ISIS Gunmen In Vegas Executed US Defense Spy Paddock

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ISIS Gunmen In Vegas Executed
US Defense Spy Paddock

By Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive to Rense
10-8-17

Official cover-ups of crimes that implicate the national-security establishment, as the Vegas massacre surely has done, must be handled with patience learned from prior investigative experience in order to spot disinformation and assemble credible evidence into a reconstruction of the totality of the crime, including the sequence of events, role of other participants, relationship to the government, background and motive.

In pathetic contrast, the compliant news media portrays alleged gunman Stephen Paddock as a lone gunman and man of mystery without making an serious effort at uncovering his connections to the intelligence services, which happens to be the key to comprehending the reasons behind this puzzling mass murder. Then there is the planted single gunman claim like the FBI tip to Infowars that suspect Paddock was killed in the Bureau's assault and that antifa (anti-fascist, anti-racist anarchism) literature was found in the 32nd floor room at the Mandalay. (Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo countered that falsehood from the FBI by stating forthrightly that more than one shooter was involved.) Here it will be shown that Paddock was anything but a radical anarchist and instead worked as a contract agent for the Defense Department and CIA.

The FBI-Las Vegas police feud was discussed at the 4chan thread, which was soon closed down for new comments:

According to a source in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department:: “The LVMPD knows the motive behind the attack, but the FBI will not allow us to release the motive because it implicates the FBI in illegal arms deals and supplying arms to ISIS terrorists within U.S. borders. Stephen Paddock was an undercover FBI agent who participated in multiple illegal arms deals in the Las Vegas area in a gun-running entrapment scheme similar to Fast and Furious. Paddock thought he was engaging in another routine arms transfer, but ISIS had learned about the entrapment scheme and Paddock’s true identity. They killed him and carried out the massacre, and then fled the scene.

“Everything is being kept under extreme wraps because 1) armed ISIS terrorists are still at large and 2) this is very embarrassing to the FBI and they don’t want their scheme to become public knowledge. . . . People within LVMP are disgusted and are pushing for this information to be released to the public.”

Arguably more grotesque are the online snipers who falsely insist that the Vegas massacre never happened but was a stage-play faked by crisis actors. (There are crisis actors, but they are hired by public relations firms after a calamity to divert public attention from the actual trauma victims.)

Citizen journalism defies online censorship and trolls

In contrast to the paucity of information from the mainstream media, rense.com has posted eyewitness accounts and revelations from hotel staffers. Despite the shutdown of new comments under management pressure, the online boards reddit, 4chan and VOAT have done a fast and worthy job of separating out some nuggets of information from the chatter and planted disinfo. Unofficial citizen journalism has assembled the pieces needed for a cohesive picture of the alleged perpetrator and his connections with the intelligence establishment and to the radical Muslim ISIS.

From these informal sources, three salient issues have surfaced:
- indisputable evidence that a squad of multiple shooters were involved rather than just a lone gunman
- the relocation of one of Paddock’s airplanes between Virginia airports after an ATF agent was killed in the cover-up of Eric Holder’s Fast and Furious gun-peddling operation
- the visits of Paddock and companion Marilou Danley to the UAE, Jordan and Israel while President Barack Obama was starting to turn against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Paddock as Agency Spy against ISIS

Those morsels of vital information indicate that Paddock served for a long-time as contract agent for CIA-FBI gun-running and as a possible trained assassin.

The Mandalay Bay affair was likely part of a covert program to transfer weapons from the vaults of the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency of Homeland Security), fitted with hidden RFID tracking chips, to ISIS militants inside the USA. Suspecting a sting operation, the ISIS team in Las Vegas shot him to death in his room at the Mandalay immediately before proceeding to fire at the crowd of revelers attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Sunday night, October 1.

Police radio chatter and initial reports, especially in cases of politically sensitive crimes against public security, are often the most accurate, and therefore invariably followed by disinformation under a politicized cover-up. For an investigative journalist like myself, who led the probe into the Tokyo Subway gassing, consideration of early-on eyewitness reports and initial police comments is a rule of thumb. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) scanner (police-band radio) messages to and from the front-line cops is the indelible first draft, and what comes later is censorship.

The earliest time-sequence report out of Vegas was posted at reddit under “Gunshots Downtown Right Now?” by Caram2, who was alerted to the gunfire by his sister, a employee at the MGM Grand who escaped the concert by running to the nearby airport. The timeline is fresher and more revealing than his post-event introduction, which already by then was influenced by Fox News’ knee-jerk response of a lone gunman narrative from the FBI.

