Here are two that struck me this afternoon. The first is from the Tsarnaevs’ father, via the NYT:
Q: Did he want to be an American citizen?
A. He wanted to, of course. Why not?
Q. But it didn’t work out, right?
A. Because with his girlfriend, there was a scandal. He hit her lightly. He was locked up for half an hour. There was jealousy there. He paid $250, that was it, he went home. Because of that — in America you can’t touch a woman, they wouldn’t give him citizenship.
A. Because of that they didn’t give him citizenship?
Q. He had gone through the interview, that was it. But they said, he said, they will check the federal authorities, when they check me they will give it. He would have been granted it, he passed the interview. Now we have a new system where they check young people. Because he is a Muslim, I think, and a Chechen, too.
Is this some kind of clue? Some shred of personal resentment that might have been Jihadized? Then this statement of the obvious:
“They didn’t practice tradecraft,” said one official, a veteran counterterrorism investigator who has been briefed on the case. “Listen, I just don’t understand how anybody could do something like that and basically go home and expect that they wouldn’t get caught.”
Another official pointed to one obvious flaw in their operational strategy. “They apparently didn’t have a plan to escape,” the official said.
This was not professional terrorism. And the response seems to me – with the benefit of hindsight and information no one probably had last night – way out of proportion to the actual threat. But – if we are allowed any light relief at this moment – this quote from the father is priceless:
Yes, he was in Makhachkala. Makhachkala, he was never out my sight. He used to sleep till lunchtime, then we visited relatives. We went to Chechnya to visit relatives. He only communicated with me and his cousins. There was nobody (else). People know. I would ask him, did you come here to sleep or what?
That sounds more like a loser than a pro.
The Dish 