Posted on 01/08/2007 1:19:20 PM PST by areafiftyone
Fortunately it's a lot harder to sink a ship than to bring down an airplane, even a civilian cruise ship.
Still RDX/C4 is powerful stuff, and properly applied could blow a good sized hole in a ship.
OTOH, the terrorists in Yemen used a whole boatload of high explosives and still didn't manage to sink the Cole. Blew a big hole in it, and killed a few crewmen, but they didn't sink it.
If there was just a small amount of residue, it could have been destroyed when they blew up the package, and you wouldn't notice any extra "bang", or they may find it when they examine what's left of the package and it's contents.
We can syart playing their game. Boom-Booms in large cities, get em going. When a country says we might attack you,,,boom boom what'd ya say?
Sounds like CYA to me. My "doubt o meter" pegged on that one. What would be in sprinklers, even plastic ones, that would "closely resemble C4", anything that closely resembles C4 is going to be, at minimum, fairly flammable, which you wouldn't want your fire system components to be.
Sounds more like the guy doing the test didn't know what he was doing, interpreted the first test wrongly and then continued to interpret the rest wrongly as well. Or there was residue of something which did indeed resemble C4, or was C4 or RDX.
Which type of test is more likely to be used, based on practical considerations such as cost, ease of use and so forth?
Probably best to do that with RDX, rather than C4, which is just RDX plus a few percent of plasticizers. I don't know that you could ever made a powder of C4. Crumbles maybe, but it would be like trying to make a powder of modeling clay, without drying it out first
Not necessarily. There may be some degree of variation in the sensitivity of the tester(s) it/them selves. Even if the level of whatever they were looking for stayed the same (and with air samples that's probably not going to be true either) you could get different readings. That's the reason for repeating the test, to try to eliminate false positives. But six positives in a row indicates that whatever they were testing for was well above the threshold level of the test. Multiple testing can only help when the level is near threshold, or one suspects a single bad tester, if one is merely using the same tester over and over then one will get the same result each time (again unless the level of what is to be detected is near the threshold that the detector is set to)
To go back to the pregnancy test analogy, if all the testers are off in the same way, then you'll get the same wrong answer. If the hormone level they are looking for is near the threshold, and the testers have the correct sensitivity, then you'd expect some positives and some negatives, due to sample variations or variations in the test strips.
"Excuse my Red-neck know nothing brain,but what does sniggering mean?I might want to use it to impress my buddies."
Think Mutley!
"D'oh!"
It sounds irresponsible when even stated that way as if the port rep wants to scare the journalist with the info.
Wanna' be J. Edgar Hoover feeds info to wanna' be Edward R. Murrow.
But it probably happened just as you stated.
They were probably relying on that swipe test. If the package was in a remote area it is doubtful they would have moved it to a large machine like this one:
http://www.lifesafetysys.com/osb/itemdetails.cfm/ID/379
Here is where it can fail...Just suppose someone had fired a gun or handled one that had been fired...Like... for example, whatever agent was taking the swipes. Or suppose someone had been exposed to some other organonitrate..for example, wearing a transderm nitro patch!
The machine would see the swipe sample, and go bananas.
They also learned that there would be no flyovers by the media allowed. They learned the public would be kept in the dark. (not that our current media is truthful, anyway) but we DID accept that decision without complaint.
And I'm sure we'll all believe like good sheeple that there was "nothing to see here" let's just move along.
This is why people need to SPEAK ENGLISH!!!
Point taken, but it's not limited to Fox. Journalism has pretty much gone to hell across the board.
I still hold out some hope that FNC can right the ship before they really do become completely irrelevant.
The only way we'll know if any of this amounts to anything is if something real happens.
Anyhow, I found an update on yesterday's incident:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16412408.htm
Charges dropped against 3 in port scare
BY ERIKA BERAS
Charges were thrown out today against the three men who set off a nationwide scare at the Port of Miami-Dade on Sunday.
Amar al Hadad, 27, the driver of the 18-wheeler, was at the center of a misunderstanding that initially sparked security concerns and quickly drew in various agencies -- the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Amar Al Hadad had been charged with resisting an officer without violence to his person. His brother, Hussain al Hadad, 24, had been charged with resisting arrest without violence and trespassing and another man, Hassan El Sayed, 20, had been charged with trespassing.
The cases against all three men were dismissed at a first appearance hearing this morning, court records show.
All three are from Dearborn, Mich., and of Middle Eastern descent. Both al Hadad men are from Iraq. El Sayed is from Lebanon. They are all legal U.S. residents.
*snip*
evidently there was cause for alarm because only one driver(occupant) is allowed in a truck that enters a harbor container yard and that driver must have valid photo ID that matches the truck and driver expected for an appointed pickup or they will not get in the yard.
I know a longshorman who works at a yard gate, she said if a driver did that he would be in big trouble
Even more fun, put in a big block of cheese.... wiring optional.
Somewhere in Miami there's a lawn that is VERY p.o.'ed.
Sprinkler parts...... the question is: which part of the sprinkler? Sophisticated sprinkler systems have TIMERS.
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