Terrorism Comes Home
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
In a town in America last week, a car was pulled over. Pipe bombs were found inside. The driver and passenger are Egyptian nationals. It happened on the road I use as a shortcut to Wal-Mart!

My little corner of South Carolina is not a hotbed of political activity. The most passionate feuds are amongst competing boiled peanut stands. Apparently, I'm naive. I knew there was a mosque in my old little town - one Burger King, one McDonald's, a mosque next to the used bookstore, and no Starbucks. And I knew that the Navy, you know, did stuff around here. On any Friday night, you can go to the mall and see fully outfitted sailors, complete with white hat, roaming the bookstore and then heading to the wing joint. But the police blotter around here is generally not very enertaining. The last time a pipe bomb was in the news, it was because a SC man killed himself trying to build one for an Independence Day celebration.

Not mentioned in the paper is that they were pulled over across the street from the entrance of the big Alcoa plant. Alcoa is a huge supplier of aluminum, which is used for infrastructure and building airplanes and boats.

From the article:

An affidavit from the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office said officers from the bomb squad determined that pipe bombs were in the trunk. Pipe bombs are homemade explosives, and making or having them is a felony.

Mohamed told the arresting officer he used materials he bought at a Wal-Mart, according to the affidavit.

No offense, but we're not idiots around here. This road may say "Hwy" on it but it's not an interstate. It is not the way someone would go to North Carolina, unless they were going a long, slow, stupid way. It basically dead ends to the south at the Navy base, and runs northeast through fairly uninhabited country.

Are we really to believe that two grown men, savvy enough to be studying abroad at a university, including one who is a doctoral candidate in engineering don't know the difference between bottle rockets and a pipe bomb he made himself?

This post is a short one today. I've got to go stock up on bottled water, duct tape, and plastic sheeting.

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posted by Milehimama @ Mama Says at 8/07/2007 10:16:00 AM | Permalink | |