Air Marshals Shoot From “Grassy Knoll”
December 22, 2005
The way in which the MSM plays the odds leaves me wondering why they haven’t yet reported that “at least one witness” saw Federal Air Marshals shooting at President Kennedy from the Grassy Knoll.
Almost immediately following the December 7 shooting of Rigoberto Alpizar at Miami International Airport by two U. S. Federal Air Marshals, the MSM started reporting the shocking news that some passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 924 never heard the word “bomb”. More specifically, on December 8, Time magazine reported, “At least one passenger (John McAlhany)...maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar...McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.”
And...McAlhany’s judgement in these matters is the gold standard. Unlike the Federal Air Marshals, he is an expertly trained “44-year-old construction worker”. As proof of his keen acumen, from just watching “Alpizar eating a sandwich in the boarding area before getting on the plane,” McAlhany concluded that Alpizar “looked normal”.
Of course this must mean that the surveillance video from the airport in Quito, Ecuador, taken just hours before he was shot, clearly showing Alpizar “acting unstable and aggressive at the airport in Quito” was manufactured by Mary Mapes. And minutes before boarding the flight at Miami International, witnesses describing Alpizar as being “agitated...and singing ‘Go Down Moses’” are far-right fundamentalists. Based on McAlhany’s surveillance expertize, we must conclude that the trained Air Marshals were trigger-happy idiots and...it is all Bush’s fault.
At least that is what Time magazine and their MSM brethren would like you to believe.
By December 9, Patrick Smith managed to churn out yet another veiled condemnation of the Federal Air Marshal Service in a Salon magazine article. Without any bias, Smith immediately concluded that “The shooting of Rigoberto Alpizar wasn't just a horrible mistake. It was also a major setback for sane airport security.” Instead of leading the article with the fact that a wacko passenger flipped-out and credibly threatened to detonate a bomb, Smith immediately charged that, “two sky marshals shot and killed an apparently unarmed and mentally unstable passenger”.
When pondering if “the marshals (were) justified in shooting”, Smith decided that “For now that's an impossible question to answer...but already there is controversy brewing”. The “controversy” stems from the conclusive evidence that “At least one passenger has stepped forward to say that Alpizar did not, in fact, make any mention of a bomb”.
At least there are more Elvis sightings than people who didn’t hear the word “bomb”.
Jean Hill was looking directly at JFK when he was assassinated and this is what she had to say, “I saw them shooting from the knoll. I did get the impression that day that there was more than one shooter, but I had the idea that the good guys and the bad guys were shooting at each other.” So what does that prove? I’m sure there were passengers on the Titanic who never saw an iceberg.
Although it was hard to find, a few news outlets reported that the total number of people on board Flight 924 was 133. But, the MSM just keeps quoting two passengers who claim they never heard Alpizar say the word “bomb”. And those two passengers probably never did hear Alpizar say the word “bomb”. But that doesn’t mean a damn thing. The only significance these two passengers have is the significance afforded them by the skewed MSM coverage of them.
Nowhere is there any mention of the remaining 130 people onboard Flight 924 being asked if they heard the word “bomb”. Even if the word “bomb” was never uttered by Alpizar (and that is a stretch), the odds would be in favor of “at least one person” thinking he/she heard the word “bomb”. But I guess that the MSM wants nothing to get in the way of their paranoid “America is the bad guy” fantasies.
By December 16, the MSM started backing off their attempts at steamrollering the impression of Wild West air marshals shooting without just provocation and Smith, again in Salon magazine, wrote a follow-up to his December 9 story. In his follow-up, Smith admits that his prior article “tends to imply that the marshals had fired in error”. And...he also admits that, “I don't believe they did. It appears the men did exactly what they were trained to do.”
BUT....
Without skipping a beat, Smith intellectualizes that his, “problem is less with the shooting per se...than with the system that set off the chain of events in the first place: our irrational obsession with the Sept. 11”. According to Smith, “our irrational obsession with the Sept. 11” is evidenced by the fact that, ” the Spanish, as victims, are sensible enough to realize that there's only so much you can do, and don't squander their resources on measures that do nothing to prevent bombings and everything to waste time and infringe on people's rights.”
Irrational obsession with the Sept. 11? The Spanish? A nut is running the loony bin!
That’s correct. Smith is actually using the Spanish example to lecture Americans on how to cope with terrorism. Again, from Smith’s fantasy world, we are told that, “The citizens of Madrid might be fearful of additional carnage, but they're also sensible and, in a quiet way, defiant.” That’s the first time I have ever seen a thesaurus produce the word “defiant” as a synonym for “surrender”.
Smith believes that prior to September 11, “Hijackings...seldom resulted in more than a temporary inconvenience”. I guess, among other things, Smith has forgotten: the 1976 Palestinian hijack of Air France Flight 193 at Entebbe Airport, Uganda; the 1985 hijack of TWA Flight 847 (an American Navy diver is shot in the head at point blank range and his body is thrown out onto the tarmac) or the chapter on 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer. Klinghoffer, a disabled American tourist, was murdered by Muslim terrorists in 1985 when the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. Under the direction of Abu Abbas, Klinghoffer was shot and killed and thrown overboard with his wheelchair.
An interesting sidebar to the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking Is that fact that Abbas was captured by U.S. Special Forces near Baghdad, Iraq on April 15, 2003. But how could that be? Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with harboring terrorists.
The extent to which the MSM will go in order to fault the Bush administration is sickening. When a deranged passenger goes crazy onboard an airliner, and gets shot by Federal Air Marshals for reaching in a bag widely believed to contain a bomb, the MSM immediately goes into March Hare mode. Aside from finding two passengers who can’t remember hearing the word “bomb”, the MSM immediately started to question the quality of Federal Air Marshals...”What prior law enforcement training did they have prior to becoming air marshals? – Is their training adequate?”
That’s as stupid as asking what medical training a doctor had prior to attending medical school.
The MSM’s coverage of the Flight 924 shooting had nothing to do with flight marshal training or a concern over Alpizar’s death. It was just another opportunity for the MSM to take a swipe at the Bush administration and roll out the red carpet for terrorism. To compare the Spanish experience with the threat facing America proves that “journalists” like Smith don’t know what the hell they are talking about. It is also more evidence that, in the eyes of the MSM, getting Bush is more important than protecting you from terrorist threats.
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