You said — “Because people have offered various, mostly far-fetched hypotheses as to what the significance of the reference to “Ismail/Ishmael” might be (which designation was indisputably of importance to this a-hole), your logical conclusion from that is that one should therefore exclude out of hand, even though we know relatively little about this guy, any possibility that he was influenced by islamism? How does that make any sense?”
That’s because there is *nothing* moving the investigation in the direction of Islam — except some ramblings of some people on Free Republic. That’s the only place I see a *shred* of Islam. And that’s a mighty weak thread...
Regards,
Star Traveler
You do not think his refering to the Columbine killers as MARTYRS is pointing towards islam? Ismail is another sign. Also, notice he had shaved his head which is also another ‘ritual’ muslims do before they undertake these missions. The police will know because they also shave their body hair, i.e. Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 hijackers. He appeared to be reading the words off of a prompt of some kind, and in a few places stumbled over them, almost like he was not totally familiar with them. Maybe someone else wrote some of those words. The style of the video was typical of what a Palestinian suicide bomber would make before blowing himself up. All in all, the jury is still very much out on an Islamci connection, but I thibnk there are certainly hints in that direction.