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My profile is radically different from all those who killed nearly 3,000 of my countrymen on September 11, 2001. My "holy book" of choice is the Bible. My race is Caucasian. I am a loyal, taxpaying, patriotic, evil-hating, English-as-first-language, natural-born American.

On 15 Oct 2004 at 21:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

As was Timmy McV, Zeus rest his soul.

Tim McVeigh did not target innocents, nor was he a suicide bomber. Nor, incidentally, was he a fundamentalist or a racist. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG i/wi0GDzGBP3KiIep9bir5YTYPAboMCPrhTWaYVr 4eGGeI7f9F42sygpTIyTsY7S6kmUE63duxZ5yn0Nf

First of all, there were 19 children killed in the OKC bombing. Were these children guilty of some crime worthy of being killed by a truck bomb? Second of all, you make it sound like McVeigh was just your average-Joe American. How could a non-fundamentalist knowingly kill 168 people? Third, does not being a suicide bomber make your cause more noble? Curious why you seem to think McVeigh was justified in his actions. -Adam On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:01:47 -0700, "James A. Donald"

Tim McVeigh did not target innocents, nor was he a suicide bomber.

Nor, incidentally, was he a fundamentalist or a racist.

--digsig James A. Donald

At 12:03 AM 10/17/2004, James A. Donald wrote:

On 16 Oct 2004 at 19:42, Adam wrote: [...]

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Second of all, you make it sound like McVeigh was just your average-Joe American. How could a non-fundamentalist knowingly kill 168 people?

Fundamentalism doesn't make people kill people. Being pissed off does. Being scared does. Believing that those people are a threat to a Higher Cause you Believe In does, whether it's religion, country, family, etc. Wanting other people's stuff does. Failing to believe that other people matter does if they happen to be in your way. Failing to believe that other people matter does if it looks like it'll help you get what you want. Being stupid might not directly make people kill people, but it can affect whether you think the other conditions apply and/or who you kill if you're going to kill people. Some of those things make you willing to die in the process of killing the people you want killed, and some don't, though there's the intermediate case of being willing to have people on Your Side get killed as long as it's not you. McVeigh was pissed off, and he believed that the Feds as a whole were a threat to America, so he decided to kill Feds who were an easy target, as opposed to, say, raiding a well-armed BATF headquarters. The kids in the next buildings were just collateral damage. Bush, on the other hand, doesn't believe other people matter, and getting US soldiers killed or Iraqi children killed or lying to the American public about them being Safer is fine, though Saddam trying to kill his Daddy really pissed him off, and war is the health of the state, which is him and his buddies.

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Third, does not being a suicide bomber make your cause more noble?

Not being a suicide bomber means there is no need to screen you from flying on planes.

You really don't want Carlos the Jackal on your flight. Non-suicidal airplane bombers might bring a bomb onto a plane and hide it under the seat so it'll blow up on the next flight, or hide it inside somebody else's luggage so it'll blow up on _their_ next flight, or whatever. And they've usually done more thinking about how to get away with it, though they're trying to solve a much harder problem than suicide bombers are. James Bamford's latest book "A Pretext for War" is mainly about the Bush Administration's willingness to use 9/11 as an excuse for the war they wanted even before they got into office, but he spends a while excoriating the CIA for being a bunch of bleeding incompetents. The CIA spent a while trying to chase and kill bin Laden, while constantly losing track of most of his organizations, but they didn't ever try infiltrating Al Qaeda, because they thought it would be too difficult to pass off their infiltrators as credible due to cultural differences. Yet Johnny Walker Lindh and Richard Shoebomber Reid didn't much trouble joining them. Bamford apparently believes that Reid was the genuine article, though Reid sure looks like the ideal guy you'd use if you wanted to scare the public by planting an unsuccessful crazy bomber wannabee. ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart@pobox.com