Boston Marathon Bomb Attack?!?!?

[Lord Jim]

April 15th is the 101st birthday of Kim Il Sung, so maybe the North Koreans did it....

I wonder how long it will be before the crackpotsphere starts claiming that the government was behind it...

Or that it was all faked....

[Rick]

April 15th is the 101st birthday of Kim Il Sung, so maybe the North Koreans did it....

Naw man the Norks got Nukes and they is itchin to use em...

[Lord Jim]

Maybe they weren't bombs at all...

Maybe they were missiles....

[liberty]

[quote="Guinevere"]Thats your own prejudices -- in fact the words used by police so far to describe the bombs are "crude" and "unsophisticated." There are reports from the hospitals of ball bearings being taken out of victims.
/[quote]

We all have prejudices, including you yourself, that we should recognize and compensate for if wish to have any chance of accuracy. In my opinion, the only sophistication that matters is the explosive used. If is anything other than gunpowder or dynamite I would suspect a foreign network. Actually gunpowder is not considered an explosive, but a propellant. I just can’t see someone carrying around enough gunpowder to make an explosion that large without being noticed. However, I have been wrong before. They will know tomorrow what the explosive was if not already.

[RayThom]

However, they were probably home taking showers or eating lunch by the time the mayhem struck. The collateral damage was almost all spectator related. Anyway, I have yet to hear from their SO's or their mom yet so... no news is good news.

More disgruntled foreign nationals... a Saudi this time -- go figure.

[Jarlaxle]

that was posted via my cell phone... and obviously without proofreading!

[Crackpot]

My suspicions:

Lone or small group of terrorists
Likly domestic base
Act form of protest rather than to achieve a political goal

[Guinevere]

[oldr_n_wsr]

Glad you and your Swede are ok Guin. My thoughts are with you and your city. Boston will make it through this. You guys are almost as tough as NY'ers

I heard they searched some apartment/house in a Boston suburb.
One of the dead is an 8 yo boy.

[Grim Reaper]

Some more details about the 8 y/o have been released.

I've read that the other two fatalities were women, but nothing more than that yet.

I've also read that the Saudi national was investigated and found to have nothing to do with the attack. Hopefully they do find the people responsible for this.

[dgs49]

A few general comments:

If the bombers intended to cause maximum harm they failed miserably. As one who has run many times in these sorts of things, I can tell you that there are literally thousands of people standing cheek to jowl AT THE STARTING LINES of these events, and a similar bomb, strategically placed at the starting line could have killed a couple hundred people, easily. And there are many, many trash cans around, as people are discarding a lot of junk (throw-away shirts and such) before the race starts.

Now, the biggest thing we have to fear is politicians doing stupid things in order to appear useful. Maybe they can pass a law that makes it illegal to kill people with garbage-can bombs.

It seems odd that no one - not even a crackpot - has yet claimed responsibility. Anonymous, unexplained terrorism is rather pointless, isn't it?

[Guinevere]

My office is eerily quiet today. Not empty quiet, just everyone staying in their offices and not talking much because we're all in a daze, quiet.

[Miles]

I don't know about obvious mate; "I don't like the idea of gun restrictions, so I'm going to blow up some marathon runners," is the logic of the madhous, and not an obvious one to me!!

They may think, and god knows they certainly think on a different level, that something like this will take the focus away from guns. Personally I would like to see less speculation starting with the media. Jenny Jones journalism, forget the 5 w's just make it up as you go.

[oldr_n_wsr]

My office is eerily quiet today. Not empty quiet, just everyone staying in their offices and not talking much because we're all in a daze, quiet.

Guin, it will probably be like that for a few days. I know after 9/11 fthere wasn't much yapping going on, not even by the water cooler, or at the bar (after work).

[liberty]

I understand that the explosive was gunpowder. How does someone position that much gunpowder without it be detected? The police didn’t canvas the area to insure all the trash cans were empty before the start of the race? They weren’t watching? If the gunpowder and other components were homemade and the bomber is a highly disciplined group or individual there is a excellent chance they will never be identified. Do you remember Ted the liberal anti-capitalist pro-environmentalist bomber he killed and maimed people for years and was never identified by anyone on site.

[Econoline]

This just in: the National Bomb Association has just announced its recommendation that all runners engaged in organized competitive events be required to carry pipe bombs while they run. "The only thing that can stop an evil madman with a bomb is a good person with a bomb," said association president Wayne LaPeepee in a statement issued today from the organization's Washington D.C. headquarters.

[Jarlaxle]

Fuck off, you Despicable shit.

[Econoline]

The police didn’t canvas the area to insure all the trash cans were empty before the start of the race?

I think Dave (dgs) already addressed that point above:

there are many, many trash cans around, as people are discarding a lot of junk (throw-away shirts and such) before the race starts.

Plus it's pretty hard to hold an outdoor event with tens of thousands of participants and hundreds of thousands of spectators along miles and miles of city streets without trash cans...

It seems odd that no one - not even a crackpot - has yet claimed responsibility. Anonymous, unexplained terrorism is rather pointless, isn't it?

Maybe lib's comparison to the Unabomber case will turn out to be the best analogy. (IIRC it was a while before an "explanation" of those bombings appeared.) Still way too early to tell.

And it's always struck me as odd to speak of "claiming responsibility"...wouldn't "claiming irresponsibility" be more apt? (Just saying.)

BTW, this is what inspired me to write the above post:

Now, the biggest thing we have to fear is politicians doing stupid things in order to appear useful. Maybe they can pass a law that makes it illegal to kill people with garbage-can bombs.

It's a good thing there isn't a National Bomb Association similar to the National Rifle Association (even though the definition of the word "arms" [as in "the right to keep and bear arms"] would include bombs as well as rifles)--or else the quote I made up would likely be real, as real as the similar statements from the NRA and others after the Newtown killings. (I do admit that calling my imaginary association president "Wayne LaPeepee" was a bit over the top, though.)

[liberty]

Fuck off, you Despicable shit.

He is not despicable he s a nice guy and I like him: he is just wrong sometimes.

[Joe Guy]

This just in: the National Bomb Association has just announced its recommendation that all runners engaged in organized competitive events be required to carry pipe bombs while they run. "The only thing that can stop an evil madman with a bomb is a good person with a bomb," said association president Wayne LaPeepee in a statement issued today from the organization's Washington D.C. headquarters.

Good point.