Multicause!

Too many reasons that this happened. From TampaBay.com:

TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his actions:

The man tried to rob him.

The man grabbed Bruce's crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English.

The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.

"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them.

So he may be gay, have roid rage, and be worked up by right-wing rhetoric in the wake of Ft. Hood.

More American terrorists

Missed this originally from Neiwert.

Memo to Palin: Here are some other domestic terrorists.

Bush's pet terrorist

From Digby:

Luis Posada Carriles, an admitted terrorist wanted for crimes in Latin America, had a nice dinner the other night.

...the man being honored by 500 fellow Cuban Americans at a sold-out gala was Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago [...]

Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism.

...

Analysts speculate that the U.S. government has dodged calls for prosecution of Posada for fear he would disclose details of CIA involvement in coups, assassination plots and scandals, including the Iran-Contra Affair.

Peter Kornbluh, head of the Cuba Documentation Project at George Washington University's National Security Archive, has compiled declassified CIA and FBI documents on Posada that show he remained in close touch with Washington handlers throughout his covert service.

"The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration's commitment to wage a war on terrorism," he said of Posada's coming-out party.

More from Digby on Justice Department's almost purposeful incompotence in managing his hearings.

Useful for 20th century CIA ops part of course.

"It seemed he was reading it from left to right, and got the message entirely wrong."

Alastair Horne interviewed in Salon. A lot of it has to do with the embrace of his work on Algeria by people as diverse as Bush/Blair, Sharon, the PLO, and Pinochet. Needless to say, he's not sure they all got the point...

"they should see Reagan"

From Hilzoy, again, on the Republicans' first debate:

"Giuliani said the only thing worse than an American-led military offensive against Iran would be Iran having nuclear weapons, which he called "the worst nightmare'' of the Cold War. The way to stop Iran, he said, was resolute American leadership facing down the Iranian president.

"He has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan,'' Giuliani said."

1. And here I thought the worst nightmare of the cold war was mutually assured destruction.
2. Hilzoy goes through Reagan's inconsistent and incomprehensible anti-terrorism and anti-Iran policies:

Maybe, instead, Giuliani thinks that when the Iranians see a US President, they should see the Ronald Reagan whose administration failed to respond at all when terrorists bombed our embassies in Beirut and Kuwait, and who did not fire his Secretary of Defense when he countermanded the President's order to strike terrorist training facilities after 241 of our troops anjd 64 other people were killed. Or perhaps he has in mind instead the Reagan who, when the marine barracks were bombed, swore that we would stay in Lebanon and then, four months later, began pulling our troops out.

That's not even the whole thing! But the Reagan myth has taken hold. The general public doesn't like it questioned because it seems like a mean attack on a nice man. The Republicans don't like it questioned because they cling to a childlike faith in Big Daddy, and Reagan is the most recent one they have to feel good about. That, and they tend not to care about logical consistency.