<p>And the thing is their excuse was that they had “transportation problems” not personnel problems. They legitimately said that they could not find a boat! That doesn’t strike me as a difficult thing to find! If I had a kid involved in this I would be calling for resignations (then again, I’m not even a parent, so this is crazy hypothetical).</p>
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<p>Who ever claimed that Islam is the root of all evil? 99% of Muslims are great, peace-loving people. The problem is that 1% of a billion is still a huge number. All we ever claimed is that Islamic jihad-based terrorism is a much greater threat to the west than any other form of terrorism right now, and it has been that way for over a decade.</p>
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<p>I found it incredible that a local news crew was able to get a chopper to the island faster than the police could get there. Ridiculously slow response time. I know in the United States in “active shooter” situations cops are now taught to move into a rampage shooting situation quickly without waiting for SWAT in order to confront the gunman; they learned that lesson after Columbine while those killers murdered students while police congregated outside. The new system works; we had a rampage close to my hometown a couple of years ago in which a single officer went into the building without backup and dropped the gunman with a single shot to the chest. The new system would have worked at Va Tech as well, had the gunman not chained the doors shut. You can’t afford to wait for SWAT in those situations. I guess they didn’t get the memo in Norway.</p>
<p>Starbright - great post. Thank you.</p>
<p>I find it upsetting that the crimes the shooter is being charged with only carry up to 21 years in prison. That means he could be out of prison when he is in his early fifties.</p>
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A self-described Christian killed abortion clinic workers less than a mile from my home … I’d call that on our shore.</p>
<p>“For those who believe that Islam is the root of all evil, it appears you’re on the same page with the gunman:”#77</p>
<p>Only if they are committing mass murder.</p>
<p>I think they had problems finding a boat because the boats had left to rescue swimmers escaping from the island (after the first strong swimmers had reached the mainland)</p>
<p>Norway probably wasn’t as prepared as the US for something like this since it is much more unusual there. I’m sure they will upgrade their emergency response capabilities.</p>
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<p>I hear some official interviewed on NPR say that the earlier Oslo bomb blast was apparently timed so that all the cops, SWAT teams, and emergency personnel would be rushing to the scene of that and thereby give himself more time to kill kids on the island.</p>
<p>The news has been describing the island as a summer camp, but that’s not entirely accurate. It was actually a summer retreat for young people who were politically active in the Labour Party. Typically, attendees would be the political leaders fifteen years or so from now-- some were already running for local office in the next elections. The current Labour leaders are mostly alums of that camp. The gunman tried to wipe out a generation of political leaders.</p>
<p>It is amazing to me that the police didn’t have a helicopter or several helicopters available to them. For an oil-rich country, Norway has very poor roads. They are only two lanes, pot-holed and curve up and down through mountain passes. Even though they have little violence and no experience with mass murders, you would think they would have helicopters for things like bad road accidents or ferry accidents on the many fjords, things like that. </p>
<p>A terrible, terrible day for a beautiful country. All it takes is one nut to destroy the lives of so many.</p>
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<p>That is theoretically the longest sentence he could be given, in practise however I doubt he will ever get out of prison. If there isn’t a move to lengthen life sentences he could well be placed under forvaring, which means that once his sentence is up he still cant be released if he’s considered a danger to society.</p>
<p>They can make the life sentences consecutive. Not concurrent.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how far this island/camp was from the bombing location in Oslo? If we’re talking a few miles, I can see the concentration of law enforcement descending on Oslo, thus leaving the island vulnerable. But if it’s 200 miles, then I don’t understand it.</p>
<p>Wiki says it’s 24 miles from Oslo.</p>
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<p>No they can’t.</p>
<p>They’re charging him under the new terror laws though,.</p>
<p>I hope the monster will never see the light of day. I also hope that he will be required to do a lot of back-breaking work instead of lounging in his cell, reading books and newspapers, and writing another manifesto.</p>
<p>My heart goes out to the people of Norway.</p>
<p>I understand that he’ll be charged with terrorism but won’t he also be charged with nearly 100 murders as well?</p>
<p>I don’t think the same emergency responders would’ve been responding to the island AND to the bombings, right? They aren’t that close?</p>
<p>Maybe Norway will consider allowing its police to carry guns now.</p>
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<p>I’m sure there are local police stationed in the vicinity of the island for traffic tickets and investigating burglaries and such. But I’m thinking that highly-trained anti-terror and SWAT teams and the Norwegian version of the FBI get deployed mostly in big cities. And I bet all of those kinds of cops were either at or rushing to the scene of the Oslo bombing when the shooting started on the island.</p>
<p>That’s what I was thinking coureur. I’m guessing that as second responders were called to Oslo, it depleted the resources out further away from the city. Especially given it was only 24 miles away. We live about 40 miles from downtown Chicago. I’m sure if there were some sort of terror attack, any available resources from the six-county Chicago area would be asked to help. Which might temporarily deplete the resources in those areas. And as coureur also said, this monster timed this just right to accomplish this in order to give himself the maximum time before reinforcements could reach the island.</p>