Fizzle your bomb once, shame on you. Fizzle twice…you don’t fizzle again.
By Thoreau
While it is too early to say whether Islamists were in fact behind the failed bomb attempt in Times Square, the Pakistani Taliban are claiming responsibility. This is a few months after the failed underwear bombing on Christmas, in which a loser had an explosion in his pants without penetrating his target. If the Times Square attempt, involving propane and fireworks, was indeed the work of Islamists, then it appears that the breed of Islamists attacking the US these days is far less competent than their counterparts overseas. (Could the origins of this incompetence be genetic? 
) I mean, I’m no explosives expert, but I know that somehow poor and illiterate guerrilla fighters around the globe manage to build improvised bombs that actually work. This is hardly worth pissing ourselves over.
Right now, it appears that terrorists are about as dumb as the guy whose famous speech inspired the title of this post. In the past, I have wrung my hands in fear of what my countrymen will do if Islamic terrorists ever succeed in setting off a bunch of car bombs. While I still worry about that, I now worry less. It appears that the terrorists we’re facing at home these days are basically the Generation Veal of terrorists. “Yeah, Osama, I, like, forgot to read the bomb manual. And then I left some supplies at home. Can I, like, get some funding for another attempt? No? That’s, like so unfair. I mean, I tried and everything. Don’t I get credit for that? Not even partial credit?”
Comment by Fraud Guy —
May 2, 2010 @ 11:52 pm
From what I’ve been reading, this bomb maker was as good as Bill Cosby was at making breakfast.
Comment by CaseyL —
May 3, 2010 @ 12:35 am
I blame the US education system.
Instead of taking classes that facilitate better bomb making (e.g., chemistry and shop) today’s schools just want students to feel good about what they’re taking rather than acquire any actual abilities in anything.
/snark
Comment by albatross —
May 3, 2010 @ 8:05 am
“Man, I want a refund on this International Terrorism for Dummies book. This thing is a total ripoff!”
Comment by mac —
May 3, 2010 @ 9:20 am
A radio news broadcast mentioned that the fertilizer used wasn’t the explosive kind. I’m guessing Miracle-Gro. What a dolt.
Comment by dhex —
May 3, 2010 @ 10:27 am
I blame the US education system.
i know you’re joking, but i have been told by those older than i that science classes back in the day were a lot more useful for making stuff that goes boom.
whomever this guy turns out to be connected to, if anyone, we can rest assured that his halfassery will be used as evidence of the great evil that lurks in this world.
Comment by bbartlog —
May 3, 2010 @ 12:14 pm
Even GW Bush could have built a better bomb than this. Remember, he did score above 1200 on his SATs; even if he baked a few brain cells with booze and cocaine I bet he could have spent a few hours on an internet pyro forum and realized that fuel needs an oxidizer, that only some fertilizers can explode, and that ammonium nitrate really needs about 150g of high-test primary explosive in order to reliably detonate. Whoever put this bomb together was probably almost retarded (or else deliberately put together a crappy non-bomb bomb to send a message, but I’m going to go with ’stupid’ as it’s almost always the leading explanation when it could apply).
Comment by Eric the .5b —
May 3, 2010 @ 12:24 pm
Well, maybe sometimes there’s an upside to abysmal science education, the near-death of chemistry sets due to tightened safety regulations, etc.
Bleah.
Comment by albatross —
May 3, 2010 @ 12:46 pm
Yeah, either this was some grossly incompetent person trying to kill a lot of people, or some more competent person trying to make a scary show without killing anyone.
Comment by Barry —
May 3, 2010 @ 1:42 pm
Comment by bbartlog —
“Whoever put this bomb together was probably almost retarded (or else deliberately put together a crappy non-bomb bomb to send a message, but I’m going to go with ’stupid’ as it’s almost always the leading explanation when it could apply).”
Not to mention that when a competant person is sending a message, he (it’s a he, I’m sure) prefers channels which don’t give the FBI large amounts of physical evidence to analyze.
Comment by Hob —
May 4, 2010 @ 1:56 am
Sekou Sundiata: “If we had only known that we could make … bombs from bullshit, we would have blown up with the first lie.”
Comment by Barry —
May 4, 2010 @ 9:27 am
Well, apparently some Pakistani guy got bagged, which confirms my belief that dud bombs in the USA are always foreign islamic terrorism – the native right-wingers know how to make working explosives.
Pingback by Miranda! | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen —
May 4, 2010 @ 1:25 pm
[...] takes on the complaints of John McCain and Peter King that the apparent Times Square “Generation Veal” attempted bomber should not have been informed of his Miranda [...]
Comment by albatross —
May 4, 2010 @ 2:03 pm
Except that this is just an arrest. In this kind of high-profile case, given the history in cases like that of Richard Jewel and Steven Hatfill and Abdallah Higazy, we ought to be pretty damned skeptical of the authorities’ claims to have the right man.
In all three of those cases, it would have taken only a small change in the way things worked out for everyone in the world to now “know” that those three innocent men were terrorists. And of course, we have several more terrorists who pled guilty after probably being tortured. (And under the guidance of our beloved anti-torture president, the government is trying not to have a confession allegedly extracted under torture thrown out of a military commission trial at Guantanamo right now.)
Comment by Eric the .5b —
May 4, 2010 @ 6:22 pm
Indeed. At least he’s just under arrest for the moment, not hooded in a aircraft bound for Bagram.
For now.
Comment by TGGP —
May 4, 2010 @ 8:00 pm
The crack-reporters at Something Awful uncovered this trend a while back:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/terrorism-training-decline.php
The problem with the IQ theory here is that the last attack mentioned in the above link was carried out by doctors. Maybe medical school standards are much lower than I thought.
Pingback by He’s got a car bomb. | Pittsburgh Alpha to Omega —
May 6, 2010 @ 3:28 pm
[...] mean, I tried and everything. Don’t I get credit for that? Not even partial credit?” “Fizzle your bomb once [...]” by Thoreau, Unqualified Offerings 5-2-10 It has also emerged that the bomb could have been [...]