>
> when terrorists have acted in the past, do they usually take
> responsibility?
>
i thought they usually do (and of course there is the whole question of who a terrorist is! the ELF has claimed responsibility for various acts but are they terrorists?), but here are some counter-examples:
http://www.airdisaster.com/special/special-ai182.shtml air india flight 182 event: disintegrated and crashed into the atlantic ocean cause: unknown, indian sikh separatists suspected, no group has claimed
responsibility
panam flight 103 event: exploded and crashed over town of lockerbie, scotland cause: nobody claimed responsibility, libyan men found guilty recently
there are more examples, but in general most "terrorist" acts seem to fall in the category where there is not much ambiguity regarding the pepetrators and this might negate the need for an organization to take explicit responsibility (this i think was true for the various acts of violence of kashmiri separatists, the violent elements of the khalistan movement, the LTTE and other tamil separatists in sri lanka, the sendero luminoso in peru perhaps, etc).
are you on this line of reasoning: most terrorist organizations claim responsibility, since they commit the act exactly to gain attention (towards themselves and their cause), and since ObL has not, coupled with the lack of published evidence against him, that makes the case against him very weak?
if so, the media pundits have already pre-empted that reasoning with this one: unlike prior terrorists and terrorist organizations, ObL does not have a cause other than killing americans and harming america (because he hates freedom, democracy and the american way), and hence the argument based on nobody taking responsibility is an invalid one. lot of right wing commentators have hit the airwaves with this argument - i heard it from d'souza on politically incorrect and from some other fellow on WNYC's morning program "on the line".
--ravi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.