Unrepentant Leftist Thread
- Thread starter lizard
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awesome...triumph the insult comic dog visits the spin doctors and pundits!!
http://www.ifilm.com/viralvideo?ifilmid=2653646
http://www.ifilm.com/viralvideo?ifilmid=2653646
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lizard, do you have that image of excerpts from bill o'reilly's book placed alongside actual things he said in the phone conversations/harassments?
um...I don't think so. if I saw it it was lost amidst the flood of pics of Bill with photoshopped dildoes, etc.
here's some info about the looted explosives that Bush was warned about but failed to safeguard (from corrente.blogspot)
Monday, October 25, 2004
High Explosives for Dummies
There's a basic human tendency to regard any number much higher than ten (five in the case of some people, since you need one hand to count the fingers on the other) as a sort of blurry "lots and lots."
Three hundred and eighty? That's a lot.
380 tons? Oy.
So let's break it down a little. Okay, it looks rough in the beginning but it gets easier. Not nicer, mind you, but... here we go. This was mostly swiped from Atrios' comment threads from people who sound like they know what they're talking about. I would just as soon not leave my ISP's fingerprints on sites that would confirm this data by googling, so we're going to take their word for it:
EXPLOSIVE FORCE:
TNT: 2.76 Mpsi @ 7197 m/sec velocity
RDX: 5.03 Mpsi @ 8754 m/sec velocity
HMX: 5.70 Mpsi @ 9159 m/sec velocity
"Mpsi" is million pounds per square inch or how hard it blows up. "m/sec" is miles per second, or how fast it blows up. Or as the poster put it:
9159 m/sec is about 20,500 miles per hour.
The vast majority of this stuff is not manufactured for use in weapons or other military purposes, but for mining. Demolition (like those cool implosions of old smokestacks and sports arenas and such) uses most of the rest. Now why does this stuff about "speed of explosion" make a difference? Possibly The Flash could duck out of the way of TNT, the slowest of the lot, but I guaranteed that neither you nor I could do so if it was anywhere nearby.
So who cares? Turns out it matters....
The difference is in the speed of the explosion. The reason [another "slow" explosive called ANFO] used in mining is because it has a slower reaction rate, producing gas and shockwaves that shove rather than shatter.
In most mines, high explosive sticks or gel packs are fired which shatters the rock and detonates the ANFO. The ANFO than pushes the shattered rock outward.
The shattering effect is what makes RDX and such so deadly. A barrel containing a small amount of ANFO and detonated will tend to rupture and separate into large chunks. If the pressure wave doesn't get you, you have pretty good odds of getting away unscathed because there are only a few large pieces flying around.
A barrel with RDX or another high explosive turns into a grenade, forming many more smaller fragments with much higher velocities.
Now you are at least a little bit of an explosives geek, able to discuss this Latest Bush Fuckup with the proper lingo and an informed air. Stomp anybody around the water cooler who tries to downplay just what a disaster this is, and is going to continue to be for years.
If that's not good enough, here's the even simpler version, from our own esteemed reader Amazed in CA down in comments to Tresy's original post on this horror:
"Seven hundred and sixty thousand pounds of high explosive. One pound took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
Seven hundred and sixty thousand pounds. Seven hundred and sixty. thousand. pounds.
Enough to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 all over again, every hour, on the hour, for the next eighty-seven years."
Monday, October 25, 2004
High Explosives for Dummies
There's a basic human tendency to regard any number much higher than ten (five in the case of some people, since you need one hand to count the fingers on the other) as a sort of blurry "lots and lots."
Three hundred and eighty? That's a lot.
380 tons? Oy.
So let's break it down a little. Okay, it looks rough in the beginning but it gets easier. Not nicer, mind you, but... here we go. This was mostly swiped from Atrios' comment threads from people who sound like they know what they're talking about. I would just as soon not leave my ISP's fingerprints on sites that would confirm this data by googling, so we're going to take their word for it:
EXPLOSIVE FORCE:
TNT: 2.76 Mpsi @ 7197 m/sec velocity
RDX: 5.03 Mpsi @ 8754 m/sec velocity
HMX: 5.70 Mpsi @ 9159 m/sec velocity
"Mpsi" is million pounds per square inch or how hard it blows up. "m/sec" is miles per second, or how fast it blows up. Or as the poster put it:
9159 m/sec is about 20,500 miles per hour.
The vast majority of this stuff is not manufactured for use in weapons or other military purposes, but for mining. Demolition (like those cool implosions of old smokestacks and sports arenas and such) uses most of the rest. Now why does this stuff about "speed of explosion" make a difference? Possibly The Flash could duck out of the way of TNT, the slowest of the lot, but I guaranteed that neither you nor I could do so if it was anywhere nearby.
So who cares? Turns out it matters....
The difference is in the speed of the explosion. The reason [another "slow" explosive called ANFO] used in mining is because it has a slower reaction rate, producing gas and shockwaves that shove rather than shatter.
In most mines, high explosive sticks or gel packs are fired which shatters the rock and detonates the ANFO. The ANFO than pushes the shattered rock outward.
The shattering effect is what makes RDX and such so deadly. A barrel containing a small amount of ANFO and detonated will tend to rupture and separate into large chunks. If the pressure wave doesn't get you, you have pretty good odds of getting away unscathed because there are only a few large pieces flying around.
A barrel with RDX or another high explosive turns into a grenade, forming many more smaller fragments with much higher velocities.
