Back at College, Suspect Called Boston Bombs 'Crazy': Classmate

[elleng]

Source: nyt/reuters

DARTMOUTH, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Working out at the gym at their sleepy New England college, two students chatted about how "crazy" it was that bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon. Three days later, one of them was named a prime suspect.

Returning to campus on Sunday after being evacuated on Friday during a massive manhunt for the bombers, students at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth swapped recollections of seeing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, back in the dorm, at class and in the gym in the aftermath of the bombings.

Tsarnaev was working out in the gym from 8 to 10 p.m. on Tuesday, listening to music on his iPod, when he struck up a conversation with fellow sophomore Zach Bettencourt.

"It's crazy this is happening now," Bettencourt recalled Tsarnaev telling him when the bombings came up. "This (these bombings) is so easy to do. These tragedies happen all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq." . .

Students were stunned to learn that the teen they knew as a friendly, pot-smoking transfer student from the UMass Boston, who took easy courses and got middling grades, eluded an army of law enforcement officers to become the most hunted man in the country.

Just as disturbing, said Bettencourt, was the casual way Tsarnaev chatted about the bombings during his gym workout.





Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/04/21/us/21reuters-usa-explosions-boston-college.html?hp

[onehandle]

1. Hardly a terror cell. Just messed up kids. nt

[Bluenorthwest]

5. 26 and 19 are kids now? 26 seems a bit long in the tooth to be a kid.

I'm sick of hearing the excused as 'kids'. Grown men. One pushing 30 and married with a kid.

[LisaL]

12. Yes, they grow up so slow these days.

[Igel]

28. "Kid" and "adult" are what you need them to be.

If somebody's accused of doing something that you don't want them accused of, 25 is still a "kid." With all the arguments about how their socialization is delayed, how their prefrontal cortex isn't necessarily fully mature, etc.

If there's somebody you want to defend, then 14 is an adult for all intents and purposes, fully able and properly legally justified in making life-and-death decisions or binding his/her family to large financial commitments.

It's all a question of what you want to defend or attack, justify or excoriate.

A foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of petty minds (slightly altered from the original, with a rather large change in meaning).

[SunSeeker]

2. Dumbass made no attempt to run. I guess he thought the cops were too stupid to ID him. nt

[truthisfreedom]

3. I think he wanted to get caught, to be "martyred".

[SunSeeker]

4. If that were true, he wouldn't have run over his brother trying to get away from the cops. nt

[elleng]

7. Right and that appears to have been truly accidental.

IMO, if anyone would have wanted to be martyred, it was #1.

[SunSeeker]

8. Yes. He was wearing a suicide vest, unlike his younger brother. nt

[snagglepuss]

29. They were arrogent and had it not been for the photo and victim who identified them, they probably

would not have been caught.

[itsrobert]

6. "pot-smoking"

Now we know the reason. Those beatniks are going to ruin this country.





note: this is not a serious response.

[VWolf]

24. Still, the fact that it was mentioned

offers a window on the writer's bias.

[KatyMan]

27. Unless it was meant more in the sense of

'the guy smokes pot, he's a peaceful fun loving guy' ? Maybe?

[Sunlei]

9. If only his older brother had left him out of his plans & he had gone to authorities.

To late now. I read that when the father went home to russia, the older brother was considered the main 'head of the household' in the younger brothers life. Even if he loved his brother, a 19 year old should know the difference between right and wrong.

[elleng]

10. Yes Yes Yes,

but siblings have all sorts of problems.

[Sunlei]

13. yes, siblings & from what I've read, the experts say-

persons in their teens and 20s are very impressionable.

impressionable-
1.open and easy to mold: ready to accept or be impressed by the experiences, opinions, and personalities of other people

[elleng]

17. Yes, and even when they don't WANT to be impressed by their elder siblings,

the emotional bonds can be very difficult to break. (Family situation causes me to say this. )

[LisaL]

11. These bombings is so easy to do? I guess he was the one to know.

[elleng]

14. Yes and no. He said

'These tragedies happen all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq,' and the fact is, about his family's home territory,

Search for Home Led Suspect to Land Marred by Strife.

According to his aunt, he was born in Kalmykia, a barren patch of Russian territory along the Caspian Sea. His family moved to Kyrgyzstan, an independent former Soviet republic in Central Asia, then to Chechnya, the turbulent republic in the Russian Federation that is his father’s ancestral home. Then to Dagestan. . .

