a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Thursday, October 31, 2002 Safire... has a good column today about hunches that nicely spells out what I've been doing on this blog with scraps of intelligence on John Allen Muhammed. I've been playing a hunch. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:54 PMMonday, October 28, 2002 Muhammed in BellinghamHe was homeless, but carried wads of cash. He flew sometimes to the Caribbean. He liked to discuss his violent anti-American fantasies, especially after September 11. It isn't much, but this piece in the Bellingham Herald (via Andrew Sullivan) paints a fishy picture of Muhammed before he traveled east for his shooting spree. Whoever may have been paying him, or using him, Muhammed fits the profile of a fall guy or Useful Idiot With a Grudge of His Own, like Timothy McVeigh. Or Muhammed Salameh. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:45 PMFriday, October 25, 2002 One more and I'll stopJim Henley links to this Cherokee tale that the sniper asked the Maryland police to quote. ("We have caught the sniper like a duck in the noose.") I'll just add that Cherokees walked the Trail of Tears in 1838 and ’39 to Tahlequah, Oklahoma. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:04 AMThursday, October 24, 2002 Loopier and LoopierI realize this blog will sound like a conspiracy riff on the D.C. sniper theme, but here we go.The suspects are John Allen Muhammed and his step-son, Lee Malvo. Found in their car was an assault rifle. Muhammed was Nation of Islam; he converted about 17 years ago, before the Gulf War. We don't know yet whether he has links to any terrorist outfit. But Jim Henley raises two excellent questions: How did Muhammed buy the cars he used? Did he have help? And why a ten-million dollar ransom? Was that just blood money, or a kind of fund-raising for some larger organization? In Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Gore Vidal notices that no one took credit for the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh confessed, but only after his trial. "The point to any terrorist act," writes Vidal, "is that credit must be claimed so that fear will spread throughout the land." He builds an argument that the Murrah Building explosion was not real terrorism: The canny Portland Free Press editor, Ace Hayes ... wrote, "If the bombing was not terrorism then what was it? It was pseudo terrorism, perpetrated by compartmentalized covert operators for the purposes of state police power." Maybe not. Terrorism without claims of responsibility is what we got from al Qaeda during the 1990s. Laurie Mylroie argues that this kind of terrorism is basically war, waged by a country (Iraq) with every reason to remain anonymous behind willing, semi-independent fronts. If McVeigh did conspire with a former Republican Guard, then McVeigh was just another front, and we have to look at the Murrah Building explosion, too, as a continuation of the Gulf War. Muhammed may have nothing to do with al Qaeda, but he and McVeigh might have crossed paths during or after their service in the Gulf. In other words: What every unclaimed terrorist attack since ’91 might have in common is, well, Saddam. Lots of people connected to the Oklahoma City bombing are still wandering the country, and that case clearly needs to re-open -- at the expense of a few heads at the FBI? -- if this patchwork of terrorism in the wake of Bush Sr.'s war is to make any sense at all. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:41 PM My first reaction... to the news that the D.C. police want to speak with a Gulf War veteran called John Allen Muhammed about the sniper shootings is that we've seen this pattern before, in the Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh was a Gulf War vet who sympathized, afterwards, with Iraq, and turned on his country, perhaps with help from Iraqi intelligence. He also hung out in a certain roadside motel. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:13 AMWednesday, October 23, 2002 Just in case... Saddam crumbles before we officially declare war on him, Debkafile suggests another target -- Osama bin Laden and his army, massing in the wild southern desert of Saudi Arabia. It's the October 19 report. Maybe not reliable, but fascinating. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:06 PMTuesday, October 22, 2002 I Thought This Was Loopy, part 2Here's another piece on the Iraq-Oklahoma City connection, via Instapundit. Nothing new or groundbreaking compared to the Wall Street Journal feature (see below), except a detail at the end about Zacarias Moussaoui and Mohammed Atta meeting at a motel in Oklahoma City in August, 2001 -- the same motel where McVeigh, supposedly, had drinks with his Iraqi conspirator. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:37 PMMonday, October 14, 2002 Radio Free Bakelite?My link to Debkafile last August about U.S. troops fighting Iraqis helped introduce the blogosphere to the notion that we were at war. I'm still finding references to it. Here's one from The Greatest Jeneration:I got the link to this from everyone's fave blogging guru Instapundit, who in turn got if from Radio Free Mike who adds this to his entry:"I happen to be a hawk on Iraq, but it bugs me that I have to learn about my own country's military maneuvers from a news service in Israel." ... I don't know if it "bugs me" to hear the war news this way, but would you really want to hear the way it would be "reported" on a "normal" TV news channel like MSNBC? I wouldn't. ... Who knew that the Internet would become the 21st Century equivalent of the old Bakelite radio in WWII? posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:20 PM Saturday, October 12, 2002 I thought this was loopy...but there seem to be mounds of evidence pointing to a link with Iraq in the Oklahoma City blast. Gore Vidal may be right: Timothy McVeigh was not alone. But what on earth would Vidal say if he turned out to be as right as the Wall Street Journal suggests? Good God. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:07 AMWednesday, October 09, 2002 More skirmishingThe New York Times reports that the gunmen who killed a U.S. Marine during urban-warfare practice in Kuwait were Qaeda-trained, and Debkafile postulates that the U.S.S. Cole-like bombing last weekend of the Limburg oil tanker (scroll to Oct. 7) -- on the second anniversary of the Cole explosion -- was also a Qaeda operation, perhaps with Iraqi help.We're basically at war, folks. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:35 PM | |
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