The people directly involved in the operations could not tell you one definitive answer either. They can only give you their truth and it would be correct to them and their level of operational knowledge. The clever aspect is that if/when all the truths are combined it can look quite contradictory and one could presume that some 'stories' are dishonest. At any rate by the time anyone gets that far the stage has been cleared, the scripts burned and a new play begun.