Deathgate, Pt 2
McClellan Wouldn’t Says Whether Troops Had Been Alerted to Heightened Danger.
Q: Are U.S. troops under any kind of higher alert because there’s enough munitions for like 50 car bombs? Is there, like, any kind of alert going on for them? Are they on any kind of higher standard?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think you need to look at what we have done in terms of destroying munitions. As I point out, we’ve destroyed more than 243,000 munitions, we’ve secured another nearly 163,000 that will be destroyed. [White House Press Gaggle, 10/25/04]
Wait. 50 car bombs???!!! It took one pound of this stuff for Libyan terrorists to bring down the plane at Lockerbie. Using the same amount per carbomb means 760,000 car bombs. And if you’re talking the amount needed for nuclear triggering, there was enough to trigger 380 crude atomic weapons like the one we used on Hiroshima in 1945.
Sheesh. These reporters need to get their facts straight. As for McClellan, he gets paid the big bucks to continue the Deathgate coverup that’s killing our troops.
October 25th, 2004 at 1:53 pm
Not only killing over 1000
Maimed and mutilatated over 8000
October 25th, 2004 at 4:55 pm
In fairness, a good car bomb requires more explosive than is required to bring down an airliner. The looted munitions were not enough to create 760,000 effective car bombs.
A better point of comparison would be the bomb that took out the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Phil Carter has estimated that the missing explosives represent the equivalent of somewhere between 2500 and 8500 times the explosive power of Timothy McVeigh’s truck bomb. So, let’s take the midpoint and then round down a little: The equivalent of 5,000 Oklahoma City bombs were stolen right out from under our noses.
There - that’s a lot less scary, isn’t it?
October 25th, 2004 at 6:44 pm
Nuclear weapons are rated in tons of TNT. The stuff that was looted is twice as powerful as TNT.
The other point is that it generates more shrapnel. The low-grade explosives of the Oklahoma City bomb “pushed” the Murrah Building. The stuff stolen from Al Qaqaa would have “fractured” the building and sent small fragments across a much larger blast radius.
October 25th, 2004 at 11:12 pm
Actually, nuclear weapons are usually rated in kilotons or (more commonly these days) megatons. You state that the explosives stolen here are twice as powerful as TNT - the number I saw was 170%, so that’s close - even at that, the total amount is less than one (about 0.7) kiloton. Of course, just because the “boom” isn’t as big as a nuclear weapon doesn’t mean it isn’t a really, really big “boom.” And in any event, the stuff is probably most valuable to the insurgents broken up into many thousands of smaller packages, rather than one really big boom.
Also, you raise an excellent point with respect to the amount of shrapnel. I read some stuff about this earlier today (I forget exactly where), and the author - who sounded pretty authoritative, but what do I know? - made this same point.