The Scientologists have figured 9/11 out.

Oh, wait. What?



So, Al-Zawahiri, whose name the one guy pronounces almost like it's Japanese (he also said "9-1-1" instead of "9-11", which I have a massive pet-peeve about) is a psychiatrist because psychology was one of the things he studied in medical school; therefore, he must be a "psychiatrist" (I think the dude was a surgeon before he became a real cut-up) "treating" Bin Laden, because Osama went from supporting terrorism kinda-sorta, to supporting it a lot. Whoo. Radical change, there.

If I want to treat this as for real, I guess it doesn't hurt to mention that the Old Man in the Mountain was hookah-ing up his assassins with hashish a long time ago--so yeah, drugs can be used to condition people to do stuff. Also, religion is a heavy trip. People can believe all kinds of crazy, life-affecting stuff after regular exposure to a cult-like insularity and regular indoctrination. They can come to develop intense hatred of even the most benign institutions with repetitive instruction and gradual elimination of all other data. They can even begin to look "crazy" to outsiders, and make choices that don't make sense to the non-indoctrinated mindset.

Like I'd have to tell these guys.

But anyway, brutal acts of terrorism have occurred in history well before the formal study of psychiatry was even a twinkle in the medical establishment's eye. Sometimes they are religiously motivated.

Go figure.