Posted on 10/17/2002 8:08:13 AM PDT by FatherTorque
Sooner or later, American paranoia about terrorists had to bring the conspiracy theorists out of the closet to claim the sniper who has killed nine ordinary people in the Washington suburbs the past two weeks is part of a giant al Qaeda plot.
“Yeah and he could be a little green man from Mars,” laughs Jonathan Burlingame, a former intelligence agent who tracked terrorists for 30 years. “Suggesting this is part of some al Qaeda plot only shows how little most people know about how international terrorism works.”
Homeland Security officials say publicly they are “not ruling out” international terrorism as a motive behind the string of killings that have left Washington area residents afraid to go to their local Home Depot or gas station, but privately they say such a possibility is “remote at best.”
“Under these horrific circumstances, you don’t want to draw any premature conclusions,” says Homeland Security director Tom Ridge. Translation: It’s possible but not probable.
“What happened is that somebody said they saw someone who may have been dark-skinned or olive-skinned and that set off the alarmists who now want to scream that ‘Oh my God it’s bin Laden’s army, shooting people right here on American soil,'” Burlingame says. “Consider this: the report of a dark or olive skinned man came from people who saw the van at night. Those who saw a van in daytime said the driver was white. The truth is, we still don’t know all that much about the shooter, but we do know that this is not the way these people wage war.”
Burlingame points to a number of red flags which he says rules out a Muslim terrorist plot behind the shootings:
--Single shot deaths are not the terrorist way. “Success is measured in body count, in shock value and in an ability to spread fear over the widest possible area,” Burlingame says. “If this were part of an al Qaeda plan, we would see multiple sniper attacks in several cities, not just the Washington suburbs.”
--Neither are single shot weapons. “The weapon of choice is a fully-automatic AK, spreading many shots in a wide angle and taking as many lives as possible. Squeezing off a single shot and killing only one person when so many targets are available runs counter to their philosophy. Again, body count is important.”
--The Tarot card proclaiming “I am God,” is a clear signal. “No Muslim will lie about such a thing. They will lie about their name, their nationality or their intentions, but claiming to the God would be blasphemy. It would deny the shooter an afterlife.”
--The sniper didn’t take out a law enforcement officer when he had the chance. “A Virginia State Trooper was working a traffic accident during last week’s shooting in Fredricksburg. He was clearly in the line of fire yet the shooter chose to fire over the trooper’s head to hit his primary target. An al Qaeda operative would never have passed up an opportunity to take out someone in uniform.”
So, who is the shooter?
“Probably someone with military or law enforcement training,” Burlingame says. “Someone who craves the media attention and the power he has from this situation. I agree fully with the profilers who say this is a homegrown shooter.”
Of course, Burlingame could be wrong. So could the profilers, at least those who say the shooter is a young, white male. Even the experts can’t agree on who the guy might be or what drives him to kill. About they only thing they can agree on is that the shooter is probably not a 45-year-old soccer mom with an anger-management problem.
But the rush to claim the shooter is a Middle Eastern terrorist simply because a witness said he thought he saw someone who was “olive skinned” or “dark skinned” is a frightening trend.
It goes beyond paranoia and becomes racism.
Even in a time when unknown killers disrupt our lives and terrorism threatens our freedoms, such attitudes have no place in America. © Copyright 2002 by Capitol Hill Blue
Are you kidding???
The sniper(s) may or may not be islamic jihadist but Mr. Thompson's reasoning that it's unlikely is soft.
To the able discounting of his many screwy points by other Freepers on this thread I would add that the "I am God" card might have been left on behalf of the shooters own god: allah.
The message being that I (allah) am god and I bring death to you infidels.
Thompson is CapHillBlue "founder and publisher" -- no wonder I've never found anything worth reading there.
However, even before we had a description, we had self-proclaimed terrorism experts on FR loudly announcing that this was al-Qaeda's latest and greatest effort.
The tarot card is a point of evidence against this being Islamist. So's the fact that this is only happening in the DC suburbs. Nothing conclusive in themselves, but interesting nonetheless.
That's so funny!! (I can't wait to steal it. :-)
That presupposes that all Al Queda terrorism is centrally controlled, yet there has been consistent speculation that with the leadership in disarray, individual cells would have the freedom to operate autonomously. That could easily explain the "one of a kind" nature of this crime spree.
Nope. Can't learn a thing from his head in the sand PC drivel.
I am not totally convinced it is islamofascist related terrorism, but there are too many things here to over look. He conveniently leaves alot of them out.
Also, if you want to talk about racism, what about the completely out in the open profiling of white males as the culprit. How blatant is that? Or is it OK to be a racist when the target of that racism is white? Racism is not the issue here though. It is the fact that if we do not at least consider that this has been a very effective terror campaign from the islamists, possibly meant as a diversion or a trial run, then we are setting ourselves up for much more to come.
Re-read my post, I said it was BS.
? Maybe John Adams, yea John Adams must be the shooter. Probably egged on by Ben Franklin. Paul Revere would be the driver or lookout.
I'm thinking the "experts" would do well to stick a sock in it until we have real data to discuss. It was, after all, the "experts" who grandly announced the Titanic was unsinkable.
Especially if it would throw the cops of the trail by making them assume it couldn't possibly be a Muslim doing it. A Muslim is SPECIFICLY allowed to lie and deny their religion if it's necessary for their safety
EXACTLY what I was thinking. FatherTorque, you have surely read many of our responses.
Care to elaborate on and or/defend your views?
Whilst we cannot tell whether it is a terrorist or not right now, if this does start to happen in many locations, the probability of it being a terrorist action increases.
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