Between the cookers, the gunpowder and the shrapnel it had to weigh at least 40-50 lbs.

But I have to tell you that I get sick in my stomach and in my heart when I read about false flag, obama and other conspiracy-like stuff.

That's not fair against those victims and those who died.

Markus

I'm a veteran of the Iraq War. I've seen almost every IED they've ever produced. Lollypops, speedbumps, daisy-chains, etc. Pressure-cooker IED's were more common in Afghanistan than in Iraq, but we did find a few. Very few bombers over there were suicide bombers. I'd say one out of 10 IED related explosions (mind you, just on my deployments, not the whole of the war) were suicide driven. Most often they would try to detonate from afar as to not be caught by coalition forces. Now what I am about to say is speculation. I am no expert. I'm just speaking based on my own personal experience. I highly doubt that it was fundamental extremism that pulled this off. It was way too sloppy in my opinion. We ran into some very complex stuff in Iraq. 9/11 was extremely complex. In fact in my opinion, I think it's a well educated lunatic that has studied up on the ME and terror tactics and replicated an attack to the best of his ability to try and get the blame placed on someone other than himself or his nutjob cult or whatever the case may be. The bombings do indeed resemble fundamentalist terrorism, but there are certain, I don't know what to call them, clues I guess, that lead me to believe otherwise.

Well, that does make sense.

The pressure cooker bomb does tend to knock the sphere of interest back into the Islamic militant region, although equally a smart non-Islamic bomber could have decided to employ Islamic methods in order to put the FBI, police and media on the wrong track. It's still too early to tell.

Exactly. Perhaps a domestic jerk read the multiple articles describing pressure cooker IEDs on the Internets Tubes.

Unfortunately, the days of "hey the baddie used technique A. That means he came from this area" are long gone. :nope:

This could be kind of superficial, I just found it interesting, and maybe a bit heartwarming.

I will explain briefly for non regional baseball fans, but the Yankees and Red Sox, uhh, hate each other. HATE. It is hard to shortly convey the feeling of contempt.

The Yankees kinda "ripped off" a Fenway park tradition of playing Sweet Caroline as a show of solidarity. TheNY fans were getting into it and singing along much like you see in Boston.

It was heartwarming, and shows the spirit of America as a whole.

We like to to hate each other, but that is because we love each other. We just do not want to admit it.

:haha: Trust me, from an outsiders POV, this can be very confusing. :haha:

Here is something for the conspiracy lovers

Suppose this was a failed hit on Gabriel Gomez?

Mr. Gomez is a senatorial candidate for Massachusetts.

According to Mr. Gomez he crossed the finish line a few minutes prior to the first explosion.

Nah. No conspiracy. Just another coincidence. :yep: But that's what most conspiracy theories are.

This was registered last night.

http://bostonmarathonconspiracy.com/

Well played.

Americans generally treat each other like crap, The northern Liberal vs the southern Conservative jabs you sometimes see here for example. We are unlike most other countries in that we are a conglomerate of cultures, so with intermingling of that sort, you get bigotry.

But at the end of the day we all recognize despite our differences we sink or swim together.

I stink at trying to explain things, but I gave it a good go at it.

My summation, we are weird, violent, yet lovable.

Winston Churchill once said "You can count on America to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else"

One of my favorite quotes from a Brit.:)

Is it too soon to perhaps discuss the ramifications this will have on our rights?

Not minimizing the victims, just saying.

The Patriot act was born from 9-11. Considering how everything these days is politically polarized, I can only imagine in horror the crap that will be imposed on the citizens now...

im thinking about getting myself back in shape and run in the
boston marathon to show the people that did this that they cant stop us

I don't see why there has to be, we coped just fine with thirty-forty years of it without becoming a police state.

American spirit!

I bet attendance for the marathon next year will be way up from the normal. Discouraging a country who made its way in the world testing its limits is not a way to go.

I hope all resources are being poured into the efforts of finding the perp/perps.

I only hope the NY Post is not covering it, with all the bullcrap they put out in the first day. Overinflated death numbers, Americas version of the Dailymail, what a freaking rag. Rupert Murdoch owns it, and it has more bikinis than news in it, do not validate the Post in any ways by reading or citing them, just a warning