http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/20/us/orlando-nightclub-shooting/index.html
Why release a partial transcript? Why not name who Mateen pledges allegiance to?
Why release a partial transcript? Why not name who Mateen pledges allegiance to?
Authorities also defended the decision, saying it was meant to avoid lending credence to terrorist leaders.
"We're not going to propagate their rhetoric, their violent rhetoric," FBI Special Agent Ron Hopper said.
rickyp wrote:bbauska its increasingly apparent that the Orlando shooter was much less an ISIS inspired terrorist and had much more in common with the dozens of mass shooters who weren't professing allegiance to anyone.
If he hadn't made any phone calls, there's no other evidence that he was in any way radicalized... But there's plenty of evidence that he meets the profile of the typical mass shooter. Its theorized that he amde the calls to make his actions more important.
Then, during the summer of 2014, something traumatic happened for our community. A boy from our local mosque, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, was 22 when he became the first American-born suicide bomber, driving a truck full of explosives into a government office in Syria. He’d traveled there and joined a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, the previous year. We had all known Moner; he was jovial and easygoing, the opposite of Omar. According to a posthumous video released that summer, he had clearly self-radicalized – and had also done so by listening to the lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki, the charismatic Yemen-based imam who helped radicalize several Muslims, including the Fort Hood shooter. Everyone in the area was shocked and upset. We hate violence and were horrified that one of our number could have killed so many. (After an earlier training mission to Syria, he’d tried to recruit a few Florida friends to the cause. They told the FBI about him.)
Immediately after Moner’s attack, news reports said that American officials didn’t know anything about him; I read that they were looking for people to give them some background. So I called the FBI and offered to tell investigators a bit about the young man. It wasn’t much – we hadn’t been close – but I’m an American Muslim, and I wanted to do my part. I didn’t want another act like that to happen. I didn’t want more innocent people to die. Agents asked me if there were any other local kids who might resort to violence in the name of Islam. No names sprang to mind.
After my talk with the FBI, I spoke to people in the Islamic community, including Omar, about Moner’s attack. I wondered how he could have radicalized. Both Omar and I attended the same mosque as Moner, and the imam never taught hate or radicalism. That’s when Omar told me he had been watching videos of Awlaki, too, which immediately raised red flags for me. He told me the videos were very powerful.
After speaking with Omar, I contacted the FBI again to let them know that Omar had been watching Awlaki’s tapes. He hadn’t committed any acts of violence and wasn’t planning any, as far as I knew. And I thought he probably wouldn’t, because he didn’t fit the profile: He already had a second wife and a son. But it was something agents should keep their eyes on. I never heard from them about Omar again, but apparently they did their job: They looked into him and, finding nothing to go on, they closed the file.
I subscribe to the theory that you treat criminals like criminals . Publicizing his "political claims" is a mistake. Especially when they seem to be almost after the thought.
.Mateen went out of his way to pledge allegiance to Al-Baghdadi and ISIS
Only one thing seems clear, experts say: that the FBI’s first assessment of Mateen as a self-radicalized jihadist likely reflected only part of his motivation.
“This is a hard one to disentangle, but there are three strands,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The dominant strand is that he hates gays. Then, there is his personal rage. He doesn’t like his life at all.
“The third strand is Islamist ideology, which is the weakest of the three,” said Potok, whose Alabama-based organization tracks extremists. “It’s almost like an afterthought.”
The FBI initially touted the theory that U.S.-born Mateen was motivated by his support of the notorious Islamic State, which as part of its radical ideology has expressed a visceral hatred for gays. But the portrait has turned far more complicated in the course of a week, with experts now saying Mateen appeared to be driven by a dangerous mix of bigotry, self-loathing and, perhaps, mental illness.
rickyp wrote:fate.Mateen went out of his way to pledge allegiance to Al-Baghdadi and ISIS
Other than in the phone calls he made from the scene..... where?