The comments below are his transcript from the LVMPD scanner. Here are a few notable excerpts of the salient points:

(The first gunshots were at 10:08)
10:11 Sister saying gunshots have slowed/stopped
10:29 2-4 shooters - some officers pinned down
10:38 Police say no shots fired 10-15 minutes
10:47 Scanner says two scenes, injured personnel
10:49 Reno and Trop(icana)
(note: Reno Avenue East is the location of the Tropicana, Excalibur and New York New York Hotels)
11:00 2 locations confirmed at Mandalay Bay and Ali Baba
(note: Henderson’s Ali Baba is a posh Lebanese restaurant.)
11:05 Scanner says 3 shooters unconfirmed. Hacienda and Trop/Vegas?? Has bodies / shooters. Not sure when last shots were fired. Tropicana offramp is losed.
(note: The Mandalay Bay is built on the site of the demolished Hacienda.
11:06 Scanner says multiple 419s?? Scanner: do not worry about injured, Neutralize Threat.
(note: 419 stands for “Dead Body”)
11:17 Officers outside the alleged shooter room at the Mandalay. . . .
11:18 NYNY shooter is heading to the Excalibur.
(note: NYNY is the New York New York Hotel two blocks north on Las Vegas Boulevard S)
1:34 Metro (police) press conference: 2 suspects dead/1 detained. One POC.
(note - POC: police officer casualty? Or person of color?)

Making Sense of the Chatter

The sister, who was near the stage, escaped the gunfire after a truck tore down a section of fence and she managed to reach safety at the nearby airport. Her mobile calls from the scene and the airport indicated the firing had slowed within the first 3 minutes. Therefore most of 1,000-2,000 bullets were fired in that short space of time, while the revelers were trying to disperse or find cover.

As part of the politicized gun-control debate, opponents of the Second Amendment have falsely claimed that a bump stock device (which uses recoil to re-engage the trigger) can enable a semiautomatic weapon, like the one found with Paddock, to fire 400 rounds per minute. This is a deliberate deceit, since 400 Rpm, take note here, is the “rate of fire” (as in highest firing rate during bursts) and not the number of bullets that can actually be shot within a minute. 400 shots would require 14 reloads and re-aiming, each requiring about 10 seconds, for a total down time of more than 2 minutes.

The FBI photo taken in Paddock’s hotel room showed a stack of curved AK-47 magazines, each holding 30 bullets; there was no bandolier-type machine-gun belt in sight. Therefore, the lone gunman narrative is preposterous, and anyone who put this sort of nonsense forward, especially from law enforcement, is a knowing liar. For that reason alone, the bump stock ban proposed in Congress should be voted down, at least until the proponents admit their deception and agree to stick to facts.

Multiple shooters, 5 or more sites

Aside from the Mandalay Bay, the police-radio intercept disclose two other nearby shooting scenes: the Tropicana and New York New York hotels. The Tropicana hotel-casino is located across Las Vegas Boulevard South (aka The Strip) about a half block from the Mandalay Bay (the southernmost on The Strip). It directly adjoins the site of the Route 91 Harvest Festival, opposite the Mandalay.

The rapid-fire shooting from the Tropicana is, therefore, consistent with eyewitness reports of a “crossfire” by the second shooter, who was likely killed by the police, as reported at the first Metropolitan Police news conference.

A third shooter, firing from New York New York hotel, is reportedly in detention, presumably captured while trying to flee in a car across the boulevard to the Excalibur. The NYNY is across the boulevard from the Tropicana, or the same side of the street as Mandalay Bay (and the Luxor). It is at a catty-corner across from the open-air concert venue.

There were three firing points in a deadly triangle, just like the trio at the Paris Bataclan (only 2 gunmen were killed, and one escaped) and Orlando Pulse (1 killed, 2 escaped). Triangulation is intended to keep the crowd confined rather than making a quick escape. (In a shooting situation, every couple of seconds feels like minute, when perception time slows to a crawl, and therefore within 20 seconds targeted individuals should be able to dash to escape or find cover, that is, in the case of a single gunman.) Even with those three shooters, at least one of them must have used a belt-loading machine gun, probably similar to a 7.62mm NATO standard, to account for the intense firepower within three minutes, along with the basso boom from the muzzle blast.

