Explosive Exit

--Lights by Lane Patterson

I believe that if we had and would
keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers
out of the business of these nations
so full of depressed, exploited people,
they will arrive at a solution of their own.
That they design and want.
That they fight and work for.
[Not one] crammed down their throats by Americans
--General David Monroe Shoup

Success is relative:
It is what we can make of the mess
we have made of things
--The Family Reunion, T. S. Eliot

Failed … like an old hanging bridge
--Marge Piercy
__________________

Ranger knows what he knows, and avoids writing about what he doesn't. Although not an expert, he has a good understanding of explosives and their use in terror and military applications.

His training as a Special Forces officer included military demolition techniques necessary in Unconventional Warfare - Guerrilla Warfare scenarios (UW/GW). This included things like blowing bridges, improvising and booby-trapping, exploding shells from 60 mm mortar to 8" artillery rounds as IED's and improvising incendiary devices. One-Zero school added specialized techniques to the suite.

Captain Zach Watson, Ranger's mentor, added Old School advanced techniques to the mix, like blowing engine blocks with with a 35 mm film canister of C-4 and PETN. The explosion was minimal but the hole created was so neat that it wouldn't cut a finger upon examination. SF was not flashy: It aimed for low-visibility success versus the activities of the terrorist, who aims for maximal press coverage.

Ranger had another mentor in the 1980's -- Ron Ball, a Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad expert known as "The Wizard". Ron used to travel on airplanes while habitually carrying ceramic detonators on his person just to demonstrate the absurdist and futile nature of airport security. That was the mid-80's (Ball was killed in 1986 along with Detective Arleigh McCree while attempting to defuse a pipe bomb in Hollywood.)

A simple Google search of "ceramic detonators" gives all the information a specialized bomb maker needs to make a significant device aimed at air traffic. Since we are 10 years into a phony war it is safe to assume that al Qaeda et. al. lack the sophistication to exploit this knowledge; if they could have, they would have.

Ranger also knows, for example, that the bridge in a recently-foiled Cleveland, Ohio, plot could not have been dropped by explosives alone. Several ear muff charges would have been required using large quantities of military-grade explosives properly placed high on the bridge and detonated at precisely the same time, which means that an advanced operative would have needed a lot of det cord to ensure the detonation. Perhaps they could have taken out an old covered bridge (surely an aesthetic crime) but not the Ohio 82 bridge. A lot of explosives alone does not = bridge destruction.

Like all the dupes and wannabes in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), they did not know the basics of destruction, to include testing your materiel. Having the intent does not necessarily result in a successful operation.

Further, would scenarios like these or that of the latest underwear (non) bomber ever have reached an execution phase without the presence of Federal agents or informants? These outside agents have often facilitated bringing these non-attacks to non-fruition. Absurd as they are, they fuel the imaginative fires of the true believers, who use them as examples of imagined even bigger and better destructive scenarios which they imagine Feds have staved off and which, for some reason, never did make it into the news cycle.

The argument is one from nothingness: If the little fish were caught, the bigger fish were caught two steps back in secrecy, and so we never hear about them. Mystery systems like religion and the National Security Administration (NSA, or "No Such Agency") allow for this belief on faith alone.

Operationally unsound plans are treated as though successes in the United States, where getting some Front Page qualifies one as winning. The story of two guys with ill-conceived explosive underwear wouldn't even provide the fodder for a lesser Tom Clancy intrigue.

We are not the Israelis and al Qaeda is not Black September. The U.S. has never seen a significant device here in the Homeland. We mistakenly combine these group's bomb-making expertise in-theatre as being relevant to our security here in the States; however, the two capabilities are mutually exclusive. Our security here in the States has no relevance to their abilities in theatre.

As a nation, the U.S. has lost its ability to be objective, rational and realistic. Until we get reality-oriented, we will spend billions to neutralize devices that can be best-described as jokes played on a fearful public being sold a bill of goods by an entrenched security conglomeration which sells fear as the only growth industry on our horizon.

At this point, please reach down and grab your balls and try to remember why they are there and what a man is supposed to do with them.