Now you are at least a little bit of an explosives geek, able to discuss this Latest Bush Fuckup with the proper lingo and an informed air. Stomp anybody around the water cooler who tries to downplay just what a disaster this is, and is going to continue to be for years.
If that's not good enough, here's the even simpler version, from our own esteemed reader Amazed in CA down in comments to Tresy's original post on this horror:
"Seven hundred and sixty thousand pounds of high explosive. One pound took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
Seven hundred and sixty thousand pounds. Seven hundred and sixty. thousand. pounds.
Enough to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 all over again, every hour, on the hour, for the next eighty-seven years."
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High explosives such as this also cause a secondary wave of IMplosion which can often do as much or more damage as the original force. Their force is also great enough that ground cover becomes shrapnel; detonating it in a gravel road would be like shooting shotguns at everyone within a pretty large distance in ADDITION to the explosive force. Even plain dirt can be turned into lethal projectiles.
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check out Daily Kos's documentation of all the different (and conflicting) stories as the administration furiously tries to spin this one.
Josh asks the obvious question, as the administration tries to furiously spin away the disaster at Al Qa Qaa.
The Iraqi interim government says that the explosives at al Qa Qaa went missing some time after April 9th 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
(Remember, Baghdad fell on April 9th, so presumably that's a marker denoting simply that it happened at some point after the fall of the old regime.)
Today, Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita suggested that the weapons may have been taken from al Qa Qaa in the final days of the old regime or in fact during the war.
Remember, the IAEA inspected the munitions in January 2003 and then returned to the site and saw that the seals were in place in March, just a week or so before the war started. So Di Rita is claiming that the explosives were taken away in a two or three week period in late March of very early April 2003. If Drudge is to be trusted (yes, yes, I know), NBC will be running with some version of this storyline.
But there's another version of events.
A Pentagon "official who monitors developments in Iraq" told the Associated Press today that "US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact."
That of course would mean that the explosives were not removed from the facility until some point after the war. And that would be in line with what the Iraqis two weeks ago told the IAEA [...]
If the Di Rita hypothesis rests on the claim that the first US troops that visited al Qa Qaa found that the explosives had already been stolen or looted or otherwise secreted away. (He has, in fact, already said this.) And that would mean that the US government has known the explosives were missing for some eighteen months.
The problem is that the White House has spent the entire day claiming that they knew nothing about this until ten days ago, October 15th. Scott McClellan said this repeatedly during his gaggle with reporters this morning. Indeed, he went on to say the following: "Now [i.e., after the notification on October 15th], the Pentagon, upon learning of this, directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi survey group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing."
So McClellan says that the Pentagon only just learned about this. And that's why they only now assigned the Iraq Survey Group to examine what happened at al Qa Qaa.
But Di Rita says that the US government has known about it for 18 months.
I'm sure they're working to reconcile their cover stories tonight as to present a more believable "I didn't do it, the buck stops somewhere else" theory.
Josh asks the obvious question, as the administration tries to furiously spin away the disaster at Al Qa Qaa.
The Iraqi interim government says that the explosives at al Qa Qaa went missing some time after April 9th 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
(Remember, Baghdad fell on April 9th, so presumably that's a marker denoting simply that it happened at some point after the fall of the old regime.)
Today, Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita suggested that the weapons may have been taken from al Qa Qaa in the final days of the old regime or in fact during the war.
Remember, the IAEA inspected the munitions in January 2003 and then returned to the site and saw that the seals were in place in March, just a week or so before the war started. So Di Rita is claiming that the explosives were taken away in a two or three week period in late March of very early April 2003. If Drudge is to be trusted (yes, yes, I know), NBC will be running with some version of this storyline.
But there's another version of events.
A Pentagon "official who monitors developments in Iraq" told the Associated Press today that "US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact."
That of course would mean that the explosives were not removed from the facility until some point after the war. And that would be in line with what the Iraqis two weeks ago told the IAEA [...]
If the Di Rita hypothesis rests on the claim that the first US troops that visited al Qa Qaa found that the explosives had already been stolen or looted or otherwise secreted away. (He has, in fact, already said this.) And that would mean that the US government has known the explosives were missing for some eighteen months.
The problem is that the White House has spent the entire day claiming that they knew nothing about this until ten days ago, October 15th. Scott McClellan said this repeatedly during his gaggle with reporters this morning. Indeed, he went on to say the following: "Now [i.e., after the notification on October 15th], the Pentagon, upon learning of this, directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi survey group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing."
So McClellan says that the Pentagon only just learned about this. And that's why they only now assigned the Iraq Survey Group to examine what happened at al Qa Qaa.
But Di Rita says that the US government has known about it for 18 months.
I'm sure they're working to reconcile their cover stories tonight as to present a more believable "I didn't do it, the buck stops somewhere else" theory.
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hrm. The press releases the DNC is putting out about this are emphasizing (very improperly) that the explosives are nuclear components, and the news media's snippage is giving that false impression even more. yeah, it hurts Bush to say he let NUCLEAR COMPONENTS and WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION slip out, but aren't the Democrats supposed to be the truth-telling side, rather than the fear-mongering fact-twisters? Relatively speaking, of course.
it looks like Drudge suckered the networks into reporting that story, alex.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_24.php#003805
Fox was practically salivating at the story because it would have negated one of kerry's primary bludgeons.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_24.php#003805
Fox was practically salivating at the story because it would have negated one of kerry's primary bludgeons.
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