So someone tried to set off a bomb in Times Square

[mikejet]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100503/...re_car_bomb_44

NEW YORK – The car bomb was a crude concoction of ordinary items — fireworks, fuel and fertilizer — that authorities suspect was meant to cause maximum mayhem in the heart of Times Square.

In the end, the device fizzled and the city and it's residents counted themselves lucky once again: lucky that a vendor saw smoke creeping out of the car parked in one of the busiest streets in America; lucky that authorities responded quickly; and lucky that the would-be terrorists were clumsy enough to assemble a bomb that wasn't capable of exploding.

But it was a close enough call to fray nerves and set off a frenzied probe in what New York Police Department officials called the most serious car bomb plot in the city since the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
"Clearly it was the intent of whoever did this to cause mayhem, to create casualties," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The hunt was on Monday for a middle-aged man who was videotaped shedding his shirt near the sport utility vehicle where the bomb was found. They also wanted to talk to the owner of the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder.

The gasoline-and-propane bomb could have cut the SUV in half, produced "a significant fireball" and sprayed shrapnel and metal parts with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out windows on one of America's busiest streets, full of Broadway theaters and restaurants on a Saturday night, Kelly said.
The Pakistani Taliban appeared to claim responsibility for an attempted car bombing in New York in three separate videos that surfaced after the weekend scare, monitoring groups said.

Kelly said police have no evidence to support the claims and noted that the same group had falsely taken credit for previous attacks on U.S. soil.
Times Square sprung back to life, despite the attempt to instill fear.
"This is America. This is what we do," said Earl Morriss, of Seattle, who went about seeing the sights. "Nobody is going to stop us from living our lives and doing what we want to do."

The New York surveillance video, made public late Sunday, shows an unidentified white man apparently in his 40s slipping down an alley and taking off his shirt, revealing another underneath. In the same clip, he's seen looking back in the direction of the smoking vehicle and furtively putting the first shirt in a bag. Police hoped to interview the tourist who took the video.

The NYPD and FBI also were examining "hundreds of hours" of security videotape from around Times Square, Kelly said.

Police had already identified the registered owner of the dark-colored Pathfinder and were looking to interview him. The vehicle didn't have an easily visible vehicle identification number and had license plates that came from a car found in a repair shop in Connecticut.

Police released a photograph of the SUV as it crossed an intersection at 6:28 p.m. Saturday. A vendor pointed the SUV out to an officer about two minutes later.
The explosive device in the SUV had cheap-looking alarm clocks connected to a 16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to detonate the gas cans and set the propane afire in a chain reaction, Kelly said.

Investigators had feared that a final component placed in the cargo area — a metal rifle cabinet packed a fertilizer-like substance and rigged with wires and more fireworks — could have made the device even more devastating. Test results late Sunday showed it was indeed fertilizer, but NYPD bomb experts believe it was not a type volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertilizer used in previous terror attacks, said police spokesman Paul Browne.

The exact amount of fertilizer was unknown. Police estimated the cabinet — with a manufacturer-listed weight of 78 pounds — weighed 200 to 250 pounds when they pulled it from the vehicle.
Though the attack was botched, Browne said it was considered the first serious car bomb plot in the city since 1993, when Islamic extremists exploded a rented van carrying up to 1,500 pounds of fertilizer in the parking garage of the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

Times Square, choked with taxis and people on one of the first summer-like days of the year, was shut down for 10 hours, unnerving thousands of tourists attending Broadway shows, museums and other city sights.

Detectives took the stage at the end of some of the shows to announce to theatergoers that they were looking for witnesses in a bombing attempt.
"No more New York," said Crysta Salinas. The 28-year-old Houston woman was stuck waiting in a deli until 2 a.m. because part of a Marriott hotel was evacuated because of the bomb

Hmmm...

Discuss.

[MaCruz]

Heard about it this morning on my drive to work. All I remember is they said Al Qaeda planned it, but there's no proof.

[KASR]

Originally Posted by MaCruz

Heard about it this morning on my drive to work. All I remember is they said Al Qaeda planned it, but there's no proof.

That's a knee-jerk reaction....not a baseless one, but still one.

[mikejet]

The main suspect is a white 40 year old male.

Al Queda and the Taliban can say all they want and TRY to claim it.

The way that the "bomb" was built, I highly doubt that.

[jaymzbo]

did you see the surveillance video? It seemed to be of good quality. If that is who in fact someone connected, and the fact there is an intact car being investigated, aren't the chances reasonable of tracking down these individuals?

[Blu-Benny]

sad to think about what the world is coming to!!!

[mikejet]

Originally Posted by jaymzbo

did you see the surveillance video? It seemed to be of good quality. If that is who in fact someone connected, and the fact there is an intact car being investigated, aren't the chances reasonable of tracking down these individuals?

I have no doubt that the person on the video will be found.

[jaymzbo]

could you imagine being at a Broadway show and the police taking the stage and asking for any witnesses to an attempted bombing outside????

I'd be freaking out for sure!