Guests and staff at another separate cluster of two or three hotels also heard nearby low-caliber small-arms fire, shootings which so far can be interpreted as diversionary actions intended to confuse the police. These secondary incidents were at the Bellagio and Caesar’s Palace, and probably the Aria, at the corner of Flamingo Avenue, two blocks north of the Harvest Festival. Later that night a local civilian resident with a rifle tried to enter Caesar’s after having heard about gunshots fired inside.

Gunfire at the Ali Baba Lebanese restaurant was later denied, although it may have been a misfired weapon kept ready by a back-up team to assist the escape of the hotel gunmen.

Therefore, the hit squad in Las Vegas included a minimum of 5 gunmen, although more likely 6-7 shooters, with a contingent of support personnel for communications, logistics and transport as well as to trip up hotel security. Hotel staff at the Mandalay saw an assailant in a hotel security uniform being chased down a hall by police officers.

The attack on Las Vegas was a small-scale paramilitary operation, probably involving a squad of radical Muslim ISIS supporters to avenge Obama’s betrayal of the Caliphate. The "one POC" code word heard on police radio scanner likely refers to a "person of color", likely from Africa, perhaps Somalia or Sudan, implying the two other suspects were light-skinned, perhaps Arabs or even white American recruits.

A most difficult problem in this incident is the code of silence among the hundreds of Muslim hotel workers and chauffeurs along The Strip, whose ultimate loyalties are with shariah law and not the U.S. Constitution. Vegas was a classic case study of the absolute failure and delusions about Muslim integration under the democratic traditions of American society. That is an undeniable fact that contributed enormously to the murder and mayhem, politically incorrect though it may sound.

On the side of caution, one cannot discount the possibility of an Israeli Mossad deep-cover false-flag operation aimed at ensuring more military aid from the U.S. against Iran and other foes. As for the professional sad clowns called “crisis actors”, the online bloggers who spread this sort of chum for fools are cogs in the repressive machinery of state working for the Feds or the Mossad.

For Paddock, to balk was a death sentence

The only remotely honest law-enforcement official with public presence, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, stated that suspect Paddock intended to survive the massacre. His assessment was based on the presence of a precursor chemical for explosives and more guns inside his car, which was left in the parking level of the Metropolitan. In other words, Paddock did not commit suicide, and there was no reason for him to wait for SWAT to arrive.

Since the firing had ceased by around 10:20 p.m., and the SWAT team did not storm his room until after 11:00, Paddock had 40 minutes to make his escape in the crowd of panicked guests down the elevators to the parking level. Why did he not exfiltrate?

The only possible answer is: Because he was already dead, killed before the shooting spree started. Who would have murdered Paddock just prior to the gunfire on the crowd below? One of the gunmen, of course.

Why? Because the would-be “buyers” of his stash of guns (none of them were legally purchased from registered firearms dealers, as implied by media fakery) had long suspected that his offer of weapons for sale was bait in an FBI-CIA trap. The ISIS knew very well that his disingenuous conversion to Islam was a ploy hatched by his bosses at the CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency).

So the jihadists offered him one last test of faith before his “martyrdom”. At every terror site, at least one dead martyr must be left behind for the sake of the lone gunman myth, which benefits both the political class to appease public anger and also the terrorists trying to conserve manpower for their next strike. Paddock was more useful as a fall guy than as a fighter.

To flush out informers, crime groups will often order a new member to murder an undercover police informant or a friend in a rival gang, as depicted in the Johnny Depp movie “Donnie Brasco”. In real life and in the movie, Joe Pistone aka Brasco was shrewd enough not to flinch and shot his pal Tony Mirra, to the satisfaction of the Bonnano mob, and no further questions were asked of the rookie who had earned their trust as an unquestioning obedient henchman.

During the meeting to transfer the traceable guns to the ISIS men in his 32nd floor room, his client(s) would order him to start shooting at the concert-goers below as a test of faith. Caught totally off-guard by this demand to kill fellow Americans, Paddock would have balked. Instead of giving a straight answer, he probably requested a moment of prayer in the bathroom to think it over, allowing him to message his FBI support team.

His prayer was answered with a gunshot to the back of the head. That bloody head is edited out the FBI photo of his body, if indeed that was his actual corpse. (Since he was laid out with a Kevlar vest, why wouldn’t he also have worn a helmet to deflect bullets?) That’s when the ISIS team leader would text-message his gunman to commence the slaughter. They had no need for Paddock’s dodgy cache of weapons; they brought their own heavier machine-guns to the fatwa fiesta.

