It is looking as if Omar Mateen could have and should have been stopped.

[cali]

Beyond the gun control issue, which I completely support, there was a fucking mountain of evidence that this guy was dangerous. Some of it was old and some of it was very recent. From the dealer who refused to sell him bulk ammunition, to the co-workers who raised concerns about him- and more. So much more. It really looks like the FBI dropped the ball.

read:http://www.wsj.com/articles/orlando-shooter-raised-suspicion-at-gun-shops-1466037291

http://abcnews.go.com/US/details-emerge-orlando-nightclub-shooter-omar-mateen/story?id=39891550

[tonyt53]

1. The FBI? I'm not so sure. His family sure as hell did though.

[redstateblues]

2. I agree-When the FBI guy first spoke

He mentioned that they had interviewed him twice and found nothing. It struck me as odd that they would lead with that. It was like the old courtroom strategy of shining a light on your weakness right out of the gate. What he didn't mention was the contact the killer had with a suicide bomber and the fact that he had been to Saudi Arabia twice. I think the FBI may need more manpower-a guy like Mateen needed to be kept under surveillance

[librarylu]

8. The suicide bomber was mentioned

Mateen knew him but that was all.

The trips to Saudi Arabia were for religious pilgrimages.

http://www.businessinsider.com/omar-mateen-saudi-uae-umrah-2016-6

Uh, aren't we supposed to be friends of Saudi Arabia?

20/20 hindsite is always best.

[Igel]

15. Pehaps if you've performed umrah you should be on a watch list.

Can't be safe.

That would make a lot of US Muslims suspicious for reasons of religion. And keep a lot of foreign Muslims from being allowed to visit the US. Almost starts looking like a kind of ban on a subset of Muslims for religion and not danger.

[librarylu]

20. It does

Since we don't know who might go off next maybe everyone should be on a watch list.

Think of the jobs that would create! We'd need watchers to watch the watchers, too, just in case.

[Yo_Mama]

31. And then watchers to watch the watchers of the watchers - 200% employment.

Everyone in the OrthoStasi. Not a pleasant picture.

[Yo_Mama]

30. That's horrible - pilgrimage in no way correlates to wanting to kill people.

I'm sorry, but that is no solution.

Of course, this guy apparently did say a lot of things that indicated he had bad beliefs. But the umrah was not one of those indications.

[99th_Monkey]

23. "aren't we supposed to be friends of Saudi Arabia?" Those 'secret' 28 pages of the 911 Commission

Report say otherwise. i.e. The Saudis financed the 911 perps. History repeats itself.

Yes of course those 2 trips to Saudi Arabia were crucially important huge Red Flags,
flags that were ignored.

[librarylu]

27. The 911 reports are coming out now

At the time, or soon after, 71% of Americans reportedly believed Iraq was behind it.

Not all Saudis funded it. What about our buddies in the oil business?

Mateen was there, what, four and five years ago? There was no evidence he was there for any reason other than Umrah, no evidence he hooked up with any terrorists, radical groups, trained with anyone.....

Apparently he didn't seem dangerous then, at least to the FBI.

[leveymg]

28. There's other evidence- Omar was also an online follower of Anwar al-Awlaki

Just like the Boston Bombers, the Ft Bragg shooter, the Times Square bomber, the Shoe Bomber and virtually every other actual AQ inspired terrorist going back to the Flt 77 hijackers who were housed by al-Awlaki when they first arrived in 2000.

Also like the Boston Bombers, Omar's family was a beneficiary of CIA visas and exile opposition group programs. If you must know what the common thread is that runs through most of these incidents, that is it.

[jberryhill]

3. "Stopped" by whom and how?

[cali]

4. The FBI could have kept him under surveillance

[Fumesucker]

5. I doubt there is anywhere remotely near enough FBI agents to surveil everyone that should be watched

You would need at least four agents to watch someone 24/7, three eight hour shifts per day and then another agent to cover for weekends, vacations, sick days and so on.

[tonyt53]

6. An impossible task for sure.

[Abouttime]

29. Maybe the agents investigating Hillary

Should be reassigned to counterterrorism. So far there has been no sign of wrongdoing by Clinton, her private server has shown to be more secure than the ones used by the State Department and DNC. I think the agents time could be used more wisely, such as preventing mass murders.

[jberryhill]

9. 24 hours a day in shifts?

How many people's full time job and for how long?

[onehandle]

7. Anyone who has been on a terrorist watch list should be pinged to the Feds when they buy a gun.

That minimal action, which would not affect your average gun owner, would have done the job.

[jberryhill]

10. Okay, and then what?

He had been a security guard for years. It was his JOB to carry a gun.

So, he bought a gun. Then what? Arrest him for buying a gun?

[Bluenorthwest]

16. Was it his job to carry THAT gun? No. How about all that ammo? Again, not required for professional

reasons at all. Actually his professional need offered parameters which make the actual purchases even more suspect, not less suspect.

[librarylu]

11. I think that gun dealer

should have been on a watch list after his posts on Facebook in November calling for Obama to be "handcuffed, removed from Office and charged with Treason and then publicly executed!"

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/omar-mateen-st-lucie-county-shooting-center

[PoliticAverse]

13. The FBI is notified when someone on the terrorist watch list buys a gun. The Orlando shooter...

wasn't on the terrorist watch list when he bought his guns.

