[colorado tanker]

What I'm getting at is this looks to me more like a guy who went postal than someone who would join Al Qaeda to go on jihad. Becoming a radical Muslim was his way of detaching from his coworkers and dehmanizing them so in his mind he could justify killing, something every mass killer in the workplace goes through in some form.

[aruanan]

What I'm getting at is this looks to me more like a guy who went postal than someone who would join Al Qaeda to go on jihad.

Someone who joins Al Qaeda to go on jihad is doing the very thing this guy was doing. He was just (apparently at this time) a solo entrepreneur but following the same business plan for the same reasons. He was probably even more motivated than some of Al Qaeda who may be pressured by family and friends and Al Qaeda itself and for monetary reasons or to avoid threats against family members.

As for being effing nuts, well, that pretty much goes without saying. But there's that kind of insanity, which still has moral culpability, and other types like paranoid schizophrenia in the throes of which one may have lessened or no moral responsibility for one's actions. I don't think he's in the latter category. Though being a shrink, he was probably more than half way there, especially since he was pressing Islam on his patients.