New York Times Blames Conservative U.S. Bloggers for Oslo Massacre

It didn't take long for American media to blame this weekend's tragic shootings in Oslo, Norway, on our nation's conservatives.

The New York Times splashed it across its front page Monday with the headline "Killings Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.":

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.

In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.

His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.

Author Scott Shane then mentioned other prominent anti-terrorism websites such as Atlas Shrugs and Gates of Vienna, implying their complicity in this awful event.

Yet when a pair of homegrown terrorists were arrested in Seattle last month before a planned attack on a military facility, the Times chose not to inform readers that the duo were Muslim-converts and the ringleader idolized Osama bin Laden.

Now, roughly four weeks later, a sadly successful attack happened thousands of miles away, and the Times was more than happy to point fingers - prominently on its front page! - at American conservatives.