CNN Inadvertently Reproduces UK Terror Bomb Failures

By Cernig

Damn, but Confederate Yankee is just turning up the gold today. Here, he has video of a CNN attempt to recreate the car bombs from the UK abortive attacks at the weekend. CNN had asked explosives experts at NewMexico Tech to recreate the bombs, in order to demonstrate their distructive power which one expert had described as able to generate "a fireball the size of a house and a shock wave spreading out over a diameter of at least 400 yards".

CNN's David mattingly confidently tells viewers to "watch in slow motion as the car is blown to pieces" and one of the expert bomb-makers opines that "the entire car will turn into shrapnel".

Confederate Yankee describes the result:

After a long-winded set-up, they finally detonate the car bomb in front of a hastily-constructed wood-framed structure no more than 10 feet--perhaps the width of a parking space--away from the blast.

...Well, the back and side glass blew out, and the windshield spider-webbed and the drivers door was flung open, but as the video clearly shows, this was not successful car bomb. the Jeep was not "blown to pieces" as Mattingly claimed, nor was the expert's claim "that this entire car will turn into shrapnel" even remotely true. If this had been a successful FAE explosion, that wooden building would have been flattened and scattered like matchsticks, along with the Jeep.

The expert even admits, "casualties would probably be fire victims."

Why? Because the bomb burned, and created a small blast, but utterly failed as a a fuel-air explosive bomb.

I was amused to watch Mattingly shift gears post-blast, and explain that if this device had gone off outside of a London club, "fire could have claimed many lives." Well, yeah, providing the nightclub didn't have any other doors, or a sprinkler system.

But the kicker was watching him walk approximately 30 feet to the rear of the vehicle to pick up a nut that dribbled that far from the blast, and try to explain that it could have caused casualties. Well, I suppose it could have, but considering my seven-year old daughter can chuck one equally as far, I doubt the damage would have been that severe.

Which is exactly what I've been saying would happen with such a device all along. Heh, I wonder what Dan Collins has to say now?