Saturday, January 7, 2017

Jihad? No, I Suspect Mental Illness

In November, Santiago appeared unannounced in the FBI offices in Anchorage, complaining that the Islamic State had gained control of his mind and was urging him to fight on its behalf.
The FBI conducted a background check, learning of his military record, which included service in Iraq, but found no connection to terror groups. Determining that the man apparently needed psychiatric care, the FBI alerted local law enforcement and turned him over to their custody for a medical referral. It is not clear whether Santiago received treatment following that incident.
The suspect is 26, a very common age for paranoid schizophrenia.  Thirty years ago, his delusion would have been that CIA or KGB were taking over his mind.  Pretty clearlt, Santiago wasn't hospitalized or at least not for very long.

1/6/17 ABC channel 10:
His maternal aunt, Maria Ruiz, who lives in Union City, told reporters in New Jersey that he wasn't the same when he came back from Iraq. 
"He lost his mind," Ruiz said in Spanish, as she referred to a psychiatric hospitalization that occurred after he allegedly suffered from hallucinations.
Federal law enforcement officials investigated Santiago last year. He told FBI agents that he heard voices in his head that told him to watch Islamic State materials, but he said he was in control and had no intention of hurting anyone, according to The New York Times
Voices in his head.  Clear enough?  Until we confront the left's destruction of our state mental health system in the 1960s and 1970s, this is going to continue.  It isn't Prozac or Big Pharma.

What drives me crazy is how many people insist these are false flag operations done by the government, with no apparent knowledge of what schizophrenia causes.

3 comments:

  1. He may well be mentally ill; but so are most islamists.

    There is a nice picture of this fellow now making the rounds where he is wearing his moslem-style headscarf, with his moslem-style beard, holding his finger in the manner of mohammedans. He's a jihadi.

    The whole ideology is sick.

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  2. It used to be said that the difference between insanity and political or religious ideology is the number of believers. I think most jihadis are not truly insane, although the difference is subtle. The fact that this guy went to the FBI tells me he was not operating entirely on his own power.

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  3. I'd say mental illness and terrorism, in the following sense...

    ISIS propaganda clearly influenced this guy. Without that propaganda, his delusions might have led him in some direction that wasn't so violent.

    So, while this guy is insane, the effect is consistent with the ISIS campaign.

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