Posted on 08/07/2020 8:02:14 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Lebanese President Michel Aoun says there are two possibilities behind Tuesdays blast either negligence or external intervention by a missile or a bomb.
Aoun said Friday that he asked France for satellite images to see if there were warplanes or missiles in the air at the time of the blast.
The blast is believed to have been caused when a fire touched off 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the port since it was taken from an impounded ship in 2013. The cause of the initial fire is not known.
Aoun told journalists that he received information on July 20 about the stored material and immediately ordered military and security officials to do what was necessary. He did not elaborate. He said several governments in charge since 2013 received warnings about the material.
He said the investigation is concentrating on 20 persons. He rejected an international investigation into the blast, saying that it will make us lose the truth.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
The correct term is blasting agent.
Not useless if/when they are limited, by definition not big. The US Constitution did very well in creating a limited, self-checking government doing the things that were required to be a nation. Internal Travel & Trade, Defense, International Relations & Commerce etc. The 'Federal' concept was that the States handled their affairs internally and devolved smaller things down the line.
It is when we got rich and progressive that things started to go awry. I mark the turning point when the peace-time US Government started to have more employees outside of the Post Office than within. Also when the 17th Amendment emasculated the Federal State Legislators power over the US Senate in 1913. The final bell was rung when FDR went after the US Supreme Court in the 1930s. While he failed to pack the court, he forced it to get into line with big government and making the 9th & 10th Amendments almost 'dead letters'!
Now, like for Covid and everything else, the citizens expect THE GOVERNMENT to protect and fix everything and anything. Katrina was the fault of Bush'43, Portland riots are because of Trump. It reminds me of the truism of executive power, once you make a rule you can never release it or forget it, it is always your responsibility.
“Raise the terrorism possibility to deflect from the sheer incompetence and stupidity of leaving a seized cargo of dangerous ammonium nitrate in a common warehouse, in the literal center of commerce of your country - for 7 years!”
Exactly right. EVEN IF some port official knew nothing about the dangerous nature of ammonium nitrate, the fact that the shipment was destined to some ministry of explosives in Mozambique should have been far more than a minimal clue.
Talk of “someone is gonna pay a price” is so stupid. There’s several billion in damages from the blast.
It seems very curious to me that the Lebanon Government wouldn’t have had sufficient radar and other sentry type operations going, to have KNOWN if there had been alien aircraft APPROACHING, let alone IN THE SKIES over Beirut! Is the man telling the world that Beirut is a sitting duck with NO surveillance of the skies in operation? Wow. Nobody ever blurts out a lie; and HE blurted that out....
I disagree.
If it is capable of detonating, then, it is by definition a high explosive, and, the multiple examples of it doing so is proof of that.
The fact that pure AN is not used commercially as a high explosive, e.g. because it’s better mixed with fuel oil, does not alter the fact that the pure material itself is capable of detonation.
Aoun told journalists that he received information on July 20 about the stored material and immediately ordered military and security officials to do what was necessary.”
Well, well, that’s very odd. He just learned about it after it sat there for years, gave orders about and it just happened to blow up days later.
Seems like the first question would be, how did the adjacent fire start?
So he’s ruled out aliens?
“The US may have that kind of ability, but I dont think France does.”
They have to hoping that the US gives the info to France. They can’t ask us, since we’re friends with “The Jew”.
1- climate change
2- racism
Hi.
Maybe it was a jihadi worker’s comp accident?
5.56mm
LOL.
5.56mm
Anyone needs a high explosive trigger to detonate. It is impossible to get it to detonate with a fire. the large fire showed many small secondary explosions.
So did the ship full of fertilizer have high explosives stored on it?
Or are the Muslims lying as usual.
Sad!
A high explosive is defined by the speed of the shockwave front when it detonates. Not by how high you can pile it up.
ANFO is a low explosive.
Anfo dust in the air may ignite and perhaps explode but it takes a high explosive trigger and mixing in diesel fuel to the amonium nitrate to make it sensitive enough to detonate.
There are three states of explosives burning. Think of gasoline, put a match to a teaspoon full and it will burn as a smokey tki torch.
Put a teaspoon in a trash can and it will explode.
Vaporize a teaspoon in a good air fuel ratio and compress it in a sealed cylinder and it will detonate.
0 foot per second, burn
25 foot per second ,explode,
1700 foot per second, detonate.
That was not an amonium nitrate explosive,
That was a detonation. And to detonate you have to mix the fuel in with the oxidizer and make ANFO.
It was an ammo dump.
a further collary....... they knew who did it but can’t prove it
Everybody knows it was Iran
But, doesn't AN when it burns have to be in a confined space to detonate? Can fire actually cause detonation in a non-confined space??
I have burned a lot of old dynamite...makes a great fire, but will NEVER explode if burned in the open...lots of flame and smoke, but no boom!
I have also used many tons of ANFO in mining applications, (love the stuff) and being in a drill hole confines the gasses and results in detonation.
Is that correct?
My guess is the AN caught fire and the Hezbollah fools had rockets or rocket propellent in the building and that was the explosion.
Note the color of the flame and smoke...never seen ANFO send up an orange smoke cloud in a mine shot.
Perfectly said...as I recall, dynamite, Hercules 65%, burns at a rate of 20K feet per second...about the same rate as det-cord.
See my Post #37
Also, I have a local Lebanese friend who has a brother and sister-in-law living in Beirut. He has been in touch with them...his SIL’s house was destroyed.
His brother said that it is well known that this warehouse facility was being used to store and modify rockets and rocket fuel and that Hezbollah had just received a shipment of rockets from Iran.
Don’t know if true or not...but sounds about right.
The red color is nitrogen dioxide, a very toxic oxidizer, which is typical of AN explosives when there isn’t enough reducing agent, e.g. fuel oil, added. Correctly-mixed ANFO has enough fuel oil to consume all the oxygen in the AN, leaving none remaining to form nitrogen dioxide. Smoke from the resulting explosion would lack its characteristic red-brown color. The fact the Beirut explosion cloud was deeply red-brown indicates an AN explosion without much (or any) fuel oil, i.e. possibly just pure AN.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.