They are coming out of the woodwork:
The gunman who shot two Pentagon police officers was heavily armed and spent weeks driving to the Capital area from the West Coast, authorities said Friday.
Resentment of the U.S. government and suspicions over the 9/11 attacks have surfaced in writings by the Californian identified as the man fatally wounded in a hail of return fire.
John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was identified as the shooter and authorities said he’d had previous run-ins with the law.
If only more people were carrying guns in Starbucks this could have been avoided. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the truthers started getting in on the shootings.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Read where he was a Bush hater and a libertarian. So I guess we split the outrage baby with the wingnuts.
Jon H
It’s like clockwork whenever a Democrat is President.
Zifnab
Apparently somebody told him that the Pentagon security officers were stealing his precious freedoms and/or bodily fluids?
Can we get some sort of “Countdown to Ruby Ridge / Waco / Olympic Park Bomber” thing going? At this point, it’s really just a matter of time before the crazy hits critical mass.
MattF
I’m trying (and failing) to figure out how anyone thought that a lone gunman opening fire at the main entrance to the Pentagon would be anything but very fatal to the lone gunman.
Joshua Norton
There’s obviously more to come. The SCOTUS wingnuts have decided the country is better off as an armed camp.
Lots of guns. Lots of whack jobs. Do the math.
Why oh why
If white Christian men kill more people in the US for political reasons than Al Qaeda, does this mean we won the ‘War on Terror’?
Andy
Unfortunately, the initial info on this guy — whatever other craziness/criminality will come out later — is that he was a 9/11 Truther. Fox News is cuing up the Van Jones video as we speak. . . .
calling all toasters
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Well, they all claim that since January 2009, don’t they? “Oh, Bush spent too much! He wasn’t a real conservative!” A wingnut’s a wingnut, and this guy is another one.
mr. whipple
Love the understatement- issues.
No, dood was a full-blown 911 nutter.
calling all toasters
@MattF:
Here’s hoping they all get into their private planes and go after the Nimitz.
JGabriel
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Yeah … I’m betting he was the kind of Bush-hater who voted for Bush twice, but now thinks Bush must be a liberal because the economy crashed — something that could never happen under a true libertarian / conservative.
Remember, libertarianism, like conservatism, can never fail, it can only be failed.
.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@calling all toasters: Kind of sounded like a Paulite to me, if anything. Or, just a nondescript nutjob.
beltane
The only bright spot to any of this is that the audience for hate radio and TV is made up of older, sedentary, large-breasted men whose bloodstreams are coursing with estrogen due to years of eating processed, high-fat foods. They can do damage when aroused, but doing so is no easy feat.
Angry teenagers with muscles would be a very scary thing.
Redshirt
Glad this was not terrorism. No need for me to start peeing my pants. Yet! The day is young!
J.W. Hamner
I agree… we need somebody want to take odds on how quickly wingnuts rediscover a fondness for civil liberties when the FBI inevitably comes down like the fist of an angry god on some crazy birther militia group.
John S.
Left-wing extremists chain themselves to trees, vandalize property and sneak into labs to release monkeys. Right-wing extremists go paramilitary – blowing up buildings and shooting people.*
*Troll repellent: As pertains to expressions of extremism that are driven by political ideology.
Neddie Jingo
Wow. The Metro this morning displayed a warning: “Pentagon City station closed due to FBI investigation.”
Guess this is what they were investigating…
priscianus jr
The great thing about this is that it finally proves what all responsible commentators have been trying to get across for years — that only homicidal maniacs doubt the official account of 9/11. Case closed.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Redshirt: I will feel much safer when my mail order 50 cal machine gun arrives UPS.
L Boom
@MattF: I believe the expression is “suicide by cop.” I think the crazies like this are so used to feeding their own sense of persecution/victimization they’re just hoping they can take out a few people then die as a martyr to … something or other. Government tyranny? The refusal of armed government agents to stand there and get shot at without retaliating because the taxpayers are paying their salaries?
Sadly, I think it’s working. It’s a pretty straight thread from the guy who crashed the plane into the IRS building to this guy, and some kind of feedback loop seems inevitable as more people want to get in on the action and one-up each other.
Ash Can
There will always be lunatics. In this country, they have access to guns (and planes) and to propaganda/conspiracy/hate media 24/7. And their numbers increase commensurate with population, and this is a big country. Shit’s gonna happen.
geg6
Glad to see the Truthers/Paulites getting into the act.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
This is new to me.
PeakVT
and spent weeks driving to the Capital area from the West Coast
Was he driving a Model T or something?
Brick Oven Bill
Imagine that. A person harboring resentment against the military. MSNBC discloses that he was ‘well educated’. Did he go to Harvard?
SpotWeld
@PeakVT: Depending on his personal level of paranoida he could have been avoiding major highways and expressways to avoid toll cameras and fast pass systems
SpotWeld
To paraphrase Douglas Adams:
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what B.O.B. is for and why he is here, he will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
Jon H
@Zifnab: “Can we get some sort of “Countdown to Ruby Ridge / Waco / Olympic Park Bomber” thing going?”
