OT: Bombing Suspect Story Unfolding ...

[DobbsRover2]

May be just me, but the most disturbing thing I heard about the investigation today was a significant number of the 19 year old's friends recognized him from yesterday afternoon's release of info, yet not one was willing to call authorities. Had they done so an MIT policeman would potentially still be alive and the perpetrators may well have been captured or neutralized. This may be an aspect of the decline in civic responsibility that some have been debating for the last few years.

Would be a good question to pose to the friends to see why they did not come forward. But I would not leap to a conclusion that a murder could have necessarily been prevented. These guys were on the loose ready to kill and who knows what direction they would have gone. The following deaths were very tragic, but these guys could have also gone war zone with their explosives and killed even more people in a lot of other situations. Who knows what would have happened. We can't say.

 

[vtcwbuff]

Major respect to the law enforcement officers for their "tactical restraint." Apparently all the gunfire was from the murderer and the police did not return fire hoping to capture him alive.

 

[DobbsRover2]

As all the speakers at the PR conference have said, the truth will come out over the next few days.

Next year's Boston Marathon will be special, and I hope that the organizers will invite running clubs from around the country to join in a run for freedom and peace support action.

 

[MilfordHusky]

Thanks for the prayers. The conclusion was as good as anyone could have hoped--amazingly!

 

[DaddyChoc]

he wasn't tough enough to kill himself

 

[Icebear]

he wasn't tough enough to kill himself

Not sure that killing himself is being tough. We will learn much more this way and gain potentially important understandings of the dynamics and elements at work helping to keep the country and others safer.

 

[vtcwbuff]

he wasn't tough enough to kill himself

I gotta' disagree DC. Cowards usually take that way out. My understanding, and there has been so much misinformation, was that his tank was pretty much empty.

 

[DaddyChoc]

he was too weak (from injuries and/or hunger) to kill himself?

 

[VAMike23]

he was too weak (from injuries and/or hunger) to kill himself?

maybe out of bullets.......

 

[alexrgct]

Very good news that he was captured alive. It's important to understand who he knows and is connected to, if anybody. No one really knows what the motivation for this was or whether anyone was behind it other than the two brothers themselves. This is critical information. If the second brother had died too, this might have been more challenging to determine.

Sometimes the chaos of the universe imposes itself in the order we try to create in our own lives. Events such as those of this week remind me to embrace the moment and fill it with great things.

 

[vtcwbuff]

Very good news that he was captured alive. It's important to understand who he knows and is connected to, if anybody. No one really knows what the motivation for this was or whether anyone was behind it other than the two brothers themselves. This is critical information. If the second brother had died too, this might have been more challenging to determine.

Sometimes the chaos of the universe imposes itself in the order we try to create in our own lives. Events such as those of this week remind me to embrace the moment and fill it with great things.

I don't think there will be any question about motive. Look no further than radical islam.

From a Fox news report - "A tweet Tsarnaev marked as a favorite was apparently sent just hours before the attack, at 1:07 a.m. on Monday, from someone going by & quotSteezy_Be_Eazy.&quot &quotThe ultimate sacrifice is within you, The battle within is defined by the word jihad.&quot"

 

[pinotbear]

I don't think there will be any question about motive. Look no further than radical islam.

In the end, you may well be right, but..I hope officials look at lot further. Basically, I hope that they don't "assume" motive - and, I don't think they will. That would be short-sighted and unproffessional. Dig deep, dig wide, and then your conclusions will be stronger.

 

[Icebear]

I don't think there will be any question about motive. Look no further than radical islam.

I think it is far more complex than that with the two brothers involved. I suspect the dynamics for each are unique. However, there is little doubt that radicalized Islam is part of the story, especially, for Tamerlan, the older brother who had done the traveling. I suspect radicalized Islam will be the rationalized justification but not why or how this all happened.

 

[UConnChapette]

Can you ever really know what is in the heart of someone? The younger brother, by all accounts, presented himself as a normal teenager. Going to college. Social. Smart. Athletically gifted. Never an indication he had any violent tendencies. His friends and roommates state they are shocked by his involvement because it doesn't mesh with how they knew him.

History is filled with these psychopaths and sociopaths: John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy come immediately to mind. To the outside world, they appeared normal, productive members of society. But there was darkness in their hearts that was well hidden from those who "knew" them best.

My heart breaks for the victims of the violent actions of these individuals. But as is so often the case for me my heart also breaks for the innocent family members of the perpetrators. The older brother had a wife and three year old daughter. Statements from her family say they never really knew him and are horrified by what he has done. While it is too early to know if the wife had any inclination that her husband had radical Islamic believes or if he kept those well hidden (assuming this is in fact what the motive is), the poor daughter will grow up knowing her father carried out an act of terror. That will follow her through her entire life. They are also grieving the loss of a loved one, but they have the additional burden of the horror and guilt of his actions. I'm not sure how you come to terms with something like that.

 

[Gurleyman]

They feel to me closer to the Klebold-Harris mindset than the Al Qaeda mindset. Social frustration driving them to a dark place, and then perhaps finding some radical Islam quotes to fuel it. The older brother lamented that he had no American friends and didn't understand them, and the younger brother tweeted that after a decade in America, he just wanted to leave. Im sure Mohammed Atta didn't care if he made friends, and didn't feel helpless.

Perhaps more details will come out, or younger dirtbag will bare his soul, and my take will prove to be wrong.

 

[vtcwbuff]

From a Steve Emerson commentary on Fox News - "Both brothers had YouTube channels in the United States and in Russia. Emerson's group reviewed about half of the 22 videos posted on the U.S. channel. The videos were viewed by a small number of people. One video received 5,000 views, another just 1,000 views.
Based on the content of the videos, which feature Bin Laden, calls to kill Americans, Jews, Christians and exhortations to establish a world-wide caliphate, it is clear that these message are not directed just at Chechens. "They are directed primarily against all non-Muslims and are very similar to the Al Qaeda videos we've seen in years past."
The two brothers clearly want "to express a message that they totally sympathize with the jihadist cause. These were jihadists, they were not just Chechen separatists."

I'm sure the ongoing investigation will provide many of the answers. However, in this case it may end up being as simple as it seems.

Unless of course they were framed by the feds, the police, the media, the witnesses . . .

 

[Vowelguy]

Pardon me if I'm not going to take a Fox commentator as Gospel truth, particularly one with references to Glenn Becks loony caliphate theories.

 

[vtcwbuff]

Vowleguy - I'm not an Emerson fan but here he seems to be reporting fact about content on YouTube.

From a Wikipedia entry, not a Glen Beck loonieism

Al-Qaeda has as one of its clearly stated goals the re-establishment of a caliphate.[48] The late al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, called for Muslims to "establish the righteous caliphate of our umma."[49] Al-Qaeda chiefs released a statement in 2005, under which, in what they call "Phase five" there will be "an Islamic state, or caliphate".[50] Al Qaeda has named its Internet newscast from Iraq "The Voice of the Caliphate."[51] According to author Lawrence Wright, an Egyptian native, Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Laden's mentor and al-Qaeda second-in-command until 2011), once "sought to restore the caliphate...which had formally ended in 1924 following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but which had not exercised real power since the thirteenth century." Once the caliphate is re-established, Zawahiri believes, Egypt would become a rallying point for the rest of the Islamic world, leading the jihad against the West. "Then history would make a new turn, God willing," Zawahiri later wrote, "in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government."[52]

The Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaah Islamiah and Hizb-ut-Tahrir (I had to look that one up) have all stated similar goals. What do you think that all the Islamic upheavel in the middle east is about? An Arab Prague spring?