I haven't seen much coverage about this but yesterday a gunmen shot it out with police at the Pentagon's subway station. Apparently this person had a deep seated distrust towards the government over 9/11, the suicide of a Marine and mar1juana laws. I mentioned in the thread about the man who crashed his airplane into the IRS offices in Austin that while these are isolated incidents I don't think we can rule these out as terrorism as in the last year there have been several violent incidents driven by a distrust of the American government. While there is no evidence that there is any conection between them they definately do appear to be motivated by a similar ideology. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35716821/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts Pentagon gunman sought ‘truth’ about 9/11 Anti-government writings linked to shooter reveal long-held frustrations Internet postings linked to the suspected gunman in a Pentagon subway shooting suggest long-held frustration with the government's reach into the private life of Americans. The suspect, John Patrick Bedell, 36, died after exchanging gunfire with two police officers. He spent weeks driving to the Capital area from the West Coast, authorities said Friday. A blog connected to him via the social networking site LinkedIn outlines a growing distrust of the federal government. The blog suggests a criminal enterprise run out of the government could have staged the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It was the latest batch of conspiracy-laden Internet postings to surface since Thursday night's shooting. 'Hostile intent' Bedell died Thursday night from head wounds received in a volley of fire with police. Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, said the two injured officers and another officer who came to their assistance fired upon Bedell at the subway entrance into the Pentagon building in Arlington, Va. "He came here from California," Keevill said. "We were able to identify certain locations that he spent that last several weeks making his way from the West coast to the East coast." Keevill described Bedell as "very well educated" and well-dressed, saying Bedell was wearing a suit, armed with two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and carried "many magazines" of ammunition. There was more ammunition in Bedell's car, which authorities found in a local parking garage, Keevill said. Noting that Bedell was wearing a suit, Keevill said: "There was no indication based on the way he was dressed that he had hostile intent." "He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting" at point-blank range. He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face," Keevill said. The exchange of fire lasted less than a minute but, numerous shots were fired, Keevill said, adding that he didn't know how many because investigators were "still counting." Bedell was not wearing body armor, he added. The two officers injured have been released from the hospital. One suffered a thigh wound and the other was hit in the shoulder. Keevill said both were superficial injuries. Signs emerge Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. medical examiner's office, confirmed the man's death and said his body arrived at her office shortly after midnight. Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In an Internet posting, a user by the name JPatrickBedell wrote that he was "determined to see that justice is served" in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up. The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was "a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions." That same posting railed against the government's enforcement of mar1juana laws and included links to the author's 2006 court case in Orange County, Calif., for cultivating mar1juana and resisting a police officer. Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting. A man who identified himself as Bedell's father told KNX Newsradio in Los Angeles that his son was a grad student at San Jose State University. Driven by hate The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings. Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself. Whatever the motive of Thursday's attack, the method resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire. President Barack Obama was getting FBI updates on the Pentagon shooting through his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said. The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. After the attack, all Pentagon entrances were secured, then all were reopened except one from the subway, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. Transit officials said the station would remain closed at least part of the day Friday while the FBI continued its investigation. 'Normal guy' Ronald Domingues, 74, who lives next door to Bedell's parents in a gated golf course community in Hollister, said he doesn't know the family well. But he said Bedell sometimes lived with his parents and struck him "like a normal young man." "He just seemed like a normal guy to me," Domingues said. "I wouldn't suspect he would be involved in anything like this." Domingues described the neighborhood as middle-class. He said the Bedells live in a one story southwestern-style stucco home. The house was dark Thursday night.
I didn't want to turn this into a partisan thing but since you brought it up if this guy was such a Bush hater why didn't he carry this attack out during the Bush Presidency?
Correct, and he often has the highest rated cable news show not on FOX. I really don't care either way what his ratings are, but just clearing up some myths.
I had assumed he was a lefty sort of malcontent, but I can see the libertarian possibility too. I think it is kinda interesting to speculate, actually.
Self-righteous absolutism is delusional . I assume that was a preemptive tactic to deflect blame from the wingnuts.
what does libertarian have to do w/ it? he was a murder-attempting jackass w/ a history of mental problems and a criminal record. if some right wing fundamentalist christian murders an abortion doctor is it fair to say "uh oh, sounds like those christians are at it again"?
this guy was a jackass who wanted to murder people (thankfully he didnt kill anyone) and he had a history of mental problems - he had been in jail for cultivating pot and resisting arrest. being a 'truther' is irrelevant, but the media is really hyping up that angle - the implication seems to be that truther = terrorist or even libertarian = terrorist according to some in this thread. so now if you say that you think the government was involved w/ 9/11 you will have people accusing you of wanting to fly planes into buildings or shoot police officers.
That darn media. Leaping to conclusions and assuming that the reason an anti government guy shot up a federal government building was because he hated the federal government. They could be totally disconnected. He could be a guy that thinks the feds killed 5,000 Americans and yet this day he felt like murdering government employees for a completely different reason.
millions and millions of americans believe that elements w/in the government were responsible for 9/11, but you dont see them flying planes into buildings or trying to murder cops. how many of yall think we should start rounding up 'truthers' or libertarians? i mean, if this guy was a 'truther' or libertarian than that means that they are all potential terr'ists, right?