(Curious montage of the pre-explosive phase of the Boston Marathon attack. I have no idea if this is related to the actual operations but it certainly is curious. Montage courtesy “Based Heisenburg:” http://basedheisenberg.tumblr.com)
My brother ran Boston last year- making the field at his age is a pretty impressive thing, and I am very proud of him. According to the race clock in the images of the bombing, he would have been done for twenty minutes when the attacks happened.
Me? On my best day with the best time, I was only able crack four hours by a minute or three. For me, that was a mark of achievement, not a pathetically slow time. But I would have been there only minutes before whatever scumbag set off the murderous blast.
The spin on Boston is truly amazing. The BBC this morning was swamped with complaints of cultural relativism from around the world. The general thrust was why should the three causalities in the Beantown attack completely overshadow the routine reporting of a dozen killed elsewhere in bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq and the continued madness in Syria.
One of my local correspondents is slightly hysterical over the apparent detention and search of a Saudi student’s apartment in Revere, a little coastal town on the way out to Beverly where I spent a couple summers back in the day. I still remember the train stops: Beverly, Swampscott, Marblehead, Revere.
If there was something to that connection, there is no reporting of it.
From an objective standpoint, the tactics are a muddle of every crack-pot ideologue of the last thirty or forty years. The methodology seems almost textbook IRA from the Ulster and London campaigns- unless the pressure cooker bombs were actually left in black backpacks rather than in the trash cans, which the sole picture available suggests.
The recipe for the pressure-cooker IEDs is a standard in Afghanistan- but also appeared in Inspire, the al Qaida glossy magazine, which the media breathlessly reports was linked to white supremacist web sites.
I don’t know what to think, except there is naturally a great deal of IRA presence in Boston, but the Boyos rarely operate here, to avoid damaging funding streams and donations. The guy who sat between me and Old Jim confessed to coughing up $500 a year in tribute money to the IRA- but I discount them as prime subjects, unless there is a new rogue branch that is tuning up for an attack on the London Marathon net week.
A pal wrote to say that this had been intended for the NYC Marathon, which got whacked by Sandy, and the Boston fall-back was not expected.
I have no idea, except that the most logical candidates for an attack (calculate the fixation with the Big Apple on the part of the jihadis) have not been mentioned at all.
In fact, the whole thing is curious. Major Hassan’s attack at Fort Hood was mysteriously re-categorized as an incident of “workplace violence,” a bizzare characterization of a jihadi act of terror. The failed attack on Times Square with a defective car bomb….well, you know. The authorities seem determined to avoid tagging anyone in particular with this heinous act, even the most logical suspects. Like Benghazi, I imagine that would undermine the narrative that al Qaida is on the run and the threat to the homeland is over so we can get back to the important work before the Senate, I forget what that is.
I guess we will just see what information they dribble out over the next few days and weeks. I am as prepared to believe it was some domestic idiot as someone else, I know first reports are always wrong, and I will avoid a rush to judgment here at Big Pink. This being a local crime, someone will have to get pinned with the crime, unlike events overseas.
I will never make the cut for Boston, not with the leg as screwed up as it is, but my brother’s involvement makes this chillingly personal, just like 9/11.
In the wake of all that, some moron sent me one of those pictures you should not have to look at unless you have been warned. In a scrum of confusion, a young man, a runner, apparently, is hunched in agony. He is fit, or was until a moment before. There is a good six or seven inches of naked tibia protruding from the remaining flesh of his right leg.
I have had leg muscles in my time that were conditioned to run the same distance, less the last hundred feet. Taut, responsive and tough was the musculature of that leg, at least until shredded by ball bearings unleashed at high velocity.
I did not have dreams about it, but it was a powerful image. At least I have not had the dreams yet. Maybe it is still too raw.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com