After five days, President Obama finally today ordered "that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds" and at other official federal locations until sunset on Saturday to honor the five victims of Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez's murder spree in Chattanooga, Tennessee last Thurday.
Though the White House will never admit it, Congress shamed the President into doing what he did by unilaterally choosing to fly the Capitol flag at half-mast earlier this morning. Obama's order referred to "the victims of the senseless acts of violence." Sadly, the more we learn, the more we understand that Abdulazeez didn't see it as "senseless" at all. Yet he, those who work for him in the Executive Branch, and the press continue to pretend.
Earlier today, the Associated Press was running with the idea that Abdulazeez was depressed and "fought drug and alcohol abuse."
I suppose that's an improvement over Monday evening, when the AP (HT Patterico) feigned complete confusion:
Bits and pieces have emerged over the past few days about Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez’s troubled life. But two significant pieces of the puzzle are missing: Why did he ambush two military sites, killing four Marines and a sailor? And was he propelled to do so by his own demons or at the direction of someone else?
Gee, those questions aren't too tough.
The answers to those two questions aren't difficult to discern to a high confidence level.
According to ABC News, Abdulazeez "was following a radical American member of al Qaeda online in 2013, as well as pages of writing that showed the young man was suicidal and looking for a way to absolve what he considered were his sins, according to a representative of Abdulazeez's family." So if he wasn't "directed," he at least appears to have been "inspired" to attack "military sites" — a task made easier by prohibitions against soldiers carrying guns in "gun-free zones" at those installations.
But here we are, five days after Abdulazeez's massacre, with far more than enough evidence, yet virtually no one in authorty or in the establishment press wants to point directly at "radical Islam" or "Islamic jihad" as the likely or even possible motivation.
Sadly, this reminds me of a video Rush Limbaugh carried on his web site on Friday from a long since-cancelled comedy show. It's funny in how mercilessly it satirizes the see-no-Islamic-evil press:
Seven Years Ago It Was Parody, Today It's the News
However, it's horribly sad and infuriating because it's so darned accurate at portraying how determined the press is to keep the average person uninformed.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
