I love opening a NY Post like this on the subway right in front of someone who looks say....less than conservative. Then again, a headline like this gets the whole subway car looking at it.
These "experts" are adept at bounching between Fox News and CNN programs - snake oil peddlers would have felt akin to these folks.
I'd rather watch the leemers snuggle up to one another rather than listen to the inane babblings of these "experts".
Nope. Sheesh, everyone knows it's a white ex-military gun-nut.
Otherwise known as the US Military ?
You can't have it both ways.
Live by the sword, ...
BUMP
The killings began just before the one-year anniversary of the American invasion of Afghanistan . . . [and coincide with] recent attacks in Kuwait, Yemen, and Bali. . .
. . . it has been trumpeted that the locations of the shootings have been "random" - but of course they have not.
. . . we must now look beyond this somewhat obvious theory [of a serial killer/white angry militant], with its horribly comfortable familiarity, to the even more terrifying possibility that a new kind enemy is conducting an unprecedented kind of campaign within our borders
And as many have pointed out, there have been 9 killed out of 11 hit. Now a long, unexplainable, lull.....coincidence? I think not. Excellent article and analysis.
The death of the target is not the intent. The death of the targeted victim is merely the vehicle used to instill fear and panic in the rest of us. Whether freelance or state-sponsored, this is the very essence of terrorism.
This is not necessarily true. Terrorist are cunning (like animals), and for most of them the object is to commit the crime and not be caught! The 9/11 attacks set a new standard, mode of operation for airline hijackings by using the hijacked plane as a weapon. Who's to say that the terrorists haven't changed the way they carry out sniper attacks as well?
There were still plenty of LE officials and officers around, as well as news trucks.
Interesting is that the school on the opposite (westbound) side of Rt. 50 seems to have become an area of LE interest. This is a Fairfax County public school exactly opposite the HD, with a large parking lot and a grassy hill. The entire area of the hill was surrounded with Crime Scene tape. Many of you may have seen the news video yesterday of police cadets searching a parking lot area. That is the school parking lot.
The interesting thing about this lot is that it affords a direct line-of-sight into the 5th inside lane of the HD parking lot (I believe that's where the shooting took place), as well as a direct, unobstructed line-of-sight to the main entrance/exit of the store.
Having lived in the area for a number of years, I'm pretty certain that the school parking lot is completely unlit at night, as is the area immediately surrounding it. It is dark as dark can be. Also, the entrance into the lot is a mere 15 feet from the entrance ramp onto Rt. 50. I can't imagine it would take more than 10 seconds to exit from a shooting position in the lot onto westbound Rt. 50, which is not an interstate but certainly a high-speed (45-50 MPH) state road.
From the lot (it's not taped off as a crime scene), I then took a closer at the access road on the opposite side of the Rt. 50, just on the outside of the HD parking lot. This is the only spot where witnesses could realistically have ID'd suspects, vehicles, or anything else (as I said, the school parking lot would have been pitch black, and is 100 yards across the road, no one in the HD parking lot could possibly have seen anything whatsoever from that distance).
If in that access road, it looked as if the shooter might in fact have needed to exit their vehicle in order to aim into the 5th lane of the HD parking lot. Also, there's a small rise/hill, and they may have actually needed to walk up that rise perhaps 5 to 10 feet.
So the bottom line is that the access road just outside the Home Depot lot seems a very bad choice, and not consistent with previous shootings which have been in the 100 yard range according to news reports.
The conclusion from this is that the school parking lot on westbound Rt. 50 provided the ideal line-of-sight into the HD parking lot, is in cover of complete darkness, and provided immediate egress onto Rt. 50. On the other hand, the access road just outside the HD parking lot is well-lit, seems inconvenient from a positioning point-of-view, and has relatively tricky egress routes.
Bottom line: because of the darkness and distance, the school lot would have provided no witness opportunities, whereas a shooter on the HD access road would have been completely exposed and provided many witness sightings.
It seems to me inconceivable that the shooter would have broken so severely from established pattern to use the HD access road, and entirely consistent that he/they would have used the school parking lot.
Finally, I did speak with several other locals who were observing just as I was. Everyone without exception believed the shooter had used the school parking lot, and they had thought so since the moment they first heard of the shooting on the news. Standing there on the scene, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that their initial and imnmediate impression had been correct: the shot was taken from the school.
If that is true, none of the "witness accounts" make a lot of sense, because the shooter was 100+ yards away, in pitch black darkness, and within 10 feet of three separate egress choices. He/they would have been gone within 30 seconds.
My previous thinking on this was dictated by the purported "witness acounts". Having now looked at the scene, and with at least one account being entirely dismissed, I'd say that they're all quite suspect if not entirely wrong.
Why? Because the leaders of the country and many of the people so STRONGLY want things to be the way 'they used to be', they cannot embrace change or consider the unthinkable. It is almost as if they fiercely WANT it to NOT be terrorism, but that has no effect upon the objective actions of a terrorist cell committed to our destruction.
It is a good case study in human discomfort with 'Change' and propensity for 'Denial'.
In fact, "The United States of Denial" might be a more fitting title now.
I love opening a NY Post like this on the subway right in front of someone who looks say....less than conservative. Then again, a headline like this gets the whole subway car looking at it.
I read this in the hard copy of the NYPost and the above paragraph cought my eye. No one on this thread has commented. Just who would not want the Iraqi war debate off the medias radar? Who is Mr. Carr implicating? al-Qaeda? Why would al-Qaeda want Iraq off the news? If not al-Qaeda who then?
Pure supposition. No one has seen the sniper or snipers doing this, and even if they had, how would they know it was the sniper(s), since aparently no one knows what he/they look(s) like. He/they could just as well be using MapBlast, MapQuest and/or Yahoo to "scout" the area.