IED in Times Square?

[Michael_ Gee]

It is notable that after failing at the American Dream, this yoyo failed equally at the Anti-American Dream. Ideology aside, failure does seem to be the overriding theme of his life.

 

[Flying Headbutt]

Unemployed, lost a couple of jobs in the last few years? Check.

House foreclosed? Check.

Wife living in Pakistan since 2009, far, far away? Check.

All these point to the classic "loser ready to blow up" paradigm. Ok, maybe he took a little longer to simmer than usual but his nuttiness was in the driver's seat. Islam was just the vehicle that took him where he wanted to go.

You get an "A" for effort.

Keep trying to fit that square peg into the round hole.

You both agree that radical Islam played a role in this. Why are you being argumentative about it?

 

[21]

Now we have smoking baggage in the Seattle airport:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_sea_tac_suspicious_bag.html

 

[Armchair_QB]

It is notable that after failing at the American Dream, this yoyo failed equally at the Anti-American Dream. Ideology aside, failure does seem to be the overriding theme of his life.

Yep. Once again we got lucky. The bomber stopped himself by building a ****ty bomb.

 

[Cousin Oliver]

If he was an American citizen, then this is a case of domestic terrorism.

 

[cyclingwriter]

It is notable that after failing at the American Dream, this yoyo failed equally at the Anti-American Dream. Ideology aside, failure does seem to be the overriding theme of his life.

While this is not to be laughed, that is a rather witty observation.

 

[Cousin Oliver]

Humm... Let's see. Marriage troubles, lotsa debt, a spotty job history. This is the classic pattern of the quiet (i.e. tightly wound and deeply troubled) neighbor blowing up as he crashes into middle age.

We've all covered stories like this. 15 years ago, he would've been out on the lawn, screaming insanely, waving a loaded gun at the cops. Or done the whole murder-suicide routine with the estranged wife.

These days, it's the car bomb in Times Square. Well done, sir. Now that you're ratting out anyone who've you ever met in Pakistan to the FBI, there's a place waiting for you in witness protection.

McVeigh was a nut. A total psychotic nut. The militia was the means to act out his nuttiness.

Same with the Ft. Hood shooter. He was a freakin' nut. He used radical Islam as a means to act out.

My guess, based on what I've read, is this guy is the same way.

In fact, you could make an argument that all of these radical muslim terrorists are just absolutely, freaking crazy. (That's the point South Park made with the Looney Tunes as Bin Laden episode.)

Abortion clinic bomber? ****ing nuts. Columbine? No not video games, bullying or whatever, just nuts. (And yes, I'm kind of going into a Chris Rock routine.)

I guess my -- strained, tired -- point is that if it wasn't form Islam, the Militia, school or something else, these psychopaths would have acted out somewhere else.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Boomer7]

Sorry, but something about the culture of radical Islam facilitates the step from nuts to mass murder. The sample size is too large to claim otherwise at this point.

You could say the same about the culture of the radical militia, too. And you'd be right on both points.

 

[Boomer7]

Sorry, but something about the culture of radical Islam facilitates the step from nuts to mass murder. The sample size is too large to claim otherwise at this point.

You could say the same about the culture of the radical militia, too. And you'd be right on both points.

To a degree. Other than McVeigh, the radical militia people seem to be more bark than bite. More reminiscent of the scary lefties from the first half of the 20th century. But radical Islam has turned an entire sub-continent into a war zone.

An entire subcontinent? Are you attributing the India-Pakistan conflict strictly to "radical Islam"? Otherwise, I'm not sure where you're going with this.

 

[Boom_70]

Unemployed, lost a couple of jobs in the last few years? Check.

House foreclosed? Check.

Wife living in Pakistan since 2009, far, far away? Check.

All these point to the classic "loser ready to blow up" paradigm. Ok, maybe he took a little longer to simmer than usual but his nuttiness was in the driver's seat. Islam was just the vehicle that took him where he wanted to go.

You get an "A" for effort.

Keep trying to fit that square peg into the round hole.

The missing piece - daily commute on The Merritt Parkway- it would drive even the most well adjusted mad.

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

It is notable that after failing at the American Dream, this yoyo failed equally at the Anti-American Dream. Ideology aside, failure does seem to be the overriding theme of his life.

Yep. Once again we got lucky. The bomber stopped himself by building a ****ty bomb.

If this guy really was trained by Al-Qaida, there is no doubt in my mind we are talking about a very different outcome. After 10 years of planting explosives, IEDs, remote detonated bombs, they have gotten pretty sophisticated. The guy could've been far away and used a cellphone to detonate explosives. His job was hack--unflammable fertilizer, propane tanks, ect.

 

[Boom_70]

It is notable that after failing at the American Dream, this yoyo failed equally at the Anti-American Dream. Ideology aside, failure does seem to be the overriding theme of his life.

Yep. Once again we got lucky. The bomber stopped himself by building a ****ty bomb.

If this guy really was trained by Al-Qaida, there is no doubt in my mind we are talking about a very different outcome. After 10 years of planting explosives, IEDs, remote detonated bombs, they have gotten pretty sophisticated. The guy could've been far away and used a cellphone to detonate explosives. His job was hack--unflammable fertilizer, propane tanks, ect.

I think Al Queda realized the guy was a putz and wanted to get him out of their camp before he accidentally blew it up.

 

[Smash Williams]

Humm... Let's see. Marriage troubles, lotsa debt, a spotty job history. This is the classic pattern of the quiet (i.e. tightly wound and deeply troubled) neighbor blowing up as he crashes into middle age.

