RPCVYemen wrote
Let me get this straight, McVeigh was innocent
How you'd get that from what I posted is beyond me.
Mc Veigh was a nutcase but unlikely to have intended the deaths of any children. He knew a great deal less about his intended target than he thought he did.
I can see him hoping to waste a few LEO but not children, it doesn't suit his profile.
In fact it took a lot of research by engineers and demolition experts to determine just why his bomb caused as much damage to the Murray building as it did.
I've suspected that he'd intended to phone in a warning or let the bomb be discovered and the building evacuated, but it went off too soon for some reason. Thats just my speculation, based on available evidence.
While I have no problem with the death penalty in his case, it would have served better to let him live long enough to get some more conclusive information on this incident.
The Oklahoma City Bombing was an aberation. Domestic terrorists and criminal bombings seldom are geared towards mass casualties. Generally mass casualties of this magnitude in the US are mass suicide pacts.
Even "Mad Bomber Metesky" chose to avoid causing casualties, and only one person was seriously injured by his bombs.
The Unibomber , while having murderous intent, set his bombs to catch only one victim at a time.
US bombers generally attack structures rather than people. When they cause indiscriminate casualties its discredits their "cause" whatever that might be.
don't know where you get this information, but McVeigh told defense investigators that he bombed the Murrah Building at the time of day he did to "increase the body count."
If he did not want casualties he would have done it at midnight instead of 9:00 a.m.
From a cellmate informer. McVeigh was putting up a front with the investigators, he'd admitted privately that he had no idea that there was a Daycare center in the Murray Building.
Remember McVeigh's statement in court
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of Circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of Chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."
Like I said he was a nutcase. He wanted to go out with the rep of a stone killer rather than as a screw up.
If you want to learn more about the structural deficiencies that lead to the building's ususual collapse pattern I can probably dig the information up for you. The computer simulations tell the story pretty well.
My Architectual design classes were geared towards homes and other wooden frame structures, not modern office buildings, but I know enough about the stresses involved to grasp the explanations easily enough.