Updated reports said it wasn’t the fireworks, but 240 IEDs found in the house, 40 coke can size, 200 smaller ones they detonated. That sounds like way more than 10 lbs of explosive to me...the limit for the blast containment unit they detonated them in.

I heard 5000 lbs in other reports too....but it seems that's the entire haul, not what they exploded on scene. Footage of the 5000 lbs of fireworks looked like two pallets worth. I'm curious about whether the fireworks were removed before detonation or if they just got lucky they didn't go off too.

That was not just 10 lbs of fireworks exploding. It flipped over nearby cars and obliterated the bomb disposal truck, launching the 1ton lid over two blocks away. I know that's the LAPDs story, 10 lbs, but they aren't exactly known for telling the truth, especially if it's bad for them.

I've now read there were 40 coke can sized IEDs and 200 more slightly smaller devices all filled with unknown explosives. That sounds like 35lbs +- for the coke can sized ones alone (based on the weight of an unopened can), and who knows how much the smaller ones weighed, but there were 200 of them!!! Somebody screwed up big time putting them all in at once. That was way more than 10 lbs of unknown high explosives, and 10lbs wouldn't be safe to dispose of in a neighborhood. It should have been done in stages, starting with a test of just one, and a full evacuation of the block, not knocking on the 2 neighbor's doors and walking away.

At least it's turning out that most of the injuries weren't civilians, but more than one home is destroyed and many may have permanent hearing damage.

It was Ammonium Nitrate and the rumor is--Hezbollah wanted access to the 2500 tons to use...in bombs/IEDs, etc.

I don't disagree that weapons don't necessarily make anyone more free. I also can't say people are wrong to observe in a civil war level of unrest, a dissenting party armed with fully automatic weapons has more leverage than one armed with knives.

Freedom to practice religion is not 'fairly safe' without guns, unless you want to ignore attacks with cars, trucks, IEDs, and, historically, civilian airliners.

I am mostly pointing out that restricting laws on gun ownership to protect people is not so terribly different from limiting freedom to practice/express idealogies. It is readily demonstrable that BOTH those freedoms have directly contributed to civilian casualties.

The difference between say, banning automatic weapons, and the banning of affiliation with extremist groups like the KKK or ISIL is mostly divided along partisan lines, logically they are pretty much two sides of the same coin, with democrats and republicans each decrying one as necessary and the other as evil.

Someone who knows that letting vehicles, cattle, poultry, or objects stop you in a possibly hostile place is putting you into a static kill zone for an ambush or IED.

Yet this probably enrages the regular population too.

So it's lose/lose

If it buzzed in his hand, he would have just "killed" himself and lost the round....it never happened in dozens of simulated assassinations.
It doesn't take an expert, just knowledge of which end is up and a little attention....or an on off switch and 1/4 of a brain, that's all.
It's probably just as safe as any type of trigger normally used in IEDs unless you're 4wheeling or jogging....they're almost all insanely dangerous and quite often go off early. That doesn't stop them from being used.

That was a lot of IEDs. How did anybody not notice somebody digging for that long planting these things.

I'm a nuisance because you don't agree with me.

You should read 1984, see if it sounds like utopia to you.

If I am wrong about Northern Ireland, then I'm wrong. I'm not an expert on N. Ireland. It's tough to be an expert on everything, like others here.

But if a Brit drone operator saw a guy planting an IED, I'd have no problem with him sending down a little Obama love.

I agree that killing someone based on their height is dead wrong, but I doubt that was the only consideration.

Bottom line is, do you trust the gov't? I don't, not anymore, especially with this current crop of 'the end justifies the means' crowd.

We have boots on the ground in Waziristan, pakistan and Yemen?

What diff does it make to you if it's a missile off an unmanned aircraft or a missile off a manned aircraft?

Drones are looking where there are no other assets. They see a guy planting an IED, they can take care of it right then. But I would imagine the process involves intelligence-gathering, a target, then a trip to the WH to get approval.

I don't believe Obama is just sticking a pin in a map, unless it involves golf courses he hasn't yet played.

Now, if you want to say you don't trust Obama to do the right thing...that we can agree on.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by eric3579.

I really have tried to watch but until the players stop acting like they've been hit with an IED, have 9 guys race out to comfort them as they roll around for a few minutes then pop back up like it was some kind of 'gotcha' prank... Ugh... When it occurred for the third time in the particular game i was watching i just couldn't stand anymore.

But everyone saying that doesn't think of this single fact:

The society today is not what society was ages ago.

Before it was small clans / tribes. Now it's megafuckingultralarge cities and countries! I know folks on facebook that has fkn 500-800 "friends".
Even my modest 80-90 is fkn huge compared to the friend list of someone in the 1840'ies.

Education is not the same as 200 years ago, Work isn't the same, almost nothing is. So individualism might have been über for the advancement of industrialism, but it's a different world now. Maybe it's the close connection (in ya'll yankie-minds) between communism and the word collective: that's making ya freak out so bad? I don't know.

Well, it's about ten times more likely that she'll be killed by an actual IED or just directly killed by Taliban militants.

It's also guaranteed she's not going to school unless those Apache crews hang around to keep the Taliban away.

When making snide dive by comments about death in terrible circumstances it's disrespectful in the extreme to use it to score cheap political points.

The next day she was probably killed because some apache crew thought she was hiding IEDs..............

A IED joke would be tasteless and offensive, so I'm not going to make one. I am however going to inform everybody that I have thought of a tasteless and offensive joke but that I am not going to share it as I do not wish to be seen as tasteless and offensive.

To summarise: I am tastefully unoffensive.