[Amishman]

21. that is where the FBI screwed up

even if they did not have enough evidence to charge him, he should have stayed on the watch list

and yes, the FBI absolutely needs to be notified if someone on the watch list buys a gun

[jberryhill]

22. Okay, so let's say he was on the list and bought a gun

Then what?

The guy was an armed security guard for years.

He was regularly carrying a gun when the FBI had earlier contact with him.

But let's say he was on the list, he buys a gun, and the FBI is informed. Then what? Full time surveillance for how long?

[Amishman]

24. bring him in for questioning

see if he consents to a polygraph, and generally revisit the investigation.

It won't be perfect but it would give a second chance to catch someone, particularly since if they are buying a gun for an attack they are likely pretty far along in their planning and there very well could be other evidence of their plans.

[jberryhill]

25. "bring him in for questioning"?

Let me see if I understand you.

You believe, that in the United States of America, a person who has committed no crime and for whom there is no probable cause to believe they have committed a crime, can be taken into custody, forced to submit to questioning, and given a polygraph test?

You actually believe this?

Okay, fine, we'll take that as something that is actually legal.

Now, you have him in custody. You start asking him questions. He says that he prefers to remain silent and does not consent to a polygraph test.

What do you do next?

Furthermore, where is this "other evidence" coming from? We search his house too?

"generally revisit the investigation."

Okay, the investigation last time around did not find that he had done anything illegal (and, in fact, he hadn't). What would be turned up in "revisiting" it? That he had been an armed security guard, had a habit of saying obnoxious things, and has been carrying firearms for years without committing any crime.

What then?

[REP]

33. Perhaps while being on the watch list and questioned twice

The FBI should have spoken with his employers and suggested strongly that he be moved to non-armed duty and his CCW license revoked along with the clearance that expedited his gun purchases? I mean while he was on the watch list; not once he had been removed but while he was being investigated. There's no guarantee it would have stopped him, but it would have at least made it a little more difficult.

I don't believe in locking people up because they might do something. I don't believe in "pre crime." I think the FBI isn't entirely trustworthy. But I think that having a person be put on unarmed job duties with no reduction in pay while on a watch list and/or active investigation may not be an unreasonable thing. It'd have to be fleshed out much better than I've done in this post I've typed on my phone though.

[Solomon]

12. I read somewhere that they contacted him with an undercover agent and tapped his phone, etc.

If doing that doesn't produce further suspicion, what the hell do you think they could have done?

[cali]

17. Excuse me? You're fucking accusing me of using puke talking points?

You really are a.....

go.... yeah, that.

[Bluenorthwest]

18. FBI too busy checking library records to actually notice those who should be noticed.

They did the same think with the Boston Bombers. They were alerted but gave them the all clear. They were incorrect to do so in both cases. These are extremely costly errors of judgement and it is starting to look systemic and habitual.

[Igel]

19. I found the "appeared to be speaking a ME language" to be amusing.

I once saw a language demonstration by Kenneth Pike. He's an old-school linguist who was really good at eliciting data from monolingual native speakers in order to produce a grammar and basic lexicon. The kind of thing you need when you run into a formerly unknown language and want to describe it.

The faculty at the university garden-pathed him. He was stumped. And he was stumped because he used as one of his inputs race. Perhaps unconsciously so. The informant ("consultant&quot was a black woman, and he got the grammatical basics down, some vocab, all the linguistic things. But when he was asked what language or language family he thought the language was in, he flopped. It was Garifuna, which is a hard language to categorize in the first place (being a creole). But "black" and "odd language" almost always points to Africa.

"Unfamiliar foreign language spoken by somebody who looks ME must be ME." I assume Mateen was speaking Dari, since his father seems to be a Pakhtun nationalist.

[mainstreetonce]

26. If he was on a terrorism watch list why wasn't he fired?

A security guard on a watch list? Did the FBI notify his employer?

[jberryhill]

35. Do you believe the government should have the power to have people fired by putting them on a list?

The FBI doesn't notify anyone that someone is on the terror watch list.

The last time we had the government in the business of putting people on lists through unstated criteria, and leaning on their employers to fire them, it didn't work out well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that were later declared unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute.

A prime target: homosexuals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare

Both homosexuals and communist party members were seen as subversive elements in American society who all shared the same ideals of antitheism, rejection of bourgeois culture and middle-class morality, lack of conformity; they were scheming and manipulative and, most importantly, would put their own agendas above others in the eyes of the general population.[21] McCarthy also associated homosexuality and communism as "threats to the 'American way of life'."[22] Homosexuality was directly linked to security concerns, and more government employees were dismissed because of their homosexual sexual orientation than because they were left-leaning or communist. George Chauncey noted that, "The specter of the invisible homosexual, like that of the invisible communist, haunted Cold War America," and homosexuality (and by implication homosexuals themselves) were constantly referred to not only as a disease, but also as an invasion, like the perceived danger of communism and subversives.

[Demsrule86]

32. The FBI dropped the ball on this one

Head should roll including the director's. Why do we have a Gop as head of the FBI anyway...bad idea.

[rusty fender]

34. Maybe the FBI

was too busy looking at someone's email...