[mikejet]

Originally Posted by jaymzbo

could you imagine being at a Broadway show and the police taking the stage and asking for any witnesses to an attempted bombing outside????

I'd be freaking out for sure!

They wouldn't handle it that way. They probably wouldn't say anything and quietly evacuate.

[DetroitSportsFan]

Sounds like it could be one of these types of people:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/03/28...ivity-midwest/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/02/18...i-irs-suicide/

[mikejet]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

Sounds like it could be one of these types of people:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/03/28...ivity-midwest/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/02/18...i-irs-suicide/

That's exactly my thoughts.

[jaymzbo]

guess Id read the article too quickly: it said that police asked theatergoers after the show if there were any witnesses to a bombing, not necessarily outside the theater....I'd still be

Still early to tell, but I'm with you....it seems like dosmestic anti-government crazies

[Moefiz]

According to the local news here in PA...NYPD came here to one of the resident house yesterday, to get some video footage that this guy shot when he was out there...he caught the suspect on camera walking away from the parked van and then changing his shirt...

[jaymzbo]

guess it is becoming harder and harder these days to be a criminal with so many having camera phones and what not. I'd guess that the level of video surveillance in NY is a lot higher too

[toef]

I'm surprised this wasn't brought up earlier, as it's been all over the news for the last two days. But maybe it's not as much of a national story as I thought it'd be (it's all over the news in NY).

As mike noted, the main suspect is a white male in his 40s, so the likelihood of it being Al Qaeda or Taliban related are slim.

If anyone remembers, there was a shooting at an immigration center in Binghamton, NY (upstate) about a year ago, and the Taliban tried to claim responsibility for that too, even though they had nothing to do with it.

Whoever made this bomb is an idiot, because they basically set up a giant fireball, which wouldn't have caused much damage. People standing close to the car might've been killed, but it had no explosives in it to cause any sort of real damage to anything more than a couple feet away.

[mikejet]

Yeah total whacko did this one. Some guy probably living "off the grid" and he probably thinks aliens killed JFK.

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

Sounds like it could be one of these types of people:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/03/28...ivity-midwest/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/02/18...i-irs-suicide/

Highly doubtful.

This was NOT some anti-government type, as the target was not any government entity. You can bet that the mainstream media and government "spokespeople" will be trying their damnest to link this to tea parties, and that's just pathetic. From the photos released of the suspect, I don't know how one could definitively say it was a "white" male in his 40's. All I could tell was that he wasn't black.

This was targeted at people in general (which are the typical terrorist targets), and possibly at Viacom (parent company of Comedy Central and South Park, which is where the truck was parked). Evidently the creators of South Park have been receiving death threats for their portrayal of Muhammad in an episode. There is also the possiblity that this is related to some ongoing issues between street vendors, but I've not read much about that yet.

Just because the bomb failed does not automatically rule-out islamic extremists, but the make-up of the bomb does suggest an amature. What I loved was that idiot Bloomburg giving/taking credit for preventing the dissaster, when the only thing that prevented the bomb from going off was the incompetence of the bomber.

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/03/28...ivity-midwest/

Speaking of this militia, a judge just released these psychos on bond.

[toef]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Highly doubtful.

This was NOT some anti-government type, as the target was not any government entity. You can bet that the mainstream media and government "spokespeople" will be trying their damnest to link this to tea parties, and that's just pathetic. From the photos released of the suspect, I don't know how one could definitively say it was a "white" male in his 40's. All I could tell was that he wasn't black.

This was targeted at people in general (which are the typical terrorist targets), and possibly at Viacom (parent company of Comedy Central and South Park, which is where the truck was parked). Evidently the creators of South Park have been receiving death threats for their portrayal of Muhammad in an episode. There is also the possiblity that this is related to some ongoing issues between street vendors, but I've not read much about that yet.

As soon as this story broke, and I heard about a bomb in Times Square, the first target I thought of was the military recruiting station that's prominently in the middle.

[[Note for non-New Yorkers: Times Square is a 5 block section where two parallel streets come together, Broadway and 7th Ave... there's a wide sidewalk in between them and the military recruiting station is on that sidewalk... since about a year ago the Broadway side has been closed off to cars, and is now just for pedestrians, so cars can only drive on the 7th Ave side]]

I'm unsure exactly where the Pathfinder was parked, but I've heard some reports that it was only a few feet away from the recruiting station.

So I don't think the anti-government angle can be dismissed yet.

Edit: Here's a picture of it...



The Armed Forces recruiting building is the larger of the 3 structures on the sidewalk (the one with the black looking square on it). The reddish colored road on the left is Broadway, the paved road is 7th Ave. The picture is taken facing south, after the roads cross over each other... if it was taken a bit further north, Broadway would be on the right, and 7th on the left. In any case, the truck could obviously only be parked on some part of 7th.

Viacom's HQ is on the Broadway side. But since the Broadway side of Times Square is now just a giant pedestrian walkway, the only way the bomber could've gotten near it would've been to drive on the pedestrian walkway... which would've instantly gained attention.

[HeelsHater]

my gf was 10 blocks away when this was happening