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Comment by like_any_other | Hacker News Reader

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There's an effort in various corners of the Internet to rehabilitate Ted Kaczynski (gross). Is there similarly an effort to rehabilitate Timothy McVeigh? That would be news to me.

You are the second person in this thread to pretend to not be able to distinguish between accepting collateral casualties, and having them as the primary objective. You also imply I'm trying to rehabilitate McVeigh, when I have done nothing but point out how the Guardian is playing loose with facts, and being opportunistic in who they associate with which decades-old tragedies. Do you think he is so sympathetic, one has to lie about him to avoid 'rehabilitating' him?

I don't understand what this has to do with what I asked. Do you mean to say "no, there is no effort [at least none you're aware of] to rehabilitate McVeigh"? "No" is a perfectly good answer.

I'm going to guess in fair faith, that op has absolutely no desire to excuse or advocate such things. Probably feeling barraged, he replied defensively, annoyed that expressing an understanding of the subject contrary to the TFAs tone, was interpreted as support for evil shit.

I'll further guess that in a fresh situation, he'd probably agree with you.

There's nothing to agree with, as, as far as I can tell, tptacek didn't voice any opinions, only asked a leading question - for some reason, pointing out part of the article is unsubstantiated speculation trying to pass itself off as near-certain fact, prompted him to wonder if there's an effort (somewhere!) to defend this act of mass murder.

Edit: I don't understand why you think I'm some authority on how McVeigh is perceived, but to humor you, no, I don't know of any efforts to 'rehabilitate' him.

I'm not sure I see how it's "leading" and I'm starting to wonder why you don't seem to be able to answer it? You get that you can retain all your stated concerns and still not know of an effort to rehabilitate McVeigh, right?

> Andrew Gumbel is the author of Oklahoma City: What The Investigation Missed – And Why It Still Matters (William Morrow, 2012)

Maybe it's talked about here?

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.”

We 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.

The 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.

You 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.

No, 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.

Maybe because only one of those movements was rooted in white nationalist ideology and massacred children? The whataboutusm to defend a terrorist is pretty sick

Is he defending a terrorist, or is he defending information accuracy?

If he's defending terrorism, fine then. But it's kind of creepy when because terror, we advocate low quality or bad information and insult those who speculate. If it's the latter, that may well be a form of psychoterrorism. I didn't observe any advocacy of terrorism, but I guess I'll read the comment again to be sure.

No, no, I don't think we're going to accept the premise that disagreeing with someone on a message board is itself a form of terrorism, sorry, gotta draw the line somewhere.

Premature. Wait til it becomes collective. You'll see. It's certainly happened before.

But suit yourself

Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone.

I generally respect aand admire your comments, which are abundant here. But saying someone is sick simply because they've questioned journalistic integrity on a pretty sore subject and intimidating them into avoiding discussion seems a lot closer to terror than someone doubting motives.

I can't say I understand this particular comment though.

For some reason he’s lapsed into Madonna lyrics.

I’m all for holding journalists to account, but I think they gave away the game when their main takeaway from reading that article was to complain that a terrorist was treated unfairly using a weak comparison to another group they likely have less sympathetic feelings towards. It was very clearly an attempt at whataboutism between black lives matter and the Waco bombing.

The “Waco bombing”…?

You are conflating different parts of my post, and summarizing them in highly misleading ways. I'm not complaining that the Guardian is treating McVeigh unfairly - I'm complaining that they're lying about him - or at a minimum, stretching the truth.

And I'm not using the comparison to BLM for this - that is a completely separate, independent complaint. And has nothing to do with my feelings towards or the merits of BLM - it is to illustrate how opportunistic the Guardian is being in which group they associate with which tragedy. E.g. they didn't associate the defenders of the federal government or gun control with the Waco massacre, or (certain) anti-law-enforcement activists, or any of the other #resist groups, with McVeigh.

It is transparent propaganda, and I am frankly shocked others don't see it.

Waco massacred children, yet the Guardian doesn't use it to tar anyone defending the federal government or the ATF that perpetrated it. If you can't recognize this article for the transparent propaganda that it is, I can't help you.

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