I think you mean “Countdown to OKC”.
Then again, we’ve already had an attempted mini-9/11, so such a countdown is probably pointless by now.
Redshirt
It will be a great moment in American history when there is a big case of right-wing domestic terrorism and we finally see the masks come off, and the wingnuts out and out defend it. Since a democrat is in office, Patriots are by defaults treasonists.
calling all toasters
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Yes, well Paulites are right wingers. Remember who won the straw poll at CPAC?
calling all toasters
@Brick Oven Bill: You’re trying to make him sound like W, right?
eric
This is evidence that the term “populism” is, by itself, empty. Guys like this can be aroused into killing rages with seemingly populist rhetoric about the “Government” top-down running the country by fiat in opposition to the will of the populace. Yet, what grows out of organic populist movement depends on the seed and the soil. There are hippie populist who will hear the same rhetoric about Wall Stree and K Street and seek to organise and to lobby for laws that protect the populace from their “betters.” Individualists hear that rhetoric and seek, not simply to petition the government, but to attack their government as traitorous to the nation. Thus, when we all speak of “Wall Street” as evil, we have to remember that for many, that translates to “jewish bankers,” or the like. This is not to say that we are to blame, no. We just have to remember that the same objective event will give rise to competing impulses and that some of the impulses will always be violent.
The real bad guys here are the right wing manipulators that want the anger to resonate loud and strong without a care for whether things turn violent. They do not pull the trigger, but they seduce these nuts with songs of dire straits and the coming political calaclysm of soshulism.
eric
eric
Andy
@eric:
Yes, that. The Becks and Levins and Limbaughs and their enraged, tea-bagging followers are like the people who gather on the street when they see some poor, disturbed soul up on a ledge. They chant, “Jump! Jump! Jump!” And when he eventually does, they walk away, “horrified” at the sight they witnessed, and reassure themselves that they bear no moral responsibility in the tragedy whatsoever. “Who, me? Nah — that guy was nuts!”
Erik Vanderhoff
I guess we can add “well-dressed and well-armed nutcase” to the list of Things that come from Hollister. A list that really only includes hippies and agricultural workers.
MSNBC discloses that he was ‘well educated’. Did he go to Harvard?
Compared to most people in this country, my Labrador retrievers are “well-educated.”
Erik Vanderhoff
MSNBC discloses that he was ‘well educated’. Did he go to Harvard?
Compared to most people in this country, my Labrador retrievers are “well-educated.”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Brick Oven Bill: And so are the teabagger leaders and the al Qaeda leadership.
Remember November
If they carry guns in Starbucks, then I want to carry samurai swords in Dunkin Donuts.
Remember November
@Jon H: yeah funny about that- actual police agencies catching the guy and getting confessions out of him sans waterboarding….as a person working not far from Ground Zero I have new respect for NYPD.
feebog
This caught my eye from the HuffPo Story:
So much for profiling them middle-eastern looking fellas with the checkered headcovers.
Eric U.
Just like to point out that Ruby Ridge and Waco were products of the Bush I era. Ruby Ridge was over by the time Clinton was in office, and Waco started a month after Clinton took office.
someguy
Well, the Paulites hate Bush too. Pretty clearly this is another case of right wing extremism, despite the best efforts of the Village to pawn it off on the mentally ill, libertards, and troofers.
mds
These sorts of things wouldn’t happen if Pentagon police officers were allowed to carry guns.
Pangloss
Why can’t they just turn their anger on the American Idol judges?
Citizen_X
Let’s do an accounting of recent “terrorist” cases. (With the possible exception of the antiabortionist, these are all lone attackers, so we might be stretching the term.)
The Vietnamese guy who shot up the immigrant center in upstate NY didn’t seem to have any particular political alignment; we’ll leave him out.
(Very loosely defined) left-wing examples:
The guy who shot up a recruiting office (In Missouri?)
The Army officer who shot up Fort Hood
Clear, self-proclaimed, right-wing examples:
Dr. Tiller’s murderer
The Holocaust Museum shooter
The Pittsburgh idiot who killed 3 cops
The Knoxville killer of Unitarians
(Did I leave any out?)
Now, the Pentagon guy, and the IRS bomber, may have belonged politically in a gray, paranoid, Alex-Jones-ruled area that stretches out from Libertarianism to include a few Anarchists. So, arguably, that gives us two cases that don’t fit all that comfortably in with the right.
Still: considered as white guys paranoid about the evil gubmint, they fit very solidly in with the right-wing group. And that’s six angry white killers that popped up in the Age of Beck; only one of them–the Knoxville case–attacked before Obama was in office. Explain that to me, BoB.
gnomedad
@JGabriel:
Well said.
