Briefly Noted: Mandalay Bay

I forget exactly why, but the question of what was behind the mass killing at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas (almost exactly 5 years ago) recurred to me during the last week or two. Today there are two articles out that raise the question of whether the mass killing was an ISIS sponsored event—as ISIS has repeatedly claimed. I have no inside knowledge to offer, but it’s passing strange that there really has been nothing remotely definitive offered up by the FBI regarding the motives of the killer.

The first article points to the second:

FBI Whistleblower Says 90% Certainty that the Las Vegas Mandalin Bay Was an ISIS Attack

Victoria Taft over at PJ Media has the story of an FBI whistleblower who has come forward with evidence that points to an ISIS connection to the Las Vegas massacre five years ago.  The incident claimed the lives of 58 people with nearly 900 injured or wounded.  Now, this former FBI agent says they believe there’s a 90% chance that ISIS Islamic terror organization was behind it.

Of course, the FBI still hasn’t publicly issued even an educated guess on the motive of the killer.  This despite his travel to ISIS hotspots, burner telephones receiving almost exclusively incoming calls, and the ISIS organization’s five claims that [scumbag’s name redacted] was one of their agents as they claimed responsibility for the attack.

Victoria Taft at PJMedia wrote the other article, and she makes what seems to me to be a fair point:

In 2019, the FBI finally issued a short report claiming the accountant, real estate investor, high-stakes gambler, and former McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed employee acted alone and had no political or religious agenda. The nation’s formerly premier law enforcement agency could not determine a motive.

That seems odd, given the J-6 political prosecutions in which FBI agents attribute all kinds of malevolence to “white nationalists” and assume that anyone around the Capitol Building that day, regardless of color and ethnicity, was determined to overthrow the government with pepper spray and MAGA hats …

On the one hand, remarkable reticence in expressing an opinion and a desire to have the nation simply “move on”—nothing to see here. On the other hand, remarkable determination to hype a nothing burger of an event—in security terms—and to impute the worst of possible motives to actors who appear to be harmless “little people.” In other words, to advance an ideological narrative that posits an “enemy within” that poses an existential threat to “our democracy”, meaning, the ruling class.

Now, in fairness to the whistleblower, he’s also careful, as is Taft. You can follow the link and additional facts that their opinions are based on. It’s essentially all circumstantial—which is not a knock. Circumstantial evidence, if there’s enough of it, points you in investigative directions that might yield conclusive evidence. As it is, the circumstantial evidence is certainly highly suggestive; the conclusion is restrained but pointed:

Guandolo concludes, “Right now there’s no other option on the table. All the evidence points to that. That’s all we’re saying. We’re saying, the fact the FBI hasn’t investigated it is unprofessional.”

We’ll say one thing for his theory: It makes more sense than what we’ve heard so far.

I’ll simply add that it is a known fact that the US Deep State was a significant enabler of ISIS and other jihadi groups, which we used in our efforts at regime changes in the Middle East and neighboring areas. I’m not saying that the US and ISIS (and other jihadi groups) were formal allies. I’m saying they became involved in temporary arrangements of convenience. I’m also saying that it’s one thing to attribute to ISIS attacks within the US that were small in scale or were thwarted. It’s a different thing to refuse to consider—not, at least, for the record—an ISIS angle to one of the most major terror attacks in US history. In the circumstances of the known US-ISIS connections.