Las Vegas Shooting

October 4, 2017 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

Las Vegas Shooting

Paul Craig Roberts

Dear Readers, I appreciate the confidence that you show in me with your emails asking my opinion about the Las Vegas shooting. Many of you suspect that it is another false flag affair, and you ask me about its purpose.

I don’t know if it was a false flag attack, and if so, by who or for what purpose. I don’t expect to ever know. A story is set in place by officials and media. The only way to ever know is to personally investigate. You would have to go to Las Vegas, examine the scene, ask questions of the hotel, investigate the answers if you get any, find and interview concert attendees who were shot, attend funerals and see bodies of those killed, speak to their families, learn about the weapon allegedly used, experience trying to shoot at targets far below and far away, compare the number of casualties with the recorded time of firing, and so forth. In other words, we would have to do the job that in former times would have been done by the press, but no more.

It is almost like the story is being kept from us. For example, from media reports that the event was just across the street from the hotel, I did not know that “across the street” was a distance of 390 yards (1,170 feet).

As I don’t expect to ever have a confident opinion about what happened, I am not paying much attention to the mass shooting, or should I say alleged shooting. We are lied to and deceived so much that we can never tell when we are told the truth. It is like Dmitry Orlov says:

“Lies beget other lies, and pretty soon unbiased intelligence-gathering, rational analysis and proper mission planning become impossible.”
” … a reputation for telling the truth can only be lost exactly once, and from then on the use of the phrase “US intelligence sources” became synonymous with “a conspiracy of barefaced liars.””
“Whatever message Washington and Western mass media are trying to push, a perfectly valid response is to point out all the times they have lied in the past, and to pose a simple question: When did they stop lying?”

Official explanations of such events as Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, and so forth, always throw up red flags, because the official explanations always studiously ignore contrary eyewitness and other evidence. Also, often there are not even smart phone videos of dead and wounded people. As far as I can tell, the bodies of 573 dead and wounded are absent in the Las Vegas video evidence. Considering the suspicion that such events cause, one would think the authorities would make a special effort to show the dead and wounded. In other cases of mayhem, alleged bodies look like dummies or are covered and could be a pile of anything. The presence of crisis actors on the scene, as in the Boston Marathon Bombing, raise more questions. I remember when it was expected that police and media would investigate all evidence and clear away contradictions. Now all we get is an official story instantly ready and repeated endlessly by officials and media. This itself raises suspicions.

You will have to make up your own minds about Las Vegas. Here are some of the reported facts to consider:

The victims killed and wounded total 573. That number is the size of a military battalion. It is very difficult to turn an entire battalion into casualties with small arms fire even in a fierce combat situation. I don’t know if it has ever happened. Can one person with no military training shooting down from 32 stories, which requires special sighting knowledge, at a distance of 390 yards—the length of 4 football fields—hit 573 people in a few minutes of firing? Jon Rappoport doesn’t believe it. https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/more-than-one-vegas-shooter-the-evidence-builds/

Neither does the progressive Steve Lendman: http://stephenlendman.org/2017/10/slaughter-las-vegas/ and http://stephenlendman.org/2017/10/las-vegas-another-false-flag/

There are reports of multiple shooters.

There are reports of gun flashes from the 4th floor.

The windows on the hotel do not open and would require the glass to be broken.

Stephen Paddock doesn’t fit the profile of a psychopath. Reports are he was a multimillionaire with airplanes and his own pilot. He enjoyed life. His brother is dumbfounded, said it makes no sense Stephen did the shooting.

The Mandalay Bay Hotel is reportedly a casino. If so, security cameras are everywhere. Why no videos of Stephen Paddock carrying in the many cases of 23 firearms and ammunition? How could maid service clean the room for three days and not see 23 firearms and their ammunition? Makes no sense.

Why 23 guns? The number is beyond superfluous. The large number almost suggests that the entire event is concocted as a gun control incident. The huge number of guns, the huge number of casualties. Finally, at last, enough “gun violence” to get gun control.

Skeptics are waiting to hear from the authorities how a person at such a distance managed to shoot so many people in such a short time and with what automatic rifle and caliber the deed was done. As this part of the story is especially difficult to believe, we will probably not get the explanation.

And it is not only the authorities and the presstitutes that truth is up against. There is also the lack of integrity in people with axes to grind. For example, Paul Street writing in CounterPunch says: “The Las Vegas massacre is just the latest in the Gun Lobby’s long line of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.” The article is titled:  “The NRA’s Latest Terrorist Attack on U.S. Soil.” You can read it here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/04/the-nras-latest-terrorist-attack-on-u-s-soil/

The gun control lobby has a massive vested interest in the official story. You can bet your life that the gun control lobby will ignore any and all problems associated with the official story. The story is exactly what they want in order to advance their cause. The campaign is underway: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mass-shootings-are-an-american-problem-theres-an-american-solution/2017/10/02/ac934588-a7ac-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.dd026d728b4c

As Paddock is a rich white male, the story also fits with Identity Politics. Paddock is another example of the evil white male. Here is the Identity Politics connection served up by the Washington Post: “All across America white men, some young, some of middle-age, are turning into wolves. Always, after they commit acts of terror, it is revealed out that these perpetrators were not men after all. They were beasts, mindless monsters whose evil was abstract and cold and terrible.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/10/02/when-white-men-turn-into-lone-wolves/?utm_term=.3415987733a6

CNN says mass shootings are “a white man’s problem.” See “How America has silently accepted the Rage of White Men:” http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/03/opinions/mass-shootings-white-male-rage-modan-opinion/index.html?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial

People are more interested in confirming their beliefs and prejudices than they are in the truth. If Paddock were a Muslim, Islamophobic people would cling to the official account.

Truth requires that people believe in truth more than they believe in their own biases and causes. In the United States, such people are increasingly rare.

Remember always the Roman question: “Who benefits?” That is where you will find the answer.

UPDATE: Paddock’s girlfriend describes him as a “kind, caring, quiet” man who she envisioned a “quiet future” with. A woman knows a man. Her description is not one of a psychopath.

I have spoken to more experienced persons and experts including US Marine snipers. They don’t believe a word of the official story. Will, once again, the experts be got rid of by branding them “conspiracy theorists” as was done to 3,000 architects and engineers who challenge the official story of 9/11?