'Block-Buster' Truck Bomb One of the Biggest Ever

[flowers]

http://news.yahoo.com/block-buster-truck-bomb-one-biggest-ever-205450100--abc-news-topstories.html

Afghan national security forces near the border with Pakistan recently intercepted one of the largest truck bombs ever built, a massive "vehicle-borne improvised explosive device," or VBIED, packed with some 61,500 pounds of explosives.

By comparison, the truck bomb that all but leveled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, was comprised of almost 5,000 lbs. of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with fuel oil. The same recipe is commonly used in Afghanistan to make a variety of IEDs that have killed hundreds of ISAF troops in small numbers since 2001 -- but typically using dozens of pounds, not thousands.

"We're talking something with the power to raze whole blocks in an American city," Andrew Gumbel, author of last year's "Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed -- And Why It Still Matters," told ABC News.

Army Col. Christopher Garver, a spokesperson for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force's Joint Command in Kabul, told ABC News the massive bomb was discovered Oct. 14 when the truck was stopped in Gardez, Afghanistan. The bomb, he said was, in the military's estimation, "larger in comparison to some others we have seen." Another Defense Department source said that it was one of the largest truck bombs ever known to have been built.

"Vehicle-borne IEDs are one of the most significant threats to everyone in Afghanistan, as we have seen over the summer fighting season," Garver said

[truth_seeker]

If we still had such activities by Germans in Germany in 1956, our citizens would say the job wasn't done, war not over, etc.

Yet now we are almost silent, over the deaths and lack of final, decisive victory in that far away, violent place.

[Fishrrman]

[[ If we still had such activities by Germans in Germany in 1956, our citizens would say the job wasn't done, war not over, etc.
Yet now we are almost silent, over the deaths and lack of final, decisive victory in that far away, violent place. ]]

The "final, decisive victory" remains far off.
It will be heralded the day two cities -- both of which names begin with "M" -- disappear.

Until then, it will be a long struggle.