Beirut explosion

[Hot Sauce]

What makes you think they did? when you're talking 2,700+ TONS, what's a little off the top for a car bomb or two? Either way, it's speculation, but given the fact that Hezbollah basically has their hand rammed up the lebanese government's ass and has been using them as a sock puppet for years, I don't think it's necessarily off base.

Let me get this straight. So you run the world's most sophisticated terrorist org. You have veto-level influence on the country and government, meaning you can even get legal edicts signed to move the materials, if you wanted, let alone doing so clandestinely. You have an enemy with air supremacy over your territory and precision strike capabilities. And you, considering this a useful stash that you wouldn't want to lose to something like an airstrike or an accident, make the decision to keep it all in one place at an above ground port storage facility?

Sounds less like speculation, and more like nonsense.

[WobblyPossum]

I’m just going to listen to what @TGS and @JDD posted and suggest everyone else do the same.

[JAD]

don't forget the USS Liberty. Oh wait........ Scratch that.

They did.

[willie]

What the frack. In what universe does someone think it’d be just swell to store 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in the middle of a population center? For six fricken’ years?!

In West, Tx--in the same county as Waco--the plant making this chemical was in the city near a school. I was taking a shower in the bathroom when the explosion occurred and heard a loud boom. From me the distance was 16 miles. Farmers and everybody else used this stuff to excavate. They set it off with a piece of dynamite. Its danger is known.

[OfficeCat]

Six years and only one explosion; you have to admit that this storage method was mostly safe.

I don't think it's fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up.

[Hambo]

I’m just going to listen to what @TGS and @JDD posted and suggest everyone else do the same.

Voices of reason.

[5pins]

Or at least started that way...

Mostly peaceful.

[Elwin]

If you did not know that the president and exactly half of parliament are christian, it might be worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Lebanon

I'll just add to this, since it's easy for us in the U.S. to forget that the area isn't even remotely ethnically or religiously homogeneous - Orthodox churches, including a cathedral, are among the damaged buildings. I haven't heard yet whether that sub-community suffered any loss of life or serious injuries (I happen to belong to the church whose cathedral it is), but they're certainly part of the larger displacement crisis.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I found these as interesting reads on how screwed up Lebanon is,

When Reagan Sent In the Marines: The Invasion of Lebanon
by Patrick J. Sloyan | Dec 17, 2019


From Beirut To Jerusalem Revised Edition
by Thomas L. Friedman (Author)


Talk about people fighting about nothing except religion and greed, geez.

[Clusterfrack]

Hezbollah Hoarded Fertilizer That Blew Up Beirut, Planned to Use it Against Israel in 'Nuclear' Style Attack
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/he...-london-637578

Hezbollah stockpiled chemical behind Beirut blast in London and Germany
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/he...-london-637578

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened in the past to destroy Israel by causing a massive explosion in the port of Haifa using ammonia tanks that he said would be like a “nuclear” explosion
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/na...t-blast-637582