Pentagon Shooter Pot Smoking 9/11 Truther?

"Mr_Canada" said
You guys really don't have a shortage of lunatics, do you?

Washington - The gunman in the Pentagon shootings may have harbored resentment for the military and had doubts about the facts behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

John Patrick Bedell, 36, died after exchanging gunfire with two police officers, both of whom were wounded.

In an Internet posting, a user named JPatrickBedell wrote that he was determined to see justice for the 1991 death of Marine Col. James Sabow in Orange County, which was ruled a suicide but has long been the source of coverup theories. The writer said the case would be a step toward revealing the truth behind the 9/11 "demolitions."

The same posting railed against the government's enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author's 2006 court case in Orange County for cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer.

Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell who was killed after opening fire outside the Pentagon.

"Freakinoldguy" said
This guy is living proof that no matter what you vice is, if your a freakin lunatic, you'll still be a freakin lunatic, even after you take mood altering chemicals.

Now, just for a moment, let’s set aside the false guilt-by-association game everyone’s always playing. We all know that John Patrick Bedell and Joseph Stack [the guy who flew the plane into the internal revenue office] are basically insane, plain and simple — as are any number of similar whackjobs who periodically go loco and erupt into violence. Violent psychopaths often incorporate some seemingly random overarching theme into their mindset, and on occasion that theme involves politics. Whenever someone like Bedell or Stack goes ballistic, every pundit jumps into the fray and tries to spin the outburst as “exemplifying” the political viewpoint of those with whom the pundit disagrees.

But that only rises to the level of a valid argument when a distinct pattern emerges. If, say, 5,000 suicide bombers in a row are invariably Islamic fundamentalists — well, OK, we’ve got a problem with the belief system, not just with the individuals. Yet I don’t see a pattern in these “going postal” violent outbursts which seem to happen perhaps three or four times per year, every year, no matter who’s in power or who’s president: it seems that the “philosophy” (if you can even call it that) of each of the attackers is unique, idiosyncratic and just plain illogical. Even so, if he starts shooting or killing when a Republican is president, he is deemed a left-wing psycho (see: Charles Manson); if he starts shooting or killing when a Democrat is president, he is deemed a right-wing psycho (see: Joseph Stack). But the truth is, paranoid people simply feel threatened by the external power structure in general, so they lash out at any symbol of authority, regardless of its political affiliation.

So, instead of playing the blame game so unapologetically employed by the Left when they feel they can spin things to their political advantage, I’m not going to say that Bedell’s actions at the Pentagon epitomize the leftist worldview. Rather, he was just crazy, as clearly indicated by his belief in the craziest of modern crazy conspiracy theories, 9/11 Truthism.

Are most Truthers leftists? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that all left-leaning Americans are thereby just as crazy as the most extreme among them; it simply indicates that when a leftist goes crazy in the post-9/11 era, he often gloms onto Truthism as his paranoia of choice.

Put it this way: Leftism fails as a coherent philosophy on its own terms. We shouldn’t try to wring significance from the delusional outburst of someone who just happened to be leftist. There are plenty of ways to logically disembowel Marxism and its numerous noxious contemporary offspring without having to resort to an unnecessary round of political “gotcha!”

:
To my utter amazement, some left-leaning blogs and top MSM outlets this morning somehow managed to brand Bedell as a “right-wing extremist” anyway, despite the ever-growing pile of evidence contradicting this tired old narrative. The Christian Science Monitor titled its article “John Patrick Bedell: Did right-wing extremism lead to shooting?“, while top leftist blog Talking Points Memo ran with “Pentagon Shooter Worshipped Private Property Rights, Denounced Government ‘Schemes’ Like Public Education“.

Meanwhile…

Michelle Malkin uncovered a key inconvenient fact which doesn’t quite fit this predictable “right-wing extremist” narrative — that Bedell was a registered Democrat.

Ooops!

"xerxes" said
If this guy was a Truther, then how can we be sure this wasn't an inside job as well?