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No outside help, but he certainly got encouragement and inspiration from associations with several known terrorists. He attended the same mosque as a couple of the 9/11 attackers.
You don't say!
</sarcasm>
Of course he got encouragement and inspiration, but he did not get material or advisory aid, and that's the main point that separates it from being the same sort of situation as the 9/11 attacks. He did it on his own, without any actual aid from extremist organisations.
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He had numerous email exchanges with Al-Awlaki, who had also been the imam of that same mosque, and at the time of the emails had left the US to lead the al-queda organization in Yemen.
Irrelevant, see above.
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At the very least, it's a pretty wild dismissal of the significance of the at by the Obama administration. Be honest though, if Tim McVeigh had been a member of an Irish Catholic church, from which two other members had engaged in IRA bombings in the US, and whose pastor had since moved back to Ireland to lead an IRS terrorist cell, and McVeigh had had similar contact with said former pastor (while he was leading an IRA cell), would anyone have hesitated to connect the OK bombing to broader international IRA terrorism?
I can see your point, but even in the hypothetical situation you lay out, there is no direct help being given to Tim McVeigh, and as such, it's fairly presumptuous to put blame on the IRA. The argument is really between logic and "public opinion"/media spin(from both sides of that proverbial, and absolutely idiotic fence). Somehow the latter always wins out.
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Why in this case do some people insist on doing so in this case? It's already a downplay even to just call it isolated individual domestic terrorism, but to call it "workplace violence"? That's just absurd.
I agree that it is absurd to call it "workplace violence". It's ridiculous, and is yet another reason added to the many that explain why I'm not an Obama supporter(Buddy Roemer 2012!). It is individual domestic terrorism, isolated is a stretch as we have seen similarily motivated domestic terrorism in the years since 9/11(both thwarted and semi-successful incidents).
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Sometimes things are exactly what they look like though. And this absolutely looks like someone deciding to take part in a larger international terrorism effort. I think the same argument can be made when people work so hard to find the grey in every situation. This really isn't one of those IMO.
That was more of a blanket statement towards Varus'(and Theifx's for that matter) approach to all issues than just this on alone. Some things are just one thing or the other, but most aren't.