Friday, October 07, 2005

Bengals Fans Need To Shut Up

If I see another fat, drunk, dirty Bengal fan complaining about the possibility of pat-downs at Paul Brown Stadium, I'm going to puke.

Ask Oklahoma fans how they'd feel about it?

There are some interesting video updates on the possible suicide bomber from the local Oklahoma press (all courtesy of News 9 in Oklahoma City).

A first report states that Joel Hinrichs may have tried to enter the football stadium from two different gates. He reportedly had a ticket to the game. The most concrete piece of information in the report comes from a student who says that a security guard working gate security told him that a young man with a backpack had tried to enter the stadium. When the guard tried to search the backpack, he says that the man wearing the backpack sprinted away. This is not a usual occurrence at Oklahoma University football games; the clear implication is that it may have been Hinrichs who sprinted off.

A second report explains that Norman police have confirmed that Hinrichs attempted to buy ammonium nitrate a few days before blowing himself up. An off-duty police officer was in the Ellison Feed and Seed store at the time that Hinrichs was there. Both the store owner and officer became suspicious because Hinrichs was unable to answer basic questions about how much ammonium nitrate he wanted and why he needed it. The officer then followed Hinrichs to where he was parked, got his tag number, re-entered the store and contacted the Norman police department with the tag number.

A third report provides a brief look at how Hinrichs was transformed from a National Merit Scholar to a "suicide bomber" (if that is indeed what he was). The report states that, just prior to his death, Hinrichs had spent much of his time at the Norman mosque that Zacarias Moussaoui attended. The report states that the bomb that killed Hinrichs contained TATP. The report also states that in the search of Hinrichs's house and car, agents found an airline ticket to Algeria which was "linked" to Hinrichs's Pakistani roommate. The reporter didn't specify whether this was a one-way ticket, but did say that this discovery raises the question of whether others beside Hinrichs were involved.

I have a favorite quote from the local reports. An Oklahoma University student, explaining why he thought there was more to Hinrichs's death than the OU administration would admit, said, "You don't just blow yourself up next to 85,000 people for no reason."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My issues with the patdowns are threefold:

1. The refusal to open the stadium any earlier than the 90 minutes before kickoff than it already does, and to publically announce that long lines which could cause you to miss part of the game will be a reality is irksome. On the one hand, it feels to me like they are trying to pack the stadium as soon as the gates open to maximize concession revenue while avoiding having the stands open any longer than they are now. In the winter, getting to your seats 90 minutes early is going to be a nightmare.

2. They already do bag searches. Again, this seems to be aimed at the people who slip a flask into the stadium rather than terrorists.

3. What's the difference if the bomber blows up 20 people in the staidium, or 150 packed into line waiting to be searched outside the stadium? At least inside you have a plastic seat back and a little structure to absorb or deflect some shrapnel.

They already do bag searches

Anonymous said...

Sorry about the random cut and paste there at the bottom.

Doug Fields said...

Some of your criticisms are valid. But everyone I've heard to this point has objected to the whole notion of the pat-downs, not the implementation.