Beware of Pressure Cookers

Greeting and welcome to the Un-Zone, a site where the abnormal is normal and conspiracy theories abound in their many forms. Just when you thought the world was safer, the brilliant minds in the federal government discovers another danger in a supposedly safe object. Beware, those evil terrorists might use this common object as a dangerous weapon. What is this potentially "dangerous" weapon? The pressure cooker.

The brilliant minds at the Department of Homeland Security like to think outside the box when it comes to protecting the USA. Which is why they formed a group called "Red Cell," a menagerie of creative minds including but not limited to academics, military, best-selling novelists, and pop musicians. One must wonder which pop musician/s are in "Red Cell." This "Red Cell" is not meant to be confused with the Pentagon's Red Cell, a group created by Richard Marcinko to test the security at military installations. Most of the original members of that group were from Seal Team Six, the Navy's counter-terrorist group in the vein of Germany's GSG9 and the US Army's Delta Force(SFOD-D) located at Fort Bragg. The DHS "Red Cell" can't compare to the Red Cell I've read about.
They've come up with various reports like "How Terrorist Might Exploit A Hurricane" or "Potential Terrorist Use of Emergency Vehicles to Circumvent Security Procedures." I can come up with many plausible theories on how a terrorist might exploit a hurricane and how terrorists could use emergency vehicles. And it won't cost millions of dollars. Hell, they've come up with those reasons in many a Hollywood blockbuster.

Back to pressure cookers. Apparently, one can make an improvised explosive device from pressure cookers. In fact, the terrorists in Nepal use this as their weapon of choice. Then again, as any police officer or bomb technician or soldier in Iraq will tell you, you can make an IED from anything. If you've got the resources and some ingenuity, you can make anything into a weapon. And it doesn't cost any money to figure that out. Look at the evening news.
Yup, now we can add another characteristic to the "persons of interest" list. This is stereotyypical and quite possibly racist, but it should apply well with the current "terrorist" picture people have with Al Qaeda being in the news as the terrorist group de jeur. Do you speak Arabic? Are you of Middle Eastern descent? Do you possess a pressure cooker?

Well, I'm going to keep my eyes open for anyone possessing a pressure cooker or something resembling one. With the recent hurricane devasting the Gulf Coast and another one that could make possible landfall, it's possible that no-good terrorists might take advantage of this situation. After all, one can't be too careful during these trying times.

That's all for now.

The Early Warning Blog
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/
The Potential Uses of Pressure Cookers
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2005/09/the_pressure_co.html