Police are questioning a Saudi Arabian national for the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon that killed at least three people, one of them an eight-year-old boy, and wounded 140 others Monday. More than a dozen are in critical condition, an indication that the death toll may rise. The bombs were packed with ball bearings, designed to cause maximum physical damage. Victims lost dozens of limbs in the twin bombings.
The suspect is 20 years old, in the United States on a students’ visa, and is under guard at the Boston hospital where he is being treated for severe burns. He was detained approximately two hours after the bombing at the finish line. CBS News reported that Boston police have a video of a man bringing multiple backpacks to the location of the blast.
Boston police Tuesday morning searched an apartment in a Boston suburb as part of the investigation.
However, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis insisted, “There is no suspect. There are people we’re talking to.”
President Barack Obama was unable to utter the word “terror” in his initial reaction to the bombings, as if doing so would be an admission that the United States is so secure that it is unthinkable that terrorists could operate in the country.
Sometimes it seems the government wears a proud suit of armor in la-la land, re-living a 1950s cover of the Saturday Evening Post, an exterior that lulls people into thinking that there are no rotten apples in the American pie.
The president indeed had to be careful not label the attack “terror” before being sure. “We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts,” Obama said. “But make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this, and we will find out who did this; we’ll find out why they did this.”
It will take a thorough investigation to find out what ever every person not in a State Dept. straight jacket knows – the terrorist or terrorists who carried out the attack want to destroy the United States.
The White House later stated that the attack was “an act of terror.” It took an hour to put aside the possibility that a mentally ill person blew up peoples; limbs. It too an hour to discard the original report that a gas line had accidentally burst.
American media, remaining politically correct not to insult Islam and inflame Muslim anger, God forbid, have not reminded citizens that Saudi Arabian radical Islamic fundamentalists were involved in the 9/11 attacks.
A total of five bombs were found in the Boston area, including one that exploded at the John F. Kennedy library, causing no injuries.
The timing of the attack, coincidental or not with “Patriot’s Day,” underlines the motives of the international terrorist campaign against the non-Muslim West.
But the official thinking, such it is called, is that everything is just fine while Rome, make that Washington, is burning.
”Federal officials tonight say there is no reason to think that this is part of any larger threat,” NBC reported. “At this point they believe it is confined to Boston, but a meeting tonight will decide whether any kind of national alert will be sent out.”
Tactically, the attack very likely was not part of a “larger threat”, just an “isolated” incident, just like the 1993 bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, killing six people and wounding more than 1,000 others;
And just like the “isolated incident” in Oklahoma Cavity in 1995, when a car bomb killed 168 people;
And just like the 9/11 attacks; and just like the 2012 car bomb that was discovered in Times Square but failed to detonate’
And just like the isolated bombs placed in 2010 on two cargo planes bound from Yemen to the United States;
And just like the 2011 pipe bomb that was discovered along the route of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial march in Spokane, Wash.
Officials are well aware that there is a worldwide of terror. They know very well that the attacks on the Boston Marathon are not “isolated” incidents.
But it is more important for officials, from the president on down, to maintain a mood of calm, to show Americans they are in control.
But they aren’t.