Now, boys and girls, if you want to be a secret agent for the Feds or the Agency, whenever the bad guys tell you to mow down your teammates, just do as they say and make sure there are no wounded survivors who might recognize you as one of their own and moan to you. “Jeez, good to see you again, hey, how come you’re not wearing a badge?” Kill everyone, even your loved ones, or you too will soon join the dead. That’s what it takes to be a first-class Fed, utter ruthlessness arising from the will to survive with no space for regrets or chance of redemption. It’s a lonely life that exits in hell.

Every Breath You Take

The sting operation known as Fast and Furious, initiated in 2009 by Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder turned into a self-inflicted disaster for law enforcement and national security. Supposedly traceable guns, embedded with RFID chips, were sold to the Mexican drug mafia. The concept was to track the homing devices inside the guns along the supply chain of felons up the ladder to the big bosses in Cuidad Juarez, Sinaloa state, the capital and other major smuggling hubs and money-laundering centers.

Since mobile-phone service and hotspots can be spotty in those backwaters, the FBI lost track of those firearms. It’s likely that the Mexican smugglers knew Fast and Furious was too good to be true, and took apart a gun to locate the tracking device. An estimated 10,000 civilian fatalities are attributed to those rapid-fire weapons, including American law-enforcement officials along the border, a blowback which led to an abrupt end of gun-walking. (The term means letting the criminals walk into a gun shop for an illegal purchase and walk out with firearms, in that case across the borderline.)

The killings of Americans with Holder’s guns resulted in an internal-affairs probe into the source of those firearms,which was the arsenals of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms bureau (ATF, under the Department of Homeland Security). The Obama White House responded with a self-protective cover-up, and ATF bosses were under heat to perjure themselves before Congress. So this is when Stephen Paddock’s airplane and his inexplicable wealth enter the dark picture show.

Homicide or Suicide?

That’s how one headline described the 2013 deaths of 20-year veteran ATF agent Paul Parisi and his wife Janine inside their home in Chantilly, Virginia. As an arson and explosives expert, Parisi was stationed at the local ATF field office, near the top-level forensic laboratory at Quantico, the FBI Academy, which also serves the scientific requests of Pentagon’s investigative unit called the Defense Security Service (DSS).

One of the questions related to Fast and Furious was the possible role of a suspected mafia mole inside U.S. law enforcement, so DNA testing and chemical analysis were meticulously done on recovered Fast and Furious guns, putting Paul Parisi on the wrong side in the eyes of certain higher-up circles who were not eager to see his forensic findings reach Congress.

A Big Bopper’s Chantilly Lace

In that same area of Virginia, starting in 2006, one Stephen C. Paddock (the Las Vegas suspect’s middle name is Craig), who was a resident of Henderson, Texas, and Mesquite, Nevada, based his Cirrus SR20, tail number N5343M, at Chantilly airfield. But then, just months after the Parisi deaths, he relocated the home field of that single-engine propeller plane 22 miles away to an airstrip at Roanoke.

Parked at Roanoke for the next three years, the same-model Cirrus with identical tail number N5343M was registered as belonging to Volant LLC, which conducts top-secret assignments in intelligence and defense operations, something like the Mission Impossible team. Three weeks prior to the Vegas massacre, however, the Cirrus made its first recent flight, presumably by Paddock or another Agency pilot to deliver his consignment of guns to Las Vegas.

Thanks to a vigilant citizen online by name of Mike, that defense contractor is now in the spotlight. The limited liability company describes its team of experts as follows: “A Volant Associate proudly serves the needs of the nation’s Intelligence and Defense Community. Each associate matches a specific and rigorous profile and is the absolute best of his or her breed: a dedicated, driven, educated, broadly experienced leader who holds, at a minimum, an active Top Secret SCI clearance”

To translate the alphabet soup: Top Secret (TS); SCI means Sensitive Compartmented Information, or high-level access to classified information on file. This lacework of acronyms can deadlier for one’s health than arsenic.

A notable feature of the Cirrus SR20 model is its rocket-opened parachute, which prevents a damaged aircraft from crashing into buildings while carry dangerous cargo, for example, explosives or ammunition. With seating for 4 passengers (which can be used for cargo space) and a range of 780 nautical miles, the Cirrus is an ideal plane for arms traffickers, involved in Fast and Furious and/or its successor program transporting spooked guns to Islamic radicals.

