They still want to advocate condoms, huh…

from www.nypost.com – First came the shoe bomb. Now we have the crotch bomb.

Flight 253 terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s bomb was an explosive-packed condom sewn into underwear near his genitals, where al Qaeda operatives figured airport screeners were too squeamish to look, reports said.

What a package it was.

The condom was filled with a powdery substance called PETN — a relative of nitroglycerine. It was to be ignited by a liquid detonator substance, which Abdulmutallab tried to inject into the condom with a syringe, reports say.

With 80 grams of PETN, the bomb could have packed a plane-destroying punch.
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Shoe bomber Richard Reid had just 50 grams of PETN when he tried to blow up a Miami-bound American Airlines plane in 2001, ABC News said.

Abdulmutallab’s bomb failed to ignite either because the detonator failed to make proper contact with the powder, or because there was too little liquid in the detonator, ABC News said.

The bomb was made by al Qaeda leaders in Yemen, who personally placed it in Abdulmutallab’s skivvies, the news organization reported.

The device is a new plane-bombing technology, and may have been a test bomb used by the terrorists to see if it would get through screening, CBS News reported.

“It appears to be different than what has been tried before, in terms of the ignition,” Rep. Peter King (R-LI) told The Post. “No match was used. No cigarette lighter. The ignition was different. I’m not a scientist, so I’m not sure of the specifics, but I’m told this was different.”

PETN — which stands for pentaerythritol tetranitrate — was first used in World War I. It is a component of the better-known plastic explosive Semtex.

Details of the bomb’s construction came to light when Abdulmutallab spoke with federal investigators probing the case.