Nobody and no place is immune to this scourge. I don't
expect it to make anybody feel better, but We have actually had
similar periods of violence in the United states in past times.
In the early part of the last century, we had a series of letter
bombs and terrorism by anarchists and other radicals. The worst
such incident happened on September 19, 1920.
Some person drove a horse cart up to the J. P. Morgan
Bank building on Wall Street in New York City, got out, and
walked away in to the lunch-time crowd. The street was full of
pedestrians, automobiles and horse carts so nobody payed much
attention until the abandoned cart, with horses still attached,
exploded.
It had been packed with gun powder and hundreds of
window sash weights. The heavy metal flew in all directions and
killed about 40 people.
The person who did this was never caught although the
police were fairly sure who it was. forensic science in 1920
was a joke and nobody got any kind of description of the cart's
driver so the case was never closed.
Until the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed
in 1995, the Wall Street bombing was the single worst act of
terrorism on US soil.
What really makes these things so bad now is technology
which immediately flashes all those pictures around the world.
My wife was saying that she wondered if this always-on coverage
didn't encourage unbalanced people to do more of these things.
Somewhere in Boston, some sicko is watching the television and
feeling very proud of himself that he owns the moment for now.
I suspect he will be caught but one never knows.
In 1996, somebody bombed the Olympics in Atlanta in much
the same way as Boston and the police were cheering themselves
for having caught the culprit almost red handed.
It turned out to be the wrong man and it wasn't for
maybe over a year before a series of events lead the state and
federal agencies to a man who had murdered several people over
time and turned out to be the real Atlanta bomber.
If there is anything good at all in this incident, it is
the number of people who ran right in to the chaos and helped
the injured.
The Red Cross in Boston soon posted a message asking the
public to please stop donating blood for a while. So many people
had showed up to do so right after the bombing that the Red
Cross was at capacity for all blood types.
One other thing that must give the killers pause to
think; One of the two bombs actually failed to completely
explode. The police have pieces of circuit board from the timer
and the mangled remains of the pressure cooker. I know this
doesn't sound like much, but it is a gold mine in skilled hands.
When the plane blew up over Scotland in December of
1988, a piece of a circuit board the size of a fingernail helped
build the case against that bomber.
Martin
Gordon Keen writes:
> Hi
>
> Sadly we in the U.K. have had many examples of this thype of outrage, the
> people of Warrington and Guildford and Birmingham etc. aall share the
> pain. Perhaps the next time the "real I.R.A" ask for contributions for
> "the cause" in the bars of Boston and New York will remember what the
> money is going to do to other towns and cities that do not deserve the
> agony of losing young children, women and old folk to trash can bombs.
>
> The people of Boston and the U.S.A have my sympathy for their loss.
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