Yesterday’s top story was what
didn’t happen: as an apprehensive nation waited anxiously, hanging on tenterhooks, no second wave of terrorist attacks appeared, despite widespread social media predictions. As Kamala Harris used to say, today is another day, and time extends into the future, because it is time, which always keeps extending. Anyway, as yesterday’s hot takes phase continued, the twin New Year’s Day attacks grew murkier and more obscure. First, the New York Times ran a story headlined “
New Orleans Officials Left Bourbon Street Vulnerable to Attack, Experts Say.
Five years ago, the article began, “a confidential security report warned that the iconic Bourbon Street tourist strip was vulnerable to a ‘vehicular ramming’ attack.” The New York security firm producing that classified assessment urgently recommended fixing the barriers immediately, explaining that “the two modes of terror attack likely to be used are vehicular ramming and active shooting.”
So what do you think they did? They did not fix the barriers immediately. It’s disgraceful New Orleans’s corruptocrats failed for five years to fix the problem. Don’t worry though, they plan to fix them soon.
Still, one’s mind wanders back to that report. Who else got a copy of that top-secret security report identifying the city’s chief vulnerability? Who else knew that Bourbon Street’s iconic tourist strip lay exposed to “vehicular ramming?”
In this next clip, N.O.P.D. Captain Anne Kirkpatrick explained to journalists that when she was crafting her failed security plan to protect Bourbon Street revelers, she
did not know about the police department’s “Yellow Archers.” The Yellow Archers are portable barriers used to stop people from driving onto the sidewalk. “We have them,” Captain Kirkpatrick explained, adding “I didn’t know about them, but we have ‘em; and so we have been able now to put them out.”
CLIP: Cpt. Kirkpatrick explains how she plans to immediately improve security by using stuff she forgot about last time (1:23).
They have now been able to put them out?
Now? It reminds us of an old expression about closing the barn door after the horses hide the Yellow Archers, but I can’t recall the specifics.
Captain Kirkpatrick surely deserves credit for admitting that her security plan failed, with tragic results. But it is inexcusable that Kirkpatrick failed to protect the sidewalks using inventoried gear the city’s residents had
already paid for. It would seem to be a critical question to figure out what caused Anne’s disastrous senior moment.
Next, the FBI continued to surprise us. Within 48 hours the agency concluded —and I am not making this up— with
one hundred percent confidence the killer’s motive was inspired by his Islamic beliefs and only his Islamic beliefs.
Yesterday’s astonishing NBC headline:
Ten minutes ago, this headline would be instantly labeled “Islamaphobic” and nobody else would reprint it. Jabber’s motive would have always remained murky. Corporate media obviously holds no sincere values except the value of following orders.
Not only did Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division literally express 100% certainty that truck-killer Jabbar was “inspired by ISIS,” but also that he
acted alone. Never mind about yesterday’s FBI report of additional people seen planting bombs in surveillance videos.
“We’re
confident at this point that he had no accomplices,” Raia confidently said.
Confident, in just 48 hours. CBS reported that police recovered
three phones and
two laptops from Jabbar’s AirBnB. Maybe having multiple devices was a religious thing.
Another lone wolf! Another lone wolf, killed on the scene. Never wounded.
The FBI’s
confidence was attributed to five Facebook videos that Jabbar posted after 1:30am on the night of the attack, in which he claimed —for the first time— to have converted to Islam earlier this year. Apparently, he did not explain why converting to Islam meant he felt he had to commit a suicidal terror attack.
The five Facebook videos were helpful but not
that helpful. “Jabbar set his sights on historic Bourbon Street,” CBS reported, “though authorities do not yet fully understand
why.”
And they never will. Hopefully, the reason why Jabbar picked Bourbon Street was not because someone read that confidential security assessment.
Weird. Apparently, in his five final, last-minute confessions in the moments leading up to the attack, Jabbar never explained why he decided on Bourbon Street? If the FBI is so confident Jabbar acted alone, then
who radicalized him? Who convinced Jabbar the path to Allah included a bloody speed run in New Orleans? He didn’t have any
online accomplices?
And why are there so many apparent connections to the New Orleans attack?
We aren’t the only ones scratching our heads. NBC reported that “a woman who identified herself as Jabbar’s sister-in-law” said his relatives in Texas were shocked. It makes “no sense,” she told NBC News on Wednesday. “He’s the nicest person I’ve ever known.”
Apparently not
that nice. ISIS-
inspired —not ISIS-
connected— road rage.
Whether or not you’re tempted to see a conspiracy here, remember what we do know: regardless of who’s behind the attack, it could not have happened without deep government corruption in New Orleans combined with unforgivable official incompetence at nearly every level. New Orleans readers, you should demand your tax dollars back.
More strange developments in the twin New Year's Day incidents; questions expand; Cybertruck driver was an American hero; the law of Narrative Simplicity; House votes on Johnson; Kirk tease; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
