October 2, 2017, - 10:26 pm
Stephen Paddock: Did Vegas Shooter Do It For ISIS, Islam? Don’t Be So Quick to Dismiss
There is absolutely no evidence ruling out that Las Vegas mass murderer Stephen Paddock was working for ISIS. Despite that, and barely any investigation so far, the FBI Special Agent In Charge for Las Vegas quickly ruled out “any” connection to terrorist groups. That’s no surprise. That’s par for the course for the agency. Don’t be as quick to rule it out. And even if there is no ISIS connection, it’s hard to argue that Sunday’s attack on a country music festival wasn’t inspired by ISIS and/or Islam.
I wish I could say I “watched in amazement” as Las Vegas FBI Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse staunchly ruled out any connection between shooter Paddock and terrorist groups, just hours after the attack. But I wasn’t surprised at all. I expected it. This is what the FBI does, especially when there is or could be a connection to Islamic terrorism. The FBI has no idea. And probably never will. So far, there is no way to rule in OR out that Paddock may have joined ISIS.
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So ISIS Claims #StephenPaddock as theirs & w/out any evidence 2 debunk that FBI already denies ties to terrorism. STFU liars #gop Las Vegas
— Debbie Schlussel (@DebbieSchlussel) October 2, 2017
The FBI is famous for NOT figuring things out. They never found D. B. Cooper or figured out who he really was. And they never found Jimmy Hoffa’s body or who kidnapped and likely killed him, despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to repeatedly dig up several Michigan properties over the decades. The FBI’s most proud “accomplishment”–the discovery of the Unabomber’s identity–wasn’t even an accomplishment or discovery at all. After years, Ted Kaczynski was turned in by his own brother . . . for the reward money. The FBI would never have discovered the guy but for that fact.
There’s a reason why I call the organization, “Famous But Incompetent.” It fits to a “T.”
The FBI is a reactive organization that rarely foils terrorists ahead of time (which is why they set up random Muslims and others to think they are setting off bombs and then arrest them). And the organization is so politically correct when it comes to Islam, the denial is reflexive. This morning, Rouse said it was “absolutely false” that Paddock converted to Islam and was connected to ISIS. How does he know for sure, when we know there is no way his agency had already gone through all of Paddock’s texts, phone calls, e-mails, etc.
The FBI is reflexive in its empty denials, and this affects investigations and costs lives. Agents could have discovered and stopped the 1993 World Trade Center attacks if they paid attention to visitors and communications to and from El-Sayyid Nosair, the assassin of Rabbi Meir Kahane, but they ignored that. FBI Agent Harry Samit repeatedly begged his superiors to allow him to examine the hard drive of Zaccarias Moussaoui and to engage in other law enforcement techniques which would have uncovered the 9/11 attacks. The FBI repeatedly told him no. The same thing happened with FBI Agents Robert Wright and John Vincent, who repeatedly questioned why the agency and the Bush Justice Department allowed known HAMAS terrorists to walk America’s streets and continue to fundraise for HAMAS terrorist attacks.
The FBI telling us something isn’t, is the surest sign that the opposite is true.
Yes, ISIS claimed responsibility, which the group always does. And if Paddock had joined the group, ISIS might have produced some video or communications with Paddock pledging his allegiance. It released no such stuff. But these days, terrorist groups are more careful. And we don’t know whether or not Paddock was a Muslim who joined ISIS.
What we do know is strange and doesn’t pass the smell test. Why would a retired 64-year-old retired accountant who lived in a fancy, posh retirement community and who owned apartment buildings and played big-stakes tables at casinos engage in a terrorist attack? It’s not likely. He was a multi-millionaire real estate developer, according to his brother (as reported by NBC’s Pete Williams and ABC’s Brian Ross), who was a partner in some buildings with him. He also owned his own plane and made a lot of money in the stock market and through gambling. His reported high-stakes gambling of tens of thousands of dollars is nothing if he is truly a multi-millionaire. He was living the life in Vegas with his Filipino girlfriend and his millions. That he “just snapped” is not believable. His attack took planning and deliberation. Multi-millionaires in their 60s don’t just one day decide to become terrorists. And multi-millionaires with no mental health history don’t just snap at age 64. No. But they might plan a terrorist attack if they believed it was for a “noble” cause like the moongod cult’s allah and jihad. That’s the most likely explanation, evidence or not.
