Two Military Building Shootings Linked to Same Rifle--Likely Third Shooting Linked, Too

I only mention it because it's getting so little coverage in the national media-the three shootings at the Pentagon are being reported as if the targets were only incidental. The three separate shootings all occurred in pre-morning dark, the last one occurring overnight Monday. The most recent target of the unknown shooter was a Marine Corps recruiting station in Chantilly, Virginia.

Earlier shootings at the Marine Corps Museum and the Pentagon occurred a week earlier. No one was injured in any of the shootings but investigating authorities believe the shooter fired from a considerable distance with high-velocity rounds.

The investigation is being headed by the capitol police but the FBI and other authorities are also participating. Presumably, it was forensic testing of bullet fragments which led police to announce that the bullets came from the same weapon. The FBI is following investigative protocol in not announcing the make and model of the weapon used in the shootings. As of yesterday, the two earlier shootings were conclusively linked and outcomes have not yet been released in this third and most recent shooting.

Most disturbing is the increasing tendency of federal authorities to downplay such occurrences. Certainly, Americans understand the dangers of overreaction or jumping to conclusions before facts could support such conclusions. But treating a sniper as an urban nuisance, and the military target as only incidental, is a political consideration, and a dangerous one at that.

Police agencies must follow the directive of the leadership, and their lack of forthrightness cannot much be faulted. What can be faulted is the mixed security messages Americans are receiving from Homeland Security Director Napolitano and the President. Both Obama and Napolitano seemed very much in a rush to dismiss the Fort Hood murders as one-off activity by a lone nutjob.

In this current spate of shootings, wouldn't the national media be curious to know who's doing the shooting? So what is it about the national media that so intensively followed the D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad that suspends interest in this new sniper? Is it just because no one has been killed? That's part of it, certainly, but not the best part of it.

The best part of it is that this latest sniper is obviously targeting the military, and that's where the story gets interesting for its lack of media attention. Shouldn't there be some curiosity about who is doing the shooting? The answer options are not hard to come by.

From the standpoint of the national liberal media, the best outcome would be that the shooter is a right-wing provocateur--as unlikely as that is. Less attractive are the answer options most likely. One guess may be that the shooter is a left-wing or liberal ideologue who hates the military and opposes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The liberal media wouldn't want to play that up; they fear losing their upfront seats at Robert Gibbs' press conferences. Nor would they want to countenance another conclusion-that the shooter is an Islamic extremist sparked to action by some ill creature like Major Hasan or Anwar Al-Alaki. They wouldn't want to write about that, either, not without a go-ahead from the religio-politico hypersensitive leadership in the White House.

Frankly, I've no clue as to who the shooter is. I'm just sayin' that it is a story that deserves coverage. At the moment, the national media may be able to ignore the estimated $20,000 in damage to the Pentagon windows, but why wait until someone is killed before covering the story? If a person crouches in a car with a scoped AR-15 and fires ten 5.56 caliber rounds into the Pentagon windows from 500 yards away, you'd think it would get more coverage than the zillion times you saw attendees taking down some wacky progressive woman in a wig at a Rand Paul rally. Well, wouldn't you?