3 ms·
McVeigh knew exactly what he was doing. From a recent book on him and the bombing: “Mike and Lori knew all the details of the plan, and they never discouraged
by pvg 2y ago
McVeigh knew exactly what he was doing. From a recent book on him and the bombing:
“Mike and Lori knew all the details of the plan, and they never discouraged McVeigh, even when he said during this visit that the death toll might include women and children. As McVeigh later recounted to Jones, “I told them, ‘Children may die. There may be a pregnant woman working there, or there may be someone walking down the street, or someone may have taken their child to work with them. Do you understand that?’ And Mike said, ‘Yeah, I know, it’s part of life.”
- like_any_other 2y agoWe are now conflating "might include women and children" with "prime target", are we? Would you apply this logic to any conflict? I'm sure even those you support have plenty of collateral casualties - e.g. all sides in the Ukraine-Russia and Palestine-Israel conflicts are guilty of this.
- tptacek 2y agoThe article intends that you infer McVeigh's targeting from his intimate knowledge of the structure he bombed and the fact that he placed the bomb directly below a day care center.
- pvg 2y agoYou were trying to suggest something about his motives precluded him from deliberately targeting children. It didn't and there is direct evidence for it. A mass murderer is simply a mass murderer, not someone involved in a 'conflict'. That was his self-justification narrative, I have no idea why you are adopting it as if it's some thing reasonable people have reasonable differences about.
- like_any_other 2y agoNo, not his motives, but his target selection, which is what I linked. To quote: McVeigh's criterion for attack sites was that the target should house at least two of these three federal law enforcement agencies: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He regarded the presence of additional law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service or the U.S. Marshals Service, as a bonus. He said in his authorized biography that he wanted to minimize non-governmental casualties, so he ruled out Simmons Tower, a 40-story building in Little Rock, Arkansas, because a florist's shop occupied space on the ground floor. He also believed that its adjacent large, open parking lot across the street might absorb and dissipate some of the force, and protect the occupants of nearby non-federal buildings.