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 ...
They all have a capital "A" in their name, silly. Listen to the FBI. There is NO threat coming from mosques.....
If I'm not taking a boat from Traverse City to the Island, I drive the other way across the bridge, to St Ignace, mainly to take the Bridge, but also since it's a much shorter ferry ride than from Mackinaw City. When sailing or motoring into Huron, the Bridge is a stunning view from the water, especially when you pass under it.
Considering there have been cell phone arrests in many states, this is part of a larger plot. As I said above, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they had a list of targets in every single state in order to maximize terror- and throw our emergency response into a state of chaos.
But these young men were such good football players and pillars of the community, according to their families.
They never could have been involved in anything even remotely bad!
Discarding the battery chargers is certainly unusual. Since the batteries are usually not charged when purchased, what were they going to do with the phones without charged batteries? Somehow wire it into some other power source?
Their business model, buying from Walmart, then selling at a profit is not entirely delusional, but if I'm a cop listening to the business model my first question is "why can't your customers go to Walmart themselves? Just exactly who are your customers?"
It is tension between two land anchorpoints, transmitted across the top span and hanging down that provides support?
It seems to me you would NOT have to fracture the sturdy verticle girdered supports to bring the bridge down, no:
You would blast at the anchorpoint of one of the two span/land anchorpoints, and like a laundry clothesline snapping at one point, the ghastly rest would gradually, tragically, play out.
I know this cuz the SF Golden Gate Bridge had a similar vulnerability that went unseen for a time, and was later corrected, under high secrecy. That's why the Feds took to guarding those two points so zealously when the T's said they were going to bring it down.
IF these guys were halfway intelligent, they'd take a break for election year.
Check out the link in post 14, it is a message board where store clerks/mgrs were talking about these mass phone purchases back in March.
I know,...used to live in Ypsi-tucky
Suspension Bridges are huge and marvelous but they are exquisitely VULNERABLE.
Let's make everyone buying a cell phone pass a background check. Better yet, let's have a federal registry of everyone who buys cell phones, batteries, etc. Heck, with the latest weekend news, we should do the same for anyone buying containers of liquid that could be taken on board an airplane.
Can't be too careful these days.
it's not there...
Excellent tagline.
I was in SF in 02 and have pictures of our soldiers guarding the bridge- and posing with overjoyed Chinese tourists. :) The Chinese women were so giddy to have their picture taken with our boys. I thanked the guys for their service. :)
The paperwork says to charge the batteries. This does not mean that there is no residual charge on the batteries. They were charged, tested, and recharged to a certain extent.
No one is saying that.
Makes you wonder how many things besides the planes were supposed to go boom.
Even if there is a residual charge, depending on how long ago the testing was done it could be so nominal that the phone won't function or function just enough to last a few minutes. Hardly a reliable phone.
Newspaper said the plane attacks were schedule next week - for the 16th.
Keep your eyes open.
AQ traditionally has coordinated multiple simultaneous attacks. Maybe one or more, are still "go".
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