US: Bombers didn’t have Down syndrome
Read further into the article and you learn:
“Both had recently received psychiatric treatment for depression and/or schizophrenia. From what we know now there’s no indication that they had Down syndrome,” Smith said, citing records obtained by the military. Smith also said one of the women was married but that neither had criminal backgrounds. He said it was not clear how they were linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, which the military has said was behind the bombing. The director of the Ibn-Rushd psychiatric teaching hospital in central Baghdad, Dr. Shalan al-Abboudi, said that one of the pet market bombers, a 36-year-old married woman, had been treated there for schizophrenia and depression, according to her file. Refusing to identify her, he said she received electric shock therapy and was released into the custody of an aunt.
There is a difference between using the mentally retarded as suicide bombers and using depressed, schizophrenic mental patients. But isn’t the point that al Qaeda is unable to enlist jhadis bent on martyrdom to perform these missions, and instead must take advantage of those who are unable to reason properly?
