(ABC News) The man who opened fire at the Pentagon Thursday is part of a growing pattern in the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. John Patrick Bedell is described as an angry “lone wolf.”
Bedell, according to family and friends, was mentally ill and a marijuana user. But he also had extreme views about the government, and he laid out those feelings in audio postings on the Internet.
[Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano talked about these “lone wolves” just a week before the Pentagon shooting.
“We have seen an increase in the lone wolf type attacks, which, from a law enforcement and investigation perspective, are the most challenging. Why? Because by definition they’re not conspiring. They’re not using the phones, the computer networks, or any — they’re not talking with others any other way that we might get some inkling about what is being planned,” the secretary told a House of Representatives sub-committee.
Well, mentally ill and a marijuana user? How exactly is that relevant to the story? Is the inference here that being a marijuana user is possible sign of a “lone wolf” extremist? Is it that marijuana use would impair his reasoning in a manner similar to mental illness? Is it that marijuana users are criminals so we should have expected he’d commit an act of terrorism?
ABC News has been framing this story as a “marijuana addict” gone berserk immediately after the Thursday shooting:
The gunman who charged into the Pentagon Thursday and opened fire was intelligent but troubled, and had struggled with a longtime marijuana addiction, a family friend said today.
A “longtime marijuana addiction”? (Note that the link takes you to a Diane Sawyer interview with a recovering methamphetamine addict.) Here is the actual statement from the Bedell family:
We are devastated as a family by the news from yesterday. To the outside world, this tragedy is the first and only thing they will know of Patrick. To us, he was a beloved son, brother, grandson, nephew, and cousin. We may never know why he made this terrible decision. One thing is certain though — his actions were caused by an illness and not a defective character.
We wish for a speedy and complete recovery of the two officers involved.
the family asks that you respect their privacy in this terrible time.
While Bedell does have a past as a marijuana grower leading to an arrest in California, his internet postings show that his mental illness was truly the driving factor in his attack. He was suffering mental illness (bipolar disorder) for fifteen years and was self-medicating with cannabis, but ABC News’ attempt to portray this attack as the result of a “marijuana addiction” are shameful.
With millions of people in America and around the world using cannabis for medical or recreational purposes, it’s likely that many mentally ill folks are using it, just as there are plenty of folks using it who aren’t mentally ill. It’s also true that millions of people drink Coca-cola. Some of those Coca-cola drinkers are surely mentally ill, but to suggest drinking Coca-cola is indicative of mental illness is just as ridiculous as the assumtion that cannabis use is.
This is nothing more than a case of mainstream media sucking on the teat of reefer madness. It’s such a convenient explaination of why bad people do bad things, or why sick people can also do bad things.
As long as Big Pharma shovels ad revenue into MSM, any opportunity to attack the threat to BP’s profits is simply good for business.
And, after all, business is business, isn’t it?
We have to respond to this one. They are trying to link him to marijuana activism and intenet activities regarding marijuana.
Oh boy, it would figure that they’d link radicalism to an up and coming movement just like they did Civil Rights and Gay Rights, etc.