Online access to various employment agencies connected with Volant LLC have been blocked since recent revelations of Paddock’s long-time relationship to that defense contractor.

Dad was FBI’s Most Wanted

How could the eldest son of a bank robber, diagnosed as a psychopath, on the FBI Most Wanted List, become a government-trusted military contractor and a multimillionaire (with no visible means of support)?

A migrant from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to the Sunbelt, his father Benjamin Hoskins Paddock Jr. was arrested several times in the 1950s for automobile larceny, con games and passing bad checks, resulting in debts from which he tried to bounce back with two armed robberies at braches of the Valley Bank in Tucson, Arizona, in 1959 and '60. While serving a prison sentence, Big Ben (6’2” tall) staged a prison break in 1969 and was on the lam for 7 years, operating under a false identity as a bingo parlor operator in Oregon. Although none of his sons admit to being in contact with him, the family somehow survived on the ill-gotten lucre despite the FBI watch on their Tucson home.

At the time of the prison escape and his posting on the Most Wanted list, Stephen Paddock was 15 years old, the eldest of four sons raised by their single mother. Contrary to the present-day media’s attempt to cast a “like father, like son” psychoanalysis on Stephen, in fact he managed to earned a business degree from Cal State Northridge, which qualified him to work as accountant and also gave him training in algorithms, later used to win big at video poker in casinos. Methodical, calm and low-key, his biography so far has showed no signs of his being a psychotic. His only deviance was the hiring of $6,000 per session hookers for bondage fake-rape sex, a dominance-subordination pastime that millions of otherwise straight-laced men and women also seem to enjoy, for whatever mournful reasons.

What is incongruous for the son of a fugitive bank robber, however, is that his entire working career, which lasted a mere 12 years, was entirely connected with the federal government, indicating the “protection” of the FBI over a potentially wayward youth. His first job was as a letter carrier, a mailman for the U.S. Postal Service, a routine that would prove useful later for his work as an intelligence contractor, if the mission required getting people to open their front doors and passing through neighborhoods unnoticed.

After a short stint as an IRS auditor, he worked from 1985-89 as an “in-house auditor” for an as-yet unidentified aircraft maintenance company, which was later merged into Lockheed. Just a mere one year into that better-paying job, Paddock plonked down $400,000 cash to purchase outright a large house in Northridge, California.

High Flier, High Times

What’s sticks in my craw is those dates of employment at the mystery company simultaneous with Air Cocaine flights into Mena Airfield, a major aircraft maintenance center in Arkansas while Bill Clinton was governor. It was one of few jobs in that era where an ordinary employee (pilot or ground crew and manager) could earn a tax-free million dollars a year. Perhaps not by accident, Stephen Paddock and the husband of Marilou Danley own homes in Fayetteville-Springdale in the northwest corner of Arkansas, where east-west US Highway 40 meets north-south state road 71 to Mena.

Whether or not his high times at Mena included helping Bill and the Hill roll up a carpet for Vince Foster, Paddock’s subsequent low-profile career was as a small-plane pilot, shuttling contraband or people on contract with intelligence agencies or the Pentagon. News reports indicate he often flew a small plane from Nevada to Alaska during the annual hunting season, a flight distance farther than Honduras to Arkansas. For the Alaskan hunt, he’s hauling a rifle of sufficient caliber to down a moose and maybe a few dollars more of extra hardware and ammo to offload in Idaho or Seattle.

OK, so the question begs an answer: Was Stephen Paddock a CIA assassin, as the ones in Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne series? We have yet to locate the shallow unmarked graves, even if planes can also be used to dump bodies into lakes and oceans. Pity poor Joe Pesce in "Casino", who had to use a shovel to dig holes in the desert.

ISIS Loyalty Pledge

The ISIS website boasts that Paddock was converted to Islam in April 2017, pledging allegiance to their jihad. He probably crossed the threshold on one of his cruise ship tours from Greece to the Middle East, which included stopovers in Dubai and Jordan, accompanied by his female companion Danley, who claims to have a niece in the UAE. Jordan is landlocked and the best method of entering that country is through the port of Aqaba.

Since it is by now certain that Paddock was a contract agent for U.S. intelligence, the Mideast cruise indicates:

- first, that he entered the region by cruise ship to avoid detection at region airports where he was probably a known commodity ever since the invasion of military contractors during and after the Iraq wars; and
- second, a CIA or DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) staffer, or a Mossad agent, would have escorted him for a quick briefing from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Jordanian border for his upcoming meetings with ISIS.

