Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Virginia Tech: More "second gunman" questions

On FOX News not long ago -- I watch it so you don't have to -- Geraldo Rivera related an odd tale that I had not heard before. He said that after the first round of shooting in West Ambler Johnston Hall, the dorm on Virginia Tech campus, police were told that the suspect was a white male driving a black pick-up truck with "farm" plates. Rivera even stated that the cops had reason to believe that the gunman had driven to a nearby elementary school. The Norris Hall gunman is, as you know, Asian.

Now, few people would choose Rivera as America's most trusted newsman. Still, he has spoken with local officers, and these allegations cast an interesting light on earlier reports that the police believed that the 7:14 shooter had left the campus.

ABC News is reporting that a second male may be involved with the shootings, although the account does not contain details giving evidence of a second shooter, beyond what we already know.
Campus police have identified a person of interest who is not currently in police custody. Police say the person of interest is a male who knew the female who was killed in the original double homicide at the West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory. Flinchum also said he is not a student and that he knew the female who was killed in the original double homicide.
Another question. Michael Sneed (who is female) of The Chicago Sun-Times has reported that the gunman who died in Norris Hall is a Chinese national who came to the United States on a student visa on August 7, 2006. Does this nation allow foreign exchange students -- recent visitors -- to purchase weaponry and ammunition? If 9/11 "changed everything," how did that happen?

As I write these words, nearly 18 hours have passed since the first burst of gunfire. Yet we do not yet have a narrative. That -- in my opinion -- is unusual.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Firstly, let me say thanks for putting your brain on the line for us by exposing yourself to FOX for us, Joseph.

Second--what the hell?? I was sick all day and have just started trying to figure all this out. I can't remember a time when an incident like this has been treated this way by the media.

Anonymous said...

"False flag operation indeed. Just another Manchurian Candidate whose buttons were pushed, sacrificed to the media flames, providing plenty of hand-wringing tragedy to push the “boring financial news” developing right under the nations just a few pages deeper.

Of course, all the usual garbage debate will ensue, about “people killing people” and all that badly played jazz. Criees for “safety” will bring yet another dark piece of social legislation forward, already ghost-written and waiting in the wings for just such a “tragedy” to unfold — right on schedule.

Or maybe all these heavy “condensation” trails being sprayed over our region this Monday morning are affecting my judgment. Color me a paranoid expat, but I’ve reached the point where nothing surprises me much anymore.

I intentionally avoided posting my earlier suspicions — re: possible false flag ops — on the dollar thread, as I didn’t want to distract from the issue at hand. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have acted on the instinct, if only to have demonstrated that it is possible to “feel” these sorts of events coming down the pike.

At once, witnessing the onset of a media-dominating event like this also seems to confirm in a backhanded way that the PPT will NOT be working overtime this week.

And seeing that PPT I’ve just typed reminds me once again why I find acronyms scary in a purely linguistic sort of way:

ABC CIA NBC FBI CBS HBO NRA AARP KKK MBA USA AFU UFO DEA AOL WHO PhD NIH NEA ATF ACLU USN USSR MAD AMA FDA DOA… and the list goes on and on and on."

Doug Mitchell