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STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD
Posted on 10/08/2002 11:50:30 PM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:40:01 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
ROCKVILLE, Md.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
WorldNetDaily.com: "NEW AL-QAIDA TRAINING TAPE SHOWS ANOTHER SIDE OF TERROR Captured Video Reveals Plans for Home Break-ins, Killing Police, Drive-bys, Golf Course Assassinations" by Joseph Farah (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The training video shows al-Qaida operatives practicing the following kinds of assaults: * using pickup trucks with shooters concealed in the bed of the trucks; * using motorcycles as a shooting platform for drive-bys and assassinations; * execution of prisoners; * ambushes of law-enforcement officers; * residential assassinations; * assassination on a golf course using a rocket-propelled grenade and rifle fire; * drive-up kidnapping of target walking on a street; * use of tunnels, storm drains and sewers for infiltration during urban raids; * rappelling from rooftops of buildings to make entry on upper floors; * use of motorcycles for grenade attacks; and * raids on buildings with large numbers of occupants – perhaps schools or office buildings. Analysts point out that all scenarios involving prisoners and hostages ended in execution. None included plans for negotiated settlements for escape by terrorists.") (090402)
KNOX STUDIOS.com (TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE): "THE LONG OPEN NORTHERN BORDER" by Sean Robinson, Tacoma News Tribune (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The list of suspected terrorists who have used Canada as their base of operations includes Ahmed Ressam, arrested at the Blaine crossing in December 1999 with a trunk full of explosives and a plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. News reports from Canada show other suspected terrorists tied to Canada include Armine Mezbar, an Algerian accused of having ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and Nabil al-Marabh, who may have played a role in coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks.") (100602)
Why OJ is walking free
Why Wen Ho Lee got away with spying
Why Monica walks free and Linda Tripp goes to trial.........
But with a serial killer or other killers that have no obvious motive, have no connection to the killers and work randomly- the police have very little to go on. This has always been the case with these types of killers, making them notoriously difficult to catch. The profiles offer at least something to work with when there is nothing else and at times they are extremely accurate, so it is no surprise that law enforcement rely on them.
Out of curiousity, who do you think it is? I'm going with ex military, white male, younger than the profile says- maybe 26- 32 yrs of age. After the calling card was found, I started to think it wasn't more than one guy after all, just someone who has always had a fantasy of sniping. The card said "I am God".
I would imagine it gives the guy an incredible sense of power to look through his scope and play the game of "I will now decide if you die or not". I would imagine the guy has lain in his house with his rifle trained on passersby or his neighbors while they were totally unaware of the "power" he held over them and I imagine even then, he received a powerful intoxication from the thought that he was "God-like" in the power of life and death he held in his trigger finger for the totally unsuspecting. I would imagine he had a round in the chamber, safety off, finger on the trigger with slight pressure applied when he "practiced" like this and he probably enjoyed the thought that those anonymous ones he allowed to keep living would never know how fortunate they were that he spared them.
I remember watching a video about snipers in the military. One of the guys was a police sniper. He did the above that I just described- maybe not with the evil thoughts and a round in the chamber but he definitely lay in his house aiming his rifle at his neighbors and dry fired the weapon for practice. He said he did this for hours at a time and reckoned it trained him to be sub-conciously connected to the target in his scope and prepared him for the random little movements people make. I found the guy to be kind of nutty myself.
I would also imagine this sniper hasn't been practicing at a commercial firing range lately. He probably likes to construct his own targets to look like humans and take them out into the hills somewhere to poke holes in them. He's probably fascinated with books like "Marine Sniper" or "One Shot, One Kill" and movies like "Enemy at the Gates".
Another thing about the calling card and its "I am God" message- in the Army the sniper is often nicknamed "God". This is what got me thinking about the ex-military angle in the first place. I wouldn't speculate on whether he had actually gone to the military sniping school or not or simply had wet dreams about being a sniper and going to the school- probably the latter, but then again, hard to say.
The only thing I can think of doing against him would be to call in a bunch of these ex military snipers, maybe even Carlos Hathcock himself, and ask them where they would set up in the area if they wanted to commit these sorts of crimes and then do stakeouts on these places. Maybe sit down and talk with them and find out a little bit about the sniper mentality. Maybe review the rolls of the soldiers who went through sniper school in the last 25 yrs and see how many are living in the area?