I note that his friend reported his viewing of the ISIS video, but also note that he didn't seem motivated by the video.... (I also note that its a case of the Muslim community "policing" its own community which many on the right say doesn't happen. And that the FBI couldn't have stopped him from arming even with that information.)
Here...Only one thing seems clear, experts say: that the FBI’s first assessment of Mateen as a self-radicalized jihadist likely reflected only part of his motivation.
“This is a hard one to disentangle, but there are three strands,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The dominant strand is that he hates gays. Then, there is his personal rage. He doesn’t like his life at all.
“The third strand is Islamist ideology, which is the weakest of the three,” said Potok, whose Alabama-based organization tracks extremists. “It’s almost like an afterthought.”
The FBI initially touted the theory that U.S.-born Mateen was motivated by his support of the notorious Islamic State, which as part of its radical ideology has expressed a visceral hatred for gays. But the portrait has turned far more complicated in the course of a week, with experts now saying Mateen appeared to be driven by a dangerous mix of bigotry, self-loathing and, perhaps, mental illness.
His motivations and profile have more in common with the usual suspects in mass shootings than the couple in San Bernadino.
Here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/us/ma ... .html?_r=0
Its really convenient and easy to lay this on the simple evidence that he offered up in his phone calls. Phillip Mudd suggests that the phone calls were a way to make his actions and his person more important. WIthout the phone calls, there would be nothing much different than the community college shooter in Oregon. Every other Islamic inspired domestic terrorist left far more behind to demonstrate their radicalization.
freeman3 wrote:The most polite thing I can say is this is really silly analysis, Ricky. First, you cannot separate his hating gays from his being Muslim. It seems somewhat clear that he was torn between gay inclinations and his religiion. And remember he went to Saudi Arabia twice to do Umrah in 2011-2012, so his religion was pretty important to him. Self-loathing would appear to be tied to a conflict between his religion and his being gay (or bisexual). I am not sure what the basis for linking this to mental illness but that appears to be speculative.
What's most dangerous about "lone wolves" is that they hear the clarion call from radical Muslims propaganda and decide to strike (therefore, without prior contacts with radical groups they are hard to catch).The idea is that he has much in common with other mass shooters is absurd. He is more similar to the Colorado shooter who shot up the Planned Parenthood, except far more lethal.
All that matters is that he is Muslim and but for radical Islamic groups urging attacks against the West he would not have acted. And he said he declared allegiance to ISIS..so now we're supposed to say no, no that's not important, it's just a hate crime against gays...come on.
Here's the reality. There is a non-insubstantial group of radical Islamic Muslims who subscribe to conflict with the West. They are less of a fringe group than Christians who commit terrorists acts though there are some Christian terrorists. More importantly, Christian terrorists have not carried any large-scale attacks (and there have been so few Christian terrorists in the West--Christians in Africa have carried out more attacks but they are not a threat to us) so equating them with Muslim terrorists is ridiculous. A significant minority of Muslims supports these radical groups.http://www.nationalreview.com
Radical Islam is a disease within the religion that Muslims need to stamp out before it does incalculable damage. We do not help matters by trying to rewrite the Muslim religion out of these attacks. President Obama is wrong in not using the term radical Islam. We are not at war with Islam; we are at war with radical groups that subscribe to an interpretation of Islam that justifies war with the West because they are at war with us. But those radical groups could not survive without the support of other ordinary Muslims. That has to change.
(It is getting a bit tiresome with regard to DF's diatribes against liberals on this subject--could you at least qualify it? Maybe I do the same with regard to conservatives on some issues and I should probably qualify that too, but it's a bit jarring to see that liberals allegedly think such and such about an issue when I don't.)
All that matters is that he is Muslim and but for radical Islamic groups urging attacks against the West he would not have acted.
.And he said he declared allegiance to ISIS..so now we're supposed to say no, no that's not important, it's just a hate crime against gays...come on
.The AG actually said, ". . . our most effective response to terror and to hatred is compassion, it’s unity, and it’s love."
That's about as dumb as it gets