<p>I like this story: [Experts</a> see home-grown terror in Boston case - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-boston-terror-20130420,0,3488508.story]Experts”>Experts see home-grown terror in Boston case)</p>
<p>I worry about copycats. No offense, but what these guys did took audacity but not special knowledge or equipment or money and they killed, maimed and shut down an entire city.</p>
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<p>That’s a bit of a flawed comparison. Other cultures/languages have different naming conventions. That’s why it may seem weird to us that “so many Vietnamese people are named Nguyen,” or that “Jesús” is a name in Spanish but naming someone “Jesus” in English would be bizarre. I highly doubt that Tamerlan’s actions can be attributed in any way to his desire to live up to his 15th century namesake.</p>
<p>ucb, I think that because these two came from a culture in which some are known to be broiling, many folks want to turn this talk to a certain sort of radical. In fact, the Boston trouble could have just as easily turned out to be someone who has any sort of lean toward violent crime. This was a stage by stage process. First see what the cameras yielded. Concurrently, draw up a list of maybes. Then piece it together, in some reasonable fashion. Use the public when it makes sense. Don’t prematurely spill beans. (I’m agreeing with you.)</p>
<p>And, some would like to make use of all this to further inflame.</p>
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<p>If he had his own phone, the police would have had him a lot sooner as they can figure out where you are located by triangulating cell towers. He was at his school partying on Wednesday so I don’t think that he suspected that the police were looking at his pictures. I think that panic set in when it was generally known that the police were going to release their suspect pictures on Thursday.</p>
<p>Calling these two ‘home grown’ is the LA Times way of attempting to play down the Islamist ties. </p>
<p>Just like certain people’s speculation that there was a connection to tax day. Some people don’t want to acknowledge that Muslim terrorists are so prevalent. It’s not PC.</p>
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<p>I dont understand the logic here. If you have a list of radical Hybrid Tomato Growers and the PETA Popular Front in the area check those guys out too.- I am fine with that. But they FBI has interviewed Tamerlan multiple times. The mother said they knew he was in contact with radical types on Skype, he post Jihad videos on line. An Al Queda type bomb goes off 3 miles from his house and he isnt a person of interest??? For shame. </p>
<p>On Monday night they should have put out the list of the 10, 20, 30 people they thought where possibilities and said “Hey we think you guys might have been in a position to see something, can you check in with us?”. Within in a few hours they would have gotten the names of everyone and been able to cross them off. The people who didnt check in- the hat brothers. </p>
<p>The could have gotten them on Tuesday without getting the MIT cop killed and locking down an entire city.</p>
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<p>The haystack of radicals of various types and other potential suspects that they were looking for the needle in was probably a lot larger than 10, 20, or 30 people.</p>
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<p>Assuming that all such people were not ones to trust the government for anything, they would have said nothing and rushed to their lawyers upon fearing that they would become suspects in the bombings. (And the actual suspects would have been tipped off that they were under investigation.)</p>
<p>Didn’t the FBI make the point that all the amateur videos and speculation actually made the execution of the official investigation and manhunt all the much harder? That’s why my eyebrows nearly lept off my forehead when I heard Governor Deval Patrick heap a bit too much praise on the public for all the photo sharing that went on.</p>
<p>In fact, it seemed to me that there was a bit too much backslapping at the press conference last night. Each politician and police official said virtually the same thing, with the exception of the MBTA chief who spoke solemnly about his wounded officer. And this was the first time I have seen a prosecutor at a press conference for an arrest, as opposed to an announcement of an actual indictment.</p>
<p>Arg, the mother said? And the mechanic said? But the school peers said? You know what they did do? </p>
<p>Not logical to place calls- hey, we’ve looked into you before, please give us a call. Not logical.</p>
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<p>Pat:“You know how ‘those people’ are”
Mike: “Which people”
Pat: “Those disgusting Tea Baggers”
Mike: “You mean your fellow citizens?”
