08.06.13
A bomb made out of clothes — yeah, right
The same anonymous perps in the national security megaplex keep trying to convince everyone al Qaeda withstood the hiding it took from the US over the last decade. No one gets a second chance in the history of major conflict. But this weekend we got the old buzzword “chatter” again. Now it’s the revival of al Qaeda’s alleged ability to make bombs of anything — in this case, clothes.
Be skeptical. The US has much bigger problems than terrorism.
There are growing concerns that an al Qaeda affiliate could use a new generation of liquid explosive, currently undetectable, in a potential attack, according to two senior U.S. government officials briefed on the terror threat that has prompted the closing of nearly two dozen U.S. embassies.
Though the Transportation Security Administration has long been concerned about liquid explosives being used in potential devices — as it was during the failed Christmas Day bombing in 2009 — the new tactic allows terrorists to dip ordinary clothing into the liquid to make the clothes themselves into explosives once dry.
“It’s ingenious,” one of the officials said.
What’s ingenious is how easy it is for anonymous sources to plant the most ridiculous claims without any substantial explanation except their say-so.
Yes, now they’re going to make bombs out of shirts and trousers by dipping them in a magical cocktail of chemicals. The reason for this kind of horseshit passed off as intelligence is that people will say anything for job security.
File this as even worse than the underwear bomb, which only burned its wearer. And the mythology of the bombs sewn into body cavities, aka “the Joker bomb,” which somehow doesn’t painfully and totally debilitate or immediately poison the carrier.
If you read the article, al Qaeda seems to have been hurt not at all. Pushing the boundaries of nature and science from the sandy wastes of Yemen, we’re surprised they haven’t yet managed to build a stealthy nuclear-tipped ballistic missile program.
User Hostile said,
August 6, 2013 at 11:06 am
What are we talking about? Nitrocellulose based clothing? (“Nitrowear – For the terror fashionista in all of us”).
Outside of flash burns and a light show, how is this a terror weapon?
Or is there something more ominous?
George Smith said,
August 6, 2013 at 11:51 am
That’s what occurred to me initially, which is why it seems so laughable. My experience, over the past decade — however, tells me there’s some other even more concocted and tortured bit to this brought on by a combination of ignorance, a desire to plant stories, and the nuisance parts of the Dept. of Homeland Security where people are paid to sit around and come up or verify mostly theoretical crap. The next thing is a combination strapped down chicken test/dog and pony show in which a dummy is put in custom-made exploding clothes and tv is given a video. Exploding clothes, it’s hard to even type it without laughing out loud.