Perhaps that's because the ammonium nitrate (AN) is mixed with fuel oil to create a bomb. The amount of ammonium nitrate is only a portion of the total amount, such that given the proportion of AN to fuel oil would result in a Canadian bomb three times the size of the OKC bomb.

I thought of that and I did a google google searches to no avail.

Even still I don't think OKC was done by 2000 lbs of AN.

Especailly since McVeigh (IRCC) used nitromethane and not diesel and was widely reported at the time..

Glad to see you are back with us Paul.

I got worried about you on Friday;)

Apparently 3X in the metric system has a different meaning than 3X in the imperial system. (/joke)

The RCMP officer very, very clearly stated that the amount the Canadians guys had was three times what McVeigh used.

OK maybe he was the start of it and the reporters parrotted him. I still don't get the math.

You forgot to include the fuel oil in your computation

You are comparing OKC amonium nitrate versus Canadian muslim ANFO.

When you add in the fuel oil to make it an apples to apples comparison you get 3x

The fuel oil, diesel fuel or nitromethane, used to produce ANFO is almost negligible in the total weight.

The actual proportions can be gleaned by reading a transcript of the McVey trial but is is like 90 parts fertilizer and 10 parts diesel. Not terribly complex at all.

ANFO while very good at moving masses of material is only a low explosive, not a high explosive like dynamite, TNT or C4.

Explosive force increases by the cube of the amount of explosive, in other words to double the explosive force you have to increase the amount by a fact of 2 cubed or 8 times as much explosive. So even if it was three times as much the effect would be much smaller than it sounds. Not to say it would be inconsequential of course.

Especailly since McVeigh (IRCC) used nitromethane and not diesel and was widely reported at the time..
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Nitromethane is weird stuff. People think that because it's used as a racing fuel that it burns very fast, which is wrong. You can pour a puddle of it on the ground and drop a match on it and it won't light. Actually, you'd have a hard time getting it lit at all. Now take a hammer and smack the concrete that the nitro is puddled on and you'll be picking concrete bits out of your skin and probably need hearing aids.

Just a week or so ago a crew member of a A/fuel dragster was injured when the engine exploded in the pits during a warm-up. Somehow a small amount of nitro leaked into the cylinder when it was just sitting there. The teams always purge the fuel lines with alcohol to make sure there is no nitro in them before starting the engine. They also remove the plugs and crank the engine to make sure there is none sitting inside the cylinders on top of the pistons.

When the team went to crank the engine over the leaked nitro exploded and a section of the block was blown off and into the crewman's legs.

Acording to a Fox news article I found they made two purchases totaling 4000lbs of AN. The 5000lb figure could have come from them having inquired about renting a truck with a 5000lb carrying capacity.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,26758,00.html