Goodman: 'Lone gunman' wasn't so alone (must read on the Tiller murder)

[underpants]

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_12511074

It is believed that the shooter acted alone.

Surely, that's true. No one else was standing beside suspect Scott Roeder when it is believed he killed Dr. George Tiller in the sanctuary of his church.

But Michael Griffin also acted alone when he killed David Gunn in 1993. Paul Hill acted alone when he killed John Britton in 1994. John Salvi acted alone and so did Eric Rudolph and James Kopp. This suspect is hardly lonely in this murderous cast of lone actors.

It was an isolated incident.

So it was. There was no grand scheme of assassinations. But it was also an isolated incident when Tiller's clinic was first bombed in 1986. It was an isolated incident when he was shot in both arms in 1993. Each anthrax threat, each invasion, even the vandalizing that took place last month at his Wichita clinic were all linked in a chain of "isolated incidents."

The pro-life community reacted with shock.

No doubt. But where was the shock at the fringe groups they forgot to disavow? At the "Tiller Watch" page that Operation Rescue featured? At the postings by one Scott Roeder calling Tiller the "concentration camp Mengele of our day"? At the Defensive Action Statement that says murdering an "abortionist" is "justifiable"?

I have covered far too many such murders. As a First Amendment absolutist, I don't believe that words kill. But this week, I can't help wondering whether rhetoric can justify a crime in the mind of a fanatic. Can't words provide the sort of perverse moral platform that jihadists stand on and the alternate universe in which a "lone nut" can find a home?

Consider the verbal targeting of "Tiller the Baby Killer" that preceded this assassination. What do you say, for example, about Bill O'Reilly, who attacked Tiller repeatedly as someone who would "kill a baby a half-hour before the baby is supposed to be birthed for no reason whatsoever other than the mother has a pain in her foot"? Or should we let O'Reilly say it himself? The unrepentant Fox News host boasts "no backpedaling here. ... I report honestly every single thing we said about Tiller was true." Except that it wasn't.

One way is for those who truly "denounce the murder" to take on the chorus, the backup singers, who still provide the doo-wop for the next deranged soloist.

You see, this suspect was not such a lone gunman. And no, I am afraid, this was not an isolated incident.

[Blue_Tires]

1. that can't be right...

there are dozens of low-post-count wonders in GD who swear up and down O'Reilly's words had ZERO influence on the shooter, that there is NO proof that the extreme anti-choice groups ever condoned murder, that a lone crazed nutbar ALWAYS acts on his own volition and is never influenced by extreme rhetoric, and that there is no real fundamental difference betweek Operation Rescue and say, Greenpeace...:sarcasm:

this is one of the strangest weeks i've ever spent on DU, and I've been around awhile...i need a nice long vacation from the site...