Cerberus
@Zifnab:
I’m pretty sure that ship has already sailed. We’ve already had open planned assassinations (Dr. Tiller), holed-up shoot-outs with the Police ala Ruby Ridge (the guy who thought Obama was going to take his guns away who shot up a bunch of cops), and an OKC style old-fashioned terrorism attempt (IRS 9/11 re-enacter).
I’m not sure what “real” incident we’re waiting for. I mean, yeah, it’ll continue to be bad and I’m just hoping we can stave off the inevitable assassination attempt of the president himself, but the right-wing terrorism machine has been going full tilt since day one, we’ve just grown so used to it in this country that it barely registers anymore. Oh yawn, more dead doctors, shoot-outs, and right-wing bombers.
GregB
Is it time for someone to put up a bill demanding the right to carry guns openly and concealed at the Supreme Court?
Scalia, Roberts and the Wild West crew should put their money where there mouths are.
Bob L
White male gunman = obvious NOT a terrorists rule still applies I assume.
So the guy is a Bush hater. Hmm So, in the ultimate expression of his rage over Bush admin policies he goes kamikaze on the government after Bush is out of office? This makes no sense. Maybe I am just not white and male enough to understand.
Punchy
Clearly a situation where a 50-cal sprayed indescriminately into the crowd would have almost certainly took down–at the very least–the shooter. Mission accomplished.
celticdragonchick
This kind of thinking leads to the same place as it does for people who think that abortion providers are actually committing genocide.
Your act of murder and terror is preventing murder and terror…see?
I am dreadfully afraid that the next major terror attack in this country will be from this kind of Glen Beck/Alex Jones insanity.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Citizen_X: I agree
gbear
Sorry to dump this and run. There’s a link to it on Washington Monthly in one of their ’roundups’.
edit: everything below is from the news article (formatting fail):
The House adopted a resolution labeling the Feb. 18 suicide plane attack in Austin, Texas, terrorism.
The resolution condemns the attack on a building that housed offices of the Internal Revenue Service, and it honors the IRS employee killed and other workers injured, as well as rescue workers.
The wording of the resolution is notable in light of the debate about why the Obama administration didn’t call the event a terrorist attack, in part because of the lack of connection to international terror groups such as al Qaeda.
The resolution passed H. Res. 1127 on a 408–2 vote, with “no” votes from GOP Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Don Young of Alaska. The offices of Paul and Young didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.
Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, whose Texas district includes Austin, introduced the resolution, along with 27 other lawmakers.
Evinfuilt
@Jon H:
Well technically we need a Ruby Ridge of Waco style event, that then triggers the OKC bombing event. The IRS Suicide Bomber skipped phase 1.
So yes, we need to watch out for the fallout on the first crackdown on an Arizona Minuteman group. Once the police try and confiscate illegally purchased arms from a militia, someone will then attack a Government building with high explosives or a larger plane.
Darkmoth
@calling all toasters:
This.
I could care less who the guy “hates”. Tell me who he voted for.
JGabriel
Citizen_X:
These aren’t in any way even remotely left-wing perpetrators. They are religious fundamentalists, and whether the badge they wear is Christian or Muslim, a religious fundamentalist is still right wing.
.
The Moar You Know
@Citizen_X:
Left wing? The guy who shot up Fort Hood?
You must be fucking kidding me. What the fuck is LEFT WING about a religious fundamentalist shooting a bunch of people?
Jesus Tapdancing Christ, Muslims aren’t fucking liberals. Just because we don’t want them waterboarded doesn’t mean they’re on our side. Fuck!
Talk about buying and selling right-wing framing.
This is the most disheartening post I’ve ever read here, not because of your stunning ignorance, but because the entire commentariat didn’t jump down your throat and tell you you’re an ignorant bastard.
THIS IS WHY WE FAIL.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Turns out he had grievances against the government and so went out shooting at a large symbol of American power. I forget, what do we call that when somebody with a funny name does it?
Origuy
The Mercury News is reporting that he had been an engineering student at San Jose State.
JenJen
FYI: Malkin’s pretty excited about discovering the guy was a registered Democrat (assuming no mistaken identity). Here we go…
Ogami Itto
@John S.:
You forgot to mention the giant paper mache puppets. Left-wing
protestersextremists love those damned things. :-)liberty60
Yes, if only those cops had been armed, this sort of crime would never have occured.
liberty60
Yes, if only those cops had been armed, this sort of crime would never have occured.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@The Moar You Know: I didn’t read that part of his comment, but agreed with the last two paragraphs. Lazy on my part. You and Gabriel are right about any left wingedness with the FT Hood shooter.
blogreeder
Now John, this is a perfect example of why it might be a good idea for everyone to have a gun. Even in Starbucks. It’s perfect. How many people did this guy kill? Not many, right? And why? Because the people he was shooting at had guns! A hail of bullets stopped him pretty quickly. The people he shot at didn’t cower under desks waiting for the cops while this guy is picking them off one by one. Maybe I’m wrong. Tell me how this would have been better if his victims didn’t have guns? That’s the argument for guns. Not the shooter but the victims. Don’t they have a right too?