Neighbors say Paddock and his girlfriend were “gone” for six months, last year. Where did they go? With whom did they meet? You can’t rule out that maybe they met with jihadists or learned about the precepts of Islam during that trip. I’ll bet you the FBI has no idea where Paddock and his consort were for those six months, just as they still don’t know where the San Bernardino terorists, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were for 20 to 30 minutes between their terrorist attacks and their trip to the 72 virgins in December 2015.
Paddock’s attack took a lot of advance work and planning. He used automatic weapons, which are not legally available to non-military civilians like him. He had to buy them from somewhere and someone. And he reportedly had 23 of them in his hotel room. He bought the ammunition–a lot of it (thousands of bullets)–and that took time and effort, including to transport it and the 23 guns to his hotel room (which he reportedly went to great effort to hide from housekeeping and hotel officials). He had to know about the country music festival and its set-up, that there would be tens of thousands of people there, ripe for the shooting like fish in a barrel. And he had to know which number rooms at the Mandalay Bay Hotel faced the concert area, either consulting hotel floor plans or someone at the hotel who assured he got the specific suite of rooms he occupied on the 32nd floor with several windows facing the concert, with the ability to shoot down on the concertgoers. All of this takes planning–calculated, deliberate planning ahead of time. This is something that was well thought out, not the work of someone who “just snapped.”
And the Al-Qaeda handbook instructed operatives to claim mental illness and recruit the mentally ill in order to camouflage their terrorist attacks as nothing more than a crazy person to whom we should pay little attention. The Detroit terrorist cell, tied to Bin Laden, took videos of Vegas hotels and released plans to attack some of its hotels. So this attack would jibe with those plans.
Yes, like you I saw the story about Paddock’s father, Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, being a bank robber on the FBI’s Most Wanted List and being called a psychopath because he tried to run over an agent. And, yes, often mental illness is inherited . . . as is the propensity to crime. You could argue the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Still, I don’t buy that this was just that simple. That it wasn’t something more. Since the FBI’s already decided (along with the mainstream media), they won’t be eager to divulge anything that disproves their theory. But there is no evidence Paddock was mentally ill. No evidence he was “just crazy” and every indication he was crazy like a fox. We also know he wasn’t religious in any way. Those who don’t believe in anything–like Stephen Paddock, who had no religious or political beliefs, according to his brother–are easy targets for Muslim proselytizers and terrorist recruiters.
Even if there ends up to be no discernible contact by Stephen Paddock with jihadists, doesn’t mean he wasn’t inspired by them and their attacks to perpetrate this attack. In fact, it’s safe to say that he was inspired by their attacks. This has all the hallmarks and the same M.O.
Huh? It's very likely he was inspired by ISIS, whether or not he was in touch with the group.
— Debbie Schlussel (@DebbieSchlussel) October 2, 2017
Just because you don’t see any documentation on Google or social media that Stephen Paddock was a believer in jihad, doesn’t mean anything. We don’t live in CSI or NCIS, where there’s strong, definite evidence of everything. That’s just on TV.
Yes, there is nothing yet we know of that points to Islam. But nothing that points against it, either.
I don't know. But there is no way the FBI can say he is absolutely NOT connected when they have no evidence to debunk it
— Debbie Schlussel (@DebbieSchlussel) October 2, 2017
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One other thing: I’ve heard many in law enforcement say this was a “soft target” and we can’t easily uncover or prevent such attacks. I disagree.
The failure to be on the lookout for snipers and shooters in tall buildings is a failure not just of imagination, but also a failure to recognize recent history. Remember that guy named John F. Kennedy? Remember where the shots came from that assassinated him? From a tall building. Even if you are a conspiracy theorist who believes there was a second shooter, the bullets in JFK’s body came from high above in Dealey Plaza’s Book Depository. In 1966, Marine sharpshooter Charles Whitman shot and killed 15 people and wounded 31 others when he took them out from a University of Texas at Austin observation deck atop a tower. Whenever the President travels anywhere, the Secret Service has snipers positioned atop some buildings and makes sure nobody else is atop other buildings.
Whenever there is a large gathering of people outside amid several buildings, events like what happened in Vegas, last night can happen elsewhere. Security teams should take this into account and be on the lookout. What happened in Vegas, doesn’t always stay in Vegas.
Tags: Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, Famous But Incompetent, FBI, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Massacre, Marilou Danley, Stephen Paddock
We all trust this agency that concluded,even before interviewing key witnesses, that Hillary was innocent from any wrongdoings by keeping classified information on her private server. We also should take seriously any claims by the agency that still is looking for a motive in Orlando nightclub shooting.
Moishe on October 2, 2017 at 11:57 pm