But why did Muhammad not make his agenda clear while the shootings were going on? Even now, after being caught, one can speculate on his message, but it's still just speculation. Why didn't he spell it out if this was his purpose?
I do agree that the snipers let themselves be caught, but I don't think this provides an adequate explanation.
By the way, as the tag-line says, Liz Michael is running a campaign for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, but let's just say that she's the opposite of a mainstream candidate.
I think he did make it clear. He left notes all over the place - the contents of which have not been revealed. The tarot cards, for example, supposedly contained more than the fragmentary messages revealed to the press, but even those fragments contained enough information so that any police agency would have realized they were dealing with Black Muslim Five Percenters. They used certain stock phrases used by this group, for example.
Actually, I think the money demand - which seems to have come later - only arose because it seemed to be the only way that Muhammed could get them to take him seriously and assemble "enough" clues to be unable to deny the evidence. Remember, Moose and the others seem to have wanted this person, from the very start, to be neither black nor Muslim, and I think this was crucial in slowing down the apprehension of the pair. If their whole purpose was publicity, it must have been pretty frustrating! If it weren't such a deadly serious thing that had destroyed so many lives, it would almost be comical.
And of course, if it weren't such a serious thing with regards to the future. I still wonder about the "duck in the noose" remark -
Normal people tend to look for logical actions by those who commit atrocious acts under the influence of religious zeal or intense hatred, since murder of strangers is in complete contradiction to our well-ordered world, and threatens, by its random nature -- to undermine the very fabric of society.
How many times did you hear so-called "experts," many of them former FBI agents, proclaim that the sniper was not a terrorist, since a terrorist would claim responsibility? This assumption is completely bogus, as evidenced by the FBI's own case files, as far back as 1990.
When Egyptian El-Sayyid Nosair assassinated Meir Kahane in November of 1990, the FBI insisted on the “lone nut” theory; and Nosair never offered a rationale for the shooting during his criminal trial in New York; in fact, he was not even convicted of murder, only of lesser charges. But in a notebook belonging to Nosair (who was also linked to the bombing of a gay bar in Greenwich Village and the attempted assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev the same year) he called for the “breaking and destruction of the enemies of Allah. And this is by means of destroying exploding, the structure of their civilized pillars such as the touristic infrastructure which they are proud of and their high world buildings which they are proud of and their statues which they endear and the buildings which gather their head[s,] their leaders, and without any announcement for our responsibility of Muslims for what had been done.”
Michaels is obviously a libertarian, as you imply, but while I don’t agree with some of her beliefs, I think she may be right on target with this theory.