Posted on 08/12/2006 3:11:03 PM PDT by SE Mom
Tuscola County prosecutors filed terrorism-related charges Saturday against three men who they say bought dozens of cell phones Friday in Caro in a globally coordinated plot involving the Mackinac Bridge.
They charged brothers Adham Abdelhamid Othman, 21, and Louai Abdelhamied Othman, 23, along with their cousin, Maruan Awad Muhareb, 18, with identical counts of collecting material to support terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target with intent to committ terrorism.
(Excerpt) Read more at mlive.com ...
or is it Wayne State University that's right downtown Detroit and so red it should be called Stalin U? Been gone from there so long I'm forgetting.
Undoubtedly. But I don't see the demolition as necessarily being the objective. If even a small part were damaged- it's the psychological impact on the citizens that counts. Sure- they want a high body count- but first- they want to mess with our minds, our spirits..
I walked across that bridge during the Bridge Walk when I was 7 years old. 7 miles across. Seeing that bridge is like seeing the Golden Gate for the first time... you really have no idea how large it is until you see it up close. Quite overwhelming for a 7 year old. The bridge is also notorious for strong winds in the fall/winter, so much so that a Yugo was blown off the bridge once.
I just added it to Breaking News.
But I'm still kind of disgusted.
You know that because of the UK/NY bombing near-miss, they deployed National Guardsmen at some US airports, right?
The SF Chronicle featured a huge photo of the troops "guarding" SF Int'l Airport --NONE of them had magazines in their weapons.
They wouldn't even be able to fire, if they had to!
My ire is not confined to the FBI per se, it's just that lots of visible parts of the federal "anti-terror effort" are kind of lame and depressing.
Remember the USS Cole bombing? Off of Yemen? The captain rightly feared a follow-up attack, and ordered men to stand armed guard topside.
WITHOUT AMMO --and I do NOT mean they didn't have any. They were specifically forbidden to be locked and loaded for fear of AN ACCIDENT.
Who would want to serve under such careerists?
There is also quite a large Muslim population in Ann Arbor, home of U of M.
Boy, those Mennonites sure have funny names!
Thank you!
..here I was thinking they were Celtic?? ;)
Right. Lots of people are uneasy just going across a major bridge in the first place. IEDs would send people into a panic. They'd be driving over each other to try and escape. Rationally, I know that it would take a heavy airstrike to knock down a structure like that, but if IEDs started going off, I'd be doing everything I could to get to get off that bridge.
so have they changed what the M in UofM stands for yet to MAZI
Hmmm...what do these 3 have in common? I'm trying to figure it out. Umm....same knitting circle? No. Bridge club? No. Hmmmm...I just can't put my finger on it.
BINGO!
Exactly. Why tip off the New York Times?
Don't worry - troops can be sent from the fort. :)
http://www.mackinacparks.com/parks/colonial-michilimackinac_7/
Call me skeptical, but this seems specious at best. Seems like such an attack could be accomplished far easier without the need for 1k mobile phones. With all due respect to Michiganders, I highly doubt your state rates terribly high on the list of high profile targets.
A prosecutor can claim anything they like, doesn't mean it will stand the scrutiny test.
It's just that side of the state. Ann Arbor is not that far from Dearborn.
They would be detected and folks with weapons would be there pretty quickly, I would guess / hope that is the plan. The bridge has independent management from M-DOT, and every issue concerning the bridge is handled by folks who have nothing else to tend to.
Normally a Li-Ion battery would only explode if it was short-circuited or overheated, and wouldn't create a huge explosion (although it would certainly get one's attention). A large amount of it put together would create a large, very intense fire. It appears to be particularly unstable when exposed to moisture, and makes one wonder if there would be a connection between this and the banning of liquids and gels from aircraft....if the lithium was in a compartment of a water bottle for instance, and was allowed to combine, what would be the effect? Maybe someone with a better knowledge of chemistry could opine. The more likely use would be to disassemble the battery and remove the lithium, which is used as a reducing agent in making illegal drugs. As a sidelight, lithium is also a mood stabilizer found in prescription drugs such as Eskalith. Of course, the antenna and receiver in the phone would be used as part of the detonator of an explosive device... As another sideline, modern cellphones contain what may be called a "smartchip" which actually contains all the information for a phone. If these guys were removing the chips, they could keep switching the chips in one phone and it would appear they were making calls from different phones with different numbers.
50 posted on 08/12/2006 3:14:20 PM EDT by ElCid89
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