Both Dubai and Jordan are major hubs for the Muslim Brotherhood, which was involved in the Hillary-Obama fiasco known as the Arab Spring and financed by the jihadist Emirate of Qatar. Lest Americans have forgotten by now, the Brotherhood launched the first attempted attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and its members were aboard the 911 jetliners. Presumably, many and perhaps most of the captains of ISIS came out of the Brotherhood, the “grandfather of modern jihad”.

Here again in the Paddock caper, the CIA-DIA revealed a basic lack of common sense, even after losing captured “aid workers” to ISIS decapitators. After all, who in their right mind would join ISIS when its barracks and arsenals were being pounded daily by Russian airstrikes? For Stephen Paddock, however, volunteering for this fool’s errand was perhaps his way of making up for the crimes of his father against American society. He was trying to redeem the family name, as hopeless and suicidal as that may have seemed. There’s nothing like Christian guilt to bring on Shariah law.

Gift from Heaven

The masterminds of ISIS must have interpreted Paddock’s oath of fealty as a gift from Above, a doorway into the American heartland, even though it was through the tiger’s den, a trap laid by the CIA. By then, ISIS had a grudge match with President Barack Obama after he reneged on the trans-Syrian pipeline from Qatar to the Mediterranean and onto Cyprus and Ukraine, meant to compete with the hated Russians who have a near-monopoly on European gas supply.

Despite the risks of entrapment, the ISIS chieftains had every reason to feel confident about the planned strikes on Orlando, Vegas and San Francisco, cities that represent to the Islamic community the sins of bestiality, gambling and homosexuality. (Animals that talk, as in the Disney menagerie are considered diabolical.) The Muslims were gaining the upper hand against their Satanic foe. The Awan brothers team had control of the computers in the House of Representatives, thanks to Debbie Wasserman Schultz; Tim Kaine along with the California Democrats were staunch in their support for open immigration and sanctuary cities, havens for ISIS sleeper cells; Obama’s Pizzagate team set up a transport network for DACA children, ensuring a bright future for Islam in the New World; and Khizer Khan was gaining influence in the DNC. The counterattack was proceeding way faster than Saladin’s slow meandering drive against the Crusaders.

While Stephen Paddock’s intelligence bosses were eager to put marked guns in the hands of jihadist supporters in America, ISIS was many steps ahead of the intel bureaucrats James Comey, John Brennan and Loretta Lynch. If the killings at the Orlando Pulse were an initial taste of glory, the assault on Las Vegas would surely be a bumper harvest, a fiesta for the fatwa.

While Paddock and his Agency superiors set the trap as neatly as he would fill an accounting ledger, the ISIS gunmen quietly took their stations at the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, the Aria, New York New York, Tropicana and the Mandalay Bay, while an armed back-up team delicately nibbled on baklava with Turkish coffee, awaiting orders.

For Americans, a ghastly horrifying Halloween came early; but for ISIS the Autumn Moon glowed like honey dripping the sweet taste of revenge. In the Hijri calendar, the night of Oct. 1-2, 2017, marked the Islamic New Year, a blood sacrifice followed by a new dawn promising victory.

Where to Go from Here

What’s the prognosis? More of the same, because American society, including the self-serving political class, is much too narcissistic and divided to put up effective resistance to sustained attacks from fanatics who have no fear of dying and every reason to kill, in a era when citizens cannot even agree to stand up for the national anthem or celebrate Columbus Day, or even dare think of rallying around the commander in chief, all the while exulting in a frenzy of political correctness that prioritizes one’s private issues like sexual orientation over tough personal sacrifices for the common good.

The War on Terror and the Arab Spring, along with the absurd extremism of political correctness, as many of their critics like myself have repeatedly warned, have had devastating consequences for the United States and its democratic norms and cultural traditions. Until there is a minimal degree of unity as a nation, rising with a seachange among hearts and minds, the situation will deteriorate.

In contrast to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which united the country often to excessive zeal, the Las Vegas Massacre was a sharp blow that fragmented the USA into a million broken pieces that may possibly never be glued back together again. Regardless of the folly and disunity of all the sunshine soldiers and anti-social nationhood haters, those who struggle to revive America as a Good Nation, while accepting that greatness has probably been lost forever, will trudge though the approaching Valley Forge of our time toward the battles ahead.