Manhunt
By Matthew Vadum
Dramatic events are unfolding in Boston. As of 8am EDT, an MIT police officer has been killed by the suspects on Cambridge campus. One Boston Marathon bombing suspect is dead and another is on the run. Reports indicate that the bombers, who turn out to be brothers, are from Chechnya. We will keep you posted as the breaking news comes in.
One Boston Marathon bombing suspect is dead, while the other one is on the run. The search for these terrorists was significantly helped by bombing victim Jeff Bauman, whose legs were traumatically amputated below the knee by the blast. He looked into the eyes of one of the suspects at the finish line two and a half minutes before the explosion — his brother, Chris Bauman, told reporters. “He woke up under so much drugs, asked for a paper and pen and wrote, ‘bag, saw the guy, looked right at me,” Chris Bauman said. “I’ve had many times alone with him, and yes, he told me every single detail.”
From intensive care, Jeff Bauman gave a physical description to the FBI which enabled investigators to narrow their search as they reviewed hours of surveillance video from around the scene of the explosions Monday.
Investigators determined that one bomb was housed in a pressure cooker concealed in a backpack. The second bomb, also hidden in a backpack, was housed in a metal container but it is not yet clear if the container was a pressure cooker.
Unreleased video footage reportedly shows that the two suspects remained at the scene to watch the explosions.
“When the bombs blow up, when most people are running away and victims were lying on the ground, the two suspects walk away pretty casually,” according to an unnamed federal law enforcement official. “They acted differently than everyone else.”
While a massive manhunt is underway for the remaining suspect, and we wait for the news reports to come in, we take a moment to reflect on the intense and controversial politics that have surrounded the bombing:
There has been a veritable orgy of contradictory media reports about Saudi visa student Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi (or al-Harbi) who was hospitalized after being injured in the blast on Monday. Investigators reportedly seized bags of Alharbi’s possessions from his Boston area apartment. The young man has been reported variously to be a “suspect,” “person of interest,” and “witness” regarding the events in Boston.
Some left-wing pundits such as Gawker’s Cord Jefferson and Esquire‘s Charles P. Pierce have popped champagne corks, claiming that Alharbi’s downgrade to witness status constituted a complete exoneration. But it would be worthwhile to note that there is a prominent Alharbi clan in Saudi Arabia.
Many individuals with the surname Alharbi are active in al-Qaeda, Aaron Klein of WND.com reports. Citing confidential sources, terrorism expert Steven Emerson told Fox News Channel Wednesday that Alharbi was going to be deported from the U.S. soon on national security grounds.
At a congressional hearing yesterday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano denied Alharbi was in the process of being deported. “If I might, I am unaware of anyone who is being deported for national security concerns at all related to Boston,” Napolitano said responding to Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.).
Duncan followed up by asking if it would constitute “negligence” to deport someone who just days earlier was a person of interest to investigators.
“I’m not going to answer that question,” Napolitano said. “That question is so full with misstatements and misapprehensions that it is not worthy of an answer … there’s been so much reported on this that’s been wrong I can’t even begin to tell you, congressman.”
The Obama administration isn’t exactly known for forthrightness and transparency, so we will have to wait and see how the story on Alharbi emerges.
Radical leftist author David Sirota, meanwhile, was praying that a Caucasian American would be found to have perpetrated the bombing. He wrote a Salon.com oped titled “Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber is a White American,” that featured a graphic juxtaposing Timothy McVeigh with Osama bin Laden. Sirota’s column is a tedious mess of postmodernist nonsense and politically correct buzzwords as he blathers on about “white male privilege” and how it would work to prevent justice from being done if the perpetrator turned out to be a white male.
Sirota argues that the Global War on Terror is racist and if a Muslim is implicated in the Boston attack, Muslims will be unfairly targeted as a group.
If the bomber ends up being “a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world,” America may cite them “as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted.” This could encourage conservatives “to block immigration reform[,] defense spending cuts[,] and the Afghan War withdrawal and to further expand surveillance and other encroachments on civil liberties.”
Sirota even refers to an infamous report from Obama’s Department of Homeland Security that demonizes conservatives, libertarians, Tea Party supporters, and veterans, by labeling them potential terrorists based on, well, nothing. That report relied on research from the kooky, extreme-left Southern Poverty Law Center.
Although it may be fair to say that domestic, non-Islamist terrorism is generally carried out in the U.S. by Caucasians, it is usually committed by left-wingers such as anarchists, neo-communists, animal rights activists, Occupy Wall Street supporters, and eco-terrorists. Although anti-abortion terrorism might be classified as right-wing, it is relatively rare, as is terrorism aimed at advancing conservative or free-market goals. (As noted in a previous article, Timothy McVeigh, a bogeyman frequently raised in discussions of domestic terrorism, was not a right-winger.)
As Sirota was hit with a tsunami of criticism online, the leftist mocked conservatives for even caring about those killed and injured in Boston. “Bizarre to hear right-wingers who constantly berate/insult Massachusetts suddenly pretend they care about people in Boston,” he tweeted yesterday evening.
Sirota previously held a number of senior positions on Capitol Hill, including as press secretary for then-Congressman Dave Obey of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat at the time on the House Appropriations Committee.
Meanwhile, in the days following the bombing, officials in Washington, D.C., intercepted envelopes that tested positive for the super-lethal toxin ricin. Ricin was used in 1978 to assassinate Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov.
The intercepted ricin-laced letters were addressed to President Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and Sadie Holland, a judge in Lee County, Miss. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) also received a suspicious envelope but at press time it was not yet known if it is contained ricin.
Paul Kevin Curtis, an Elvis impersonator from Corinth, Miss., was taken into custody and charged with sending a threat to the president. On his Facebook page Curtis’s profile photoshowed him giving the thumbs-up sign with one hand in front of a bumper sticker that reads “Christian and a Democrat.” Let’s see how much media coverage Curtis gets now that we know he’s a left-winger.
All the while, an armed and dangerous suspect is on the loose — as a massive manhunt is underway and Boston has been shut down.
To be continued…
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