If not a perimeter staked out, why not an immediate perimeter lock down and road block after the fact.
The police were patrolling the school and knew immediately there had been another attempted murder.
I will believe it when I see it. My impression is that both agencies think with their file systems and not with their brains. If a case is not routine or like a dozen domestic precedents, they haven't the first idea what they are dealing with or what to do. They have little imagination and are uncomfortably working from hypotheticals about obvious but new or unusual attacks. They also simply don't seem to be among the brightest bulbs, overall. These tendencies and failings have been spectacularly on display since a year ago.
We see reports of the attacks "not fitting expected profiles". We hear speculations of lone nut hood. We hear of dragnets for white delivery vans. We heard the FBI at one point saying there wasn't yet a federal crime involved. These are all signs of authorities completely out of their depth.
As for the profile, there is nothing at all unexpected about the MO. There is only a disconnect between the MO and the thesis of a lone madman self-destructing - because the latter thesis is obviously false. The actual MO fits perfectly with trained military sniping attacks. Such soldiers are trained to operate in enemy territory, focus on their surviviability to remain in action, go after isolated enemy targets of opportunity one at a time, then evade and repeat. Ask any Bosnian how "atypical" this sort of thing is - they lived through half a dozen years of it, not half a dozen days.
As for the white delivery van dragnet, it is most likely a conscientious false lead, which can happen and to which no blame attaches. Any expectation that the perps have only one vehicle, that it is a prominently visible type, that the whole episode has been one continuous ride around in that vehicle - is by now wildly implausible and does not fit any other aspect of the case. If one or a days worth of attacks occurred from one such vehicle, that part of the method has certainly shifted since.
Non-involvement by feds is obviously silly, since local police departments are hardly prepared for this sort of thing. The real issues on reaction forces would seem to be (1) whether military advice or technical support should be extended to law enforcement, and other intel agencies and (2) what "civil defense" measures, if any, should be asked of the civilian population.
The former might include everything from info - on known Bosnian and Afghan foreigners who are war veterans and have entered the country or area since 9-11, domestics known to have the training or experience from our military and to be in the area, explanation of MOs and evasion, reconstruction of shooting positions - to analysis personnel support, sensor equipment, counter guerilla tactical advice etc. The latter might run the gambit from nothing, to curfews, to neighborhood watch, to deputization, etc. One person on the spot of the next attack with a cell phone is more likely to generate a lead than 100 police officers looking for white delivery vans.
Why is the perp doing it, and why haven't they taken credit if they are terrorists? They haven't finished, for one. A domestic might want to highlight the vunerability, perhaps because of an axe to grind about how such things are handled or trying to elicite a preferred response. The more likely case is a foreign attacker who wants the demonstration effect of getting away with it to inspire copycats. Since the "audience" for that would be within his own organization or among those he hopes to recruit, and not any response from the authorities, there is no need or desire to "take credit" for it.
If a Ladenist muslim terrorist is involved, he may simply be taking literally any of the dozens of fatwahs ordering him to kill Americans wherever he finds them. One might also consider the closeness in time to the recent arrests of the cell planning on going to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban. That was pursuant to a particular obligation some Muslims see to fight whenever another Muslim territory is "attacked". The news coverage made much of the distinction between going to Afghanistan (to fight "defensively") and performing terrorist acts here. There may be an indirect connection, of someone who saw the coverage and decided it was more sensible to fight here.
The primary thesis has to be guerilla terrorism by an experienced or at least trained soldier. A secondary possibility, which must be considered far less likely, is a disgruntled vet who thinks he is highlighting American complacency and defenselessness. These judgments stem simple from recognizing that we are in a war, and that the MO perfectly fits how snipers operate in enemy territory in wartime. Stop thinking with file systems about the long term past, filled with domestic only incidents. Start using your brains about the present and the future our enemies want to see.
With squat for proof, media elites have been profileing this sniper as a white male, yet with beaucoup proof we dare not profile a single swarthy foreigner as a terrorist.
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