Pat: “Yes those ones. Thinking the government shouldnt run Trillion dollar deficits is the same thing as celebrating Tax Day by blowing up children with nail bombs. I’ve always suspected them”</p>
<p>Has anyone heard or read whether the public named the two suspects after their photos were released? Several friends were interviewed yesterday, who all said they had not called the FBI to confirm the names of the suspects. So I’m wondering if the way LE obtained their names was from ID on the body of suspect #1. I hope this information comes out.</p>
<p>reductio ad absurdam, arg.</p>
<p>I’ll give you a contrast. After the first bomb attack upon the World Trade Center, Governor Mario Cuomo gave a speech that gave us all comfort and invigorated our collective sense that the evil deed would not deter us from continuing to fulfill our American values. He said what we needed to hear in a time of fear.</p>
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<p>Its two different processes- first off a terrorist (yeah I would have assumed that on Day 1) bomb goes off. Team at DHS should have had the tape drives whirring on the old PDP11 - who is on the watch list in the area. Lets interview them, sound them out, see if they are nervous.</p>
<p>Secondly there was a finite set of people that this could have been based on the pictures and videos- ya know kind of like the list 4chan and reddit had. Put those out right away. You dont think it would have been worthwhile to talk to the track kid playing hooky from highschool anyway?</p>
<p>Flyme, in the article I linked from the New Yorker, people who knew them did call. The one who was a friend of the older through his wife and had been the younger’s wrestling coach, he called right away, as did more.</p>
<p>“Just like certain people’s speculation that there was a connection to tax day.”</p>
<p>"Pat:“You know how ‘those people’ are”
Mike: “Which people”
Pat: “Those disgusting Tea Baggers”
Mike: “You mean your fellow citizens?”
Pat: “Yes those ones. Thinking the government shouldnt run Trillion dollar deficits is the same thing as celebrating Tax Day by blowing up children with nail bombs. I’ve always suspected them” </p>
<p>There was also speculation that appeared within minutes after the bombing that it was a 'false flag." </p>
<p>[Alex</a> Jones raises ?false flag? conspiracy after Boston Marathon bombings](<a href=“Alex Jones raises ‘false flag’ conspiracy after Boston Marathon bombings”>Alex Jones raises ‘false flag’ conspiracy after Boston Marathon bombings)</p>
<p>We ought to look at matters with a more dispassionate statistical viewpoint to determine our policies in regards to protecting our citizens. If you take ten thousand pre-teens here, how many are likely to have anti-US terrorist zeal and an organization to help them accomplish their goals when they grow up? Repeat the experiment with ten thousand potential immigrant pre-teens from Chechnya or Somalia etc. and see what the ratio will be. I predict the number of Islamists will be many many times higher in the second group, but something you’ll not be able to identify among specific 7 or 8 year olds. </p>
<p>In the subject of terrorism, you don’t need a majority or even a significant minority to do horrendous damage. The question is whether the benefit of keeping out those who account for a significant amount of terrorism in the US outweighs the negatives of keeping out all their friends and families if that group as a whole has a significantly higher rate of terrorism. ie., would we have been better off keeping out these two at the expense of also not permitting his parents, sisters, uncles, aunts, etc.</p>
<p>Nobody would have kept this family out of the country. They became radicalized while in the country.</p>
<p>I saw an interview on CNN last night with a college sophomore who used to go to the mother or sister for beauty treatments at their house. At first she was very americanized and wore all sorts of Western clothing. A couple of years ago she began to wear the headscarf and full black dress outside the house. That’s a lot of years before they changed.</p>
<p>We don’t WANT to keep people out of this country. These people are so rare, they are probably about as statistically significant as the nutjobs who cause mass murder who aren’t Islamists.</p>
<p>More Americans are killed by serial killers every year.</p>
<p>I still wonder about how the first exchange in Watertown took place, and how the young brother could escape at first. It seems that the police actions in general were not effective. The lockdown did not accomplish anything, except delay the discovery of the boat. </p>
<p>We have all reasons to be worried. Those criminals were amateurs. We just got more proof how poorly equipped we are against threats, and how inept our responders are. Remember that innocent guy who was stripped naked and exposed to the public. All that praise is insufferable. The last days have been a comedy of errors. No victory laps are needed.</p>