From: nobody@neva.org (Neva Remailer)
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 1997 11:29:36 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Violence and Depravity
Message-ID: <199711201532.JAA17885@multi26.netcomi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain





Monty Cantsin wrote:

>Violence is, in nearly every case, a poor investment of time, >money, and energy.

I disagree.

The US Goverment and the mainstream media were both guilty
of either ignorance or deliberate subreption during McVeigh's
trial.  As a military trained explosive demolition instructor,
I am compelled to concur with the absent testimony and published
findings of a certain three star, to wit: 
It ain't necessarily so.

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of explosives will tell you
that two tons of ammonium nitrate, sixty feet from the base
of a tall, reinforced concrete and steel building, will not do very much more than break lots of windows.  You see, ammonium nitrate is a low velocity explosive compound useful for moving dirt.  A brissance, or shattering effect, on steel and/or reinforced concrete requires an explosive compound with much greater explosive velocity.... C-4, several types of commercial
blasting gelatin, even TNT.  

If you observed the news footage of the Murray Federal Building after the blast, you may have noticed that the damage was configured in a semi-cylindrical fashion, rather than the conic section which would have resulted from a ground placed charge of sufficient strength.  You might also have wondered about the apparent lack of a crater at the site of the explosion...
(The crater was mysteriously relocated to the basement of the structure, probably by A Terrorist-Provocateur To Be Named Later...)

If you looked closely at the ruined building, you would have seen
evidence of brissance on alternating bearing members on each floor.
(I have photos of this)

Had detailed chemical analysis of the site been permitted, evidence of a very large and elaborate line or ring main constructed of detonation cord, of the RDX or PETN based military variety, likely, would have been found.

Consider that the placement of the array of charges necessary to 
simultaneously shatter several dozen large bearing members in the
building would have required several hours for a well trained
demolition team, not to mention unlimited access to the building after hours.

Seismographs recorded TWO impacts that day, several minutes apart.

Consider that if this action was meant to revenge or commemorate the Waco massacre, it achieved the opposite goal.  However, if this was the work of agents-provocateur, it worked beautifully.  Waco was downplayed in the face of 'the threat of domestic terrorism.'  The body count was higher, and this time it came from the 'self-styled militia.'
Also, if McVeigh really had followed the Turner Diaries recipe, he would have put his bomb somewhere useful.  The book details the use of a similar device to destroy a large government database, and the truck bomb is parked underneath it
in the basement parking structure, _not_ sixty feet away...

The reader's digest version:

1)  McVeigh's bomb, as it was and where it was, was a squirt of piss in a hurricane.

2)  A well financed team of demolition professionals did the job.

3)  The payoff from this "investment" was the impressive Anti-Terrorism bill, much political mileage for the agency "targeted" by the attack, and an option for more legislation in the crypto arena.

4)  In a perfect world, McVeigh would have been prosecuted for incompetence, and given a suspended sentence because he was, after all, merely an infantry sergeant, not a demolition pro.  In the same perfect world, Woodward and Bernstein types would follow up on stuff like this instead of gulping down regurgitated propaganda like so many infant birds.  Then perhaps the true terrorists would be punished, and the political agenda of their employers exposed.

5)  The convenient deaths of poor defenseless children(TM) contributed mostly to the policy goals of the jackbooted thugs, not to those of their detractors.

6)  McVeigh pulled an Oswald.  Quit crediting him with success.


A Noncom To Be Named Later