Following the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando back in June, the left and its media quickly circled through its cycle of denial. The attack was the worst mass public shooting on American soil — so guns became a target. Not only that, the shooting was carried out at a gay nightclub on the club’s Latin night, so another narrative quickly emerged that the attack was a hate crime.
The fact that shooter Omar Mateen had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State numerous times before the attack, and had a father with sympathies to the Taliban, made no difference. Such an attempt by the Obama administration and the media to switch the motive from jihad to anything else comically (if it weren’t so tragic) led to al-Qaida releasing a statement urging jihadists to “avoid targeting places and crowds where minorities are generally found,” because if sympathetic minorities get killed then, “the federal government will be the one taking full responsibility.”
Part of the “confusion” — willful or not — could have been alleviated months ago, had the FBI released the transcripts earlier. Well, though the FBI has been withholding it, we’ve now finally learned the true motive — and, here’s a shocker, it wasn’t as Obama and the media had suggested. As Omar Mateen himself stated, the massacre he carried out in Orlando was motivated by opposition to America’s war on ISIS.
Via The Washington Free Beacon:
The domestic terrorist behind the Orlando nightclub massacre was motivated by a Pentagon drone strike in Iraq a month before the shooting, according to police transcripts made public last week.
Conversations between Omar Mateen and an Orlando police negotiator on June 12 were kept secret by FBI and local police until Friday. The secrecy contributed to misleading media accounts of the terrorist’s motives in the days after the killings.
The transcripts were released by Orlando police Friday after a Florida court hearing held in response to a lawsuit filed by several news organizations.
During an exchange in the early morning hours of June 12, an Orlando Police Department negotiator identified only as “Andy” asked Mateen, who was speaking by cell phone from inside the club, to tell him what was going on.
“Yo, the air strike that killed Abu Wahid a few weeks ago… that’s what triggered it, okay?” said Mateen, who earlier in the conversation identified himself as a follower the Islamic State terror group.
“They should have not bombed and killed Abu Wahid,” the former security guard declared. “Do your f—ing homework and figure out who Abu Wahid is, okay?”
For those unaware (which I imagine is most people), Abu Wahid was an ISIS military commander responsible for overrunning most of the Anbar province in 2014. He previously had allegiance to al-Qaida during the Iraq War before joining ISIS. He had appeared in a number of the terror group’s execution videos.
So — here’s a shocker to those still in denial — one might reasonably conclude Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was inspired by alliance to ISIS, if not directly guided by the group.
Source: Allen West
