Friday 27 January 2012

The wilfully blind

The Washington Post is supremely puzzled by the following:
Yonathan Melaku was sneaking through Fort Myer and Arlington National Cemetery, his backpack filled with plastic bags of ammonium nitrate, a notebook containing jihadist messages, and a can of black spray paint. The 23-year-old former Marine was heading to the graves of the nation’s most recent heroes, aiming to desecrate the stones with Arabic statements and leave handfuls of explosive material nearby as a message.

Before police foiled the plan in June, the vandalism was to be Melaku’s sixth attack, months after he went on a mysterious shooting spree that targeted the Pentagon, the National Museum of the Marine Corps and two other military buildings in Northern Virginia. A video found after Melaku’s arrest showed him wearing a black mask and shooting a 9mm handgun out of his Acura’s passenger window as he drove along Interstate 95, shouting “Allahu Akbar!”
The headline for this story?
Motive of shooter who targeted military sites is unclear
That's right up there with "Germans invade Poland; motives unclear".

5 comments:

Cthel said...

I'm all in favour of not jumping to conclusions, but Occam's Razor seems to limit the options in this case to:
a) Religiously-motivated fundamentalism
b) Insanity
c) Anti-Islam false-flag operation

b) raises uncomfortable questions about how he got into the marines, and c) is rather less likely due to being more complicated (Occam's Razor)

Unless they have some evidence they haven't released to the media, I can't see why they couldn't run a "gunman APPEARS motivated by religious extremism" headline (barring the obvious reason, naturally)

Sergej said...

I don't understand either. Is there some pattern I'm missing?

eon said...

I'm sure they'll determine in the end that he just suffers from a serious Twinkie dependency.

Nothing to see here, move along, move along...

cheers

eon

Neil A Russell said...

Reminiscent of the Ft Hood shooting, then the official word from Washington was that the incident was merely a case of workplace violence and we may never know what caused Major Hasad to "snap".

Unless of course this time they can demonstrate that Melaku was a "middle aged Tea Partier that is mad about Obamacare".

Someone should find out if Sarah Palin mentioned anything recently...about anything, it can be turned into something evil.

Trimegistus said...

There's a difference between wilful blindness and deliberate dishonesty. This is the latter. The Post is actively lying to its readers.