Originally Posted by Geelong Cat:
“Where did I say he wasn't linked to ISIS? It seems as if you've taken my post and gone off on a tangent.
My point, to restate it, is that this attack and the man's actions afterwards look pretty amateurish. Perhaps that's because it was - it's not difficult to hijack a truck and drive it into a group of people, after all. My impression of ISIS is that they're a sophisticated group with a network of people across Europe - that something like this would be planned carefully, including ways to get the person out of the country afterwards. Established ways for people to get across borders while minimising the risk, providing fake identity papers, contacts in different cities who could provide people with a place to stay, that kind of thing.
But this attack looks like it was carried out by someone who, while undoubtedly being heavily influenced by ISIS and having links to them, pretty much decided to act on his own. It doesn't look sophisticated. In fact he looks like an idiot. If he'd worn gloves and not dropped his identity papers, they'd have had real difficulty catching him. And aside from being an idiot, it seems no one really helped him to flee after the attack either (I mean, he had 24 hours to get out! He could've been in Tunisia before they even knew it was him).
But as I said before, perhaps I'm simply wrong to assume ISIS are very organized. Perhaps it really is just individuals carrying out these attacks, without any strong organisational network behind them. Perhaps ISIS operates in this more haphazard way rather than with sophisticated world-wide planning (attacks like 9/11 aside).”
Ah now I'm with you. So you accept that this was an in all probability an attack influenced and inspired by Islamic State. An organisation with the stated intention of establishing a theocratic intolerant worldwide caliphate. And there is no credible evidence at all that this individual was mentally ill, just not very bright. We at least have concensus on this. Do we also have consensus that this guy may not be the only fake asylum seeker running around borderless Europe today? (Unless you wish to argue that this guy was genuinely in need of refugee status).
So if we have consensus for this what's your solution to the problem of identifying those who wish to commit mass religiously motivated murder before they can carry out their plans?