Look, you guys: I look at mentally ill people all the time as part of my job, and these folks aren't mentally ill. I see mentally ill people all the time, and yes, they do attack people, and from time to time someone mentally ill does kill people, but I don't think the Oslo terrorist was mentally ill. I don't think McVeigh was either. Or Kaszynski.
I agree with you about McVeigh....and Breivik.....and even Kaszynski, as bizarre as he was.
However, this Jared Lee Loughner, the guy who attacked that political rally in Arizona....now, he sounds like someone who really COULD float an insanity defense. Right now he's in solitary lockup on suicide watch, paces all the time, holding his head, complaining that he hears voices from a radio station (no kidding, I knew a guy who could hear radio, it turned out to be a concrete company's CB base station. He wasn't crazy....soon as he had his metallic dental fillings replaced, the "voices" disappeared).
You are all on the wrong track with trying to assign political beliefs to these folks. Ok, they write manifestos etc etc, but look: the desire to kill a lot of people is independent of political beliefs or political position. It is a separate point of view- the idea that innocent lives are expendable in the pursuit of political power and dominance. THAT is the idea that is so repulsive to all of us.
In this case, though, Breivik's own "writings", his "manifesto", specifically mention his ultra-conservative political views and his intentions to cause "mayhem" (my quote marks) with his act of terrorism in an effort to spurn all other like-minded Europeans into a form of racial genocide...aimed primarily at mid-Easterners. His target for the shootings was a youth camp run by liberal minded folks...he targeted the children because they would carry forth the political ideas of those who "educated them" into the future and he wanted to stop that from happening.
Still doesn't make him insane...quite the opposite, in my book. It DOES make his acts despicable, though, and in this case (IMHO) I think the time he took to compose that 1,500 page manifesto is what created the desire to kill in him....absent any evidence that the manifesto followed the plot to kill so many.
Time will tell more. I hope, though, that this monster is denied the opportunity to gain a public audience for his nihilistic rhetoric...he doesn't deserve it and we shouldn't have to put up with it!!
Cheers from Doug!!