Dagestan may have made him feel more at home than the United States, but it was a strange place to find comfort, given the nearly nonstop violence and the persistent unease it engenders among those who live here.

In the days just before Mr. Tsarnaev visited, a 13-year-old was wounded after picking up a package booby-trapped with a hand grenade, and a traffic police post was fired upon by someone with a grenade launcher.

Two weeks after his arrival, another grenade was tossed in a residential area. It was apparently meant to draw the police into an ambush, because several minutes later, in a pattern eerily similar to the marathon bombing, a larger bomb hidden in a garbage pail went off, killing a small child and injuring another.

And so it went all the time he was in Dagestan: two or three deadly bombings a month on average, constant “special operations” in which the federal police killed dozens of people they said were Muslim insurgents, and numerous other attacks.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/world/europe/pilgrim-in-violent-land-suspect-found-comfort-in-d

[LisaL]

15. Aren't we discussing the Boston bombing here?

[elleng]

18. Yes, done by 2 young men with family and experiences from area in quote above.

We are looking to understand their motives.

[LisaL]

19. Well, they were just infants, really.

What motives could they possibly have had?

[elleng]

21. His brother has been back there recently,

which is why the NYTimes wrote the above.

[Coyotl]

16. "These tragedies happen all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq."

What do those countries have in common?

[elleng]

20. He may have been trying to deflect from his/their family's home territory,

by mentioning area countries wherein we here are aware of 'similar' violence.

[Coyotl]

22. Or, he objects to the USA invading countries on the other side of the world and causing violence

Which would make him a violent political dissenter. I remember well the bombs going off in the USA during Vietnam.

[Douglas Carpenter]

23. but the domestic US bombings that occurred during the Vietnamese War of Independence were directed

at targets such as labs, ROTC buildings and draft board offices and other symbols or institutions of the War effort. I could be wrong - but I don't recall any bombings directed at pure civilian institutions or events unless they had at least a symbolic connection with the American war efforts in Indochina. Even September 11, 2001 was an attack on the centers of American military and economic power with an apparent attempted attack on the centers of American political power. Even in the 9/11 case there was a strongly implied political message in the attack. In the Boston Marathon attack it appears that there was no apparent implied political message and the attack was on something that had no real or symbolic meaning in regards to America's political, economic or military power. I find this most confounding. Of course, I think these boys did it. But what they were thinking has me completely stumped.

[dothemath]

25. Stumped as well ..................

"In the Boston Marathon attack it appears that there was no apparent implied political message and the attack was on something that had no real or symbolic meaning in regards to America's political, economic or military power. I find this most confounding. Of course, I think these boys did it. But what they were thinking has me completely stumped."
******************************************************************
I think you are exactly right, Douglas, and I am confounded as well. There seems to be a strong
possibility, however, that their acts were driven by religious beliefs. If it is true, there are no
boundaries to the atrocities permissible by those beliefs and there will always be those driven
to persuade others to seek martyrdom with its promised rewards. I sincerely hope that anyone
who reads this does not fail to notice I did not single out a particular religion. History has demonstrated for thousands of years all who have 'divine guidance' can, and will, listen to the
voices in their head and commit evil acts. Historically, there have been a handful of people with
religious beliefs who have prayed for solutions, but they are woefully outnumbered and my fear is that will remain the case until Armageddon comes, in one form or another.

[Douglas Carpenter]

26. Even burning witches was striking at an enemy (real or imagine) of their faith. Bombing an abortion

clinic or a movie cinema that shows "Hollywood filth," would suggest a strike against the enemies of God. Religious violence like political violence almost always involves attacking a target that represents a real or imagined symbol of some real or imagined hostile force. This attack just does not fit that bill. Furthermore, there was no message or implied message so that anyone could know what it is that caused an offense and what it is that the government or the public must stop doing or start doing to avoid future attacks. Even violence against an author or artist who caused offense would be a message and act of intimidation that everyone would understand. There was no religious or political message delivered in the context of this attack. This is why I think it is not correct to use the word terrorism based on what we know so far - in that the word terrorism implies an attempt to coerce or intimidate by acts of wanton and random violence a change. There was not even an appearance of any effort to coerce or intimated a change in anything. If the older brother was hearing voices in his head and the strength of his personality coerced the younger brother into joining him in this attack - then we are down to plain simple insanity - mixed with misguided dependency - which I suppose is a possibility.