We've all covered stories like this. 15 years ago, he would've been out on the lawn, screaming insanely, waving a loaded gun at the cops. Or done the whole murder-suicide routine with the estranged wife.

These days, it's the car bomb in Times Square. Well done, sir. Now that you're ratting out anyone who've you ever met in Pakistan to the FBI, there's a place waiting for you in witness protection.

McVeigh was a nut. A total psychotic nut. The militia was the means to act out his nuttiness.

Same with the Ft. Hood shooter. He was a freakin' nut. He used radical Islam as a means to act out.

My guess, based on what I've read, is this guy is the same way.

In fact, you could make an argument that all of these radical muslim terrorists are just absolutely, freaking crazy. (That's the point South Park made with the Looney Tunes as Bin Laden episode.)

Abortion clinic bomber? ****ing nuts. Columbine? No not video games, bullying or whatever, just nuts. (And yes, I'm kind of going into a Chris Rock routine.)

I guess my -- strained, tired -- point is that if it wasn't form Islam, the Militia, school or something else, these psychopaths would have acted out somewhere else.

Just my thoughts.

Throw the unibomber in there or Bruce Ivins, the guy they suspected of sending the anthrax letters.

Sometimes, psychopaths are just ****ing crazy people.

 

[Boom_70]

*and what must he have been thinking as he walked the 10 or so blocks from Times Square to Grand Central after parking the SUV? He wasn't the brightest terrorist, clearly, as he left the keys for his get-away car inside the SUV that was meant to blow. So he had to walk, then catch the Metro North train back to Connecticut, just like thousands of other commuters. He must have known the bomb didn't go off. Did he smile and nod at other passengers? Read a newspaper? Was he relieved? He almost seemed so when he was grabbed by the feds on the plane. And he appears to have given everything up so quickly -- it took him about two seconds to tell the feds where he had parked another car, and that a gun and ammo were inside -- it's as if he's playing a part in a play.

I am sort of fascinated by this.

I mean, the guy choked. He totally panicked.

First he built a ****ty bomb. Then he forgets his keys. Then he sticks around.

Why didn't he have a ticket out of the country? He could have been on a flight that night to Pakistan.

I'd guess it was supposed to be a suicide job, but then he wouldn't have had a getaway car that he forgot the keys to.

As crazy as he was he must have known that the subway to JFK is a nightmare.

 

[YankeeFan]

Unemployed, lost a couple of jobs in the last few years? Check.

House foreclosed? Check.

Wife living in Pakistan since 2009, far, far away? Check.

All these point to the classic "loser ready to blow up" paradigm. Ok, maybe he took a little longer to simmer than usual but his nuttiness was in the driver's seat. Islam was just the vehicle that took him where he wanted to go.

You get an "A" for effort.

Keep trying to fit that square peg into the round hole.

You both agree that radical Islam played a role in this. Why are you being argumentative about it?

I don't think we're as close to agreement as you do.

britwrit thinks that radical Islam inspired how he reacted once he had reached a breaking point.

I think that radical Islam inspired him to act in the way that he did.

That's a pretty big difference.

 

[SoCalString]

Semantics.

 

[YankeeFan]

McVeigh was a nut. A total psychotic nut. The militia was the means to act out his nuttiness.

Same with the Ft. Hood shooter. He was a freakin' nut. He used radical Islam as a means to act out.

My guess, based on what I've read, is this guy is the same way.

In fact, you could make an argument that all of these radical muslim terrorists are just absolutely, freaking crazy. (That's the point South Park made with the Looney Tunes as Bin Laden episode.)

Abortion clinic bomber? ****ing nuts. Columbine? No not video games, bullying or whatever, just nuts. (And yes, I'm kind of going into a Chris Rock routine.)

I guess my -- strained, tired -- point is that if it wasn't form Islam, the Militia, school or something else, these psychopaths would have acted out somewhere else.

Just my thoughts.

You could say the same about the culture of the radical militia, too. And you'd be right on both points.

Throw the unibomber in there or Bruce Ivins, the guy they suspected of sending the anthrax letters.

Sometimes, psychopaths are just ****ing crazy people.

You guys are trying hard, but you are not being honest with yourselves.

There are a lot more problems resulting from people inspired by radical Islam than there are people who are inspired by "being crazy", or financial problems, or right wing militia activities.

 

[YankeeFan]

Semantics.

Not at all.

I don't think his "financial problems" had anything to do with this.

The guy comes from a prominent family. They're wealth enough that he arrived with $80,000 in his pocket when he came here in 1999 -- enough to put him on the lowest level watch list.

He couldn't have even lost that much money on the house he foreclosed on. He had a small down payment and stopped paying it off pretty quickly. It's not like he had built up a lot of equity.

I think it's more likely that he decided to walk away from it. Maybe because it had dropped in value and he decided it wasn't worth it.

Maybe because he had already decided to move back to Pakistan.

Maybe because he had already decided to join the Jihad.

 

[YankeeFan]

Chris Matthews is asking, "What lead him to become radicalized"?

I'm sorry, money problems or issues related to how your mommy treated you as a child don't lead you to become a homicidal murderer.

It's like the old story of the priest who works with prison convicts. All of them explain that they, "fell in with the 'wrong crowd'".

He met plenty of folks who fell in with the wrong crowd, but he never met anyone who was part of the wrong crowd.

Some of these guys are just part of the wrong crowd.

 

[Azrael]

I'm sorry, money problems or issues related to how your mommy treated you as a child don't lead you to become a homicidal murderer.

Klebold and Harris?