Just a month ago, two terrorist suspects from Egypt were arrested for carrying pipe bombs around Goose Creek in South Carolina, which is near a Naval Weapons Station. The case was very strangely handled at first, as it seemed as though the authoritie…..

Time will tell. I personally believe there’s more to this than meets the eye. Maybe 30 years of cop work made me a little biased. We’ll see.

even citizens need a permit to play with rocket propellant

Ooooh. I wish I’d known that when this story first broke.

Marine to sue Murtha over irresponsible Haditha accusations
Bryan Preston…

Also some clarification on GPS knowing where you are and where you’ve been. The GPS system doesn’t even know you exist, let alone where you are. There are devices on the market that contain GPS receivers and some memory to keep track of where you’ve been, but the memory is not part of the receiver.

/nitpick mode

Bill Faith, BSEE 1976, MEEE 1985

Anyway… If these guys were found with pipes full of legitimate rocket propellant, I’d still want them in Gitmo unless:

You can show that they have been working with model rockets for the last X years,

They have a license/permit to work with this stuff, and

An expert on model rocketry looked their stuff over and said “yes, those are rockets: nozzles, nose cones, etc.”

In which case I’d say “deport them if they’re not citizens and didn’t have a permit,” because even citizens need a permit to play with rocket propellant…

On August 30th, 2007 at 1:04 pm, Al in St. Lou said:

You’re right. Rocket fuel doesn’t explode (detonate), it burns. If it exploded, every singe attempted rocket launch would explode like a bomb on the launch pad.

If they had explosives, it definitely was not for model rockets.

Middle Easterners with explosives? Yawn. Hillary gets campaign financing from foreign criminals? Yawn. Brittany slugs her mom – man the choppers, call in all those reporters from their vacations, set up the camera trucks, go live.

Mechanical Engineering students, Gee, I wonder why they chose this course of study??????

#6 Rob

Fireworks don’t make shrapnel other than paper/cardboard; pipe bombs most definitely do.

Fireworks do cause frag – but not as effectively as a mechanical detonation.
google deflagration and detonation

I considered it. But since subsequent searches of their home, not to mention the trunk itself, turned up no model rockets or other items associated with the hobby, I rejected it.

The association with older men already indicted/convicted of terrorist activities, combined with the knowledge that thousands of international visitors have traveled from FL to NC without accidentally ending up near a naval base on a back road 50 miles from the interstate, are just gravy.