Beyond the logistical preparations for next week's Boston Marathon, including security unlike that for any of the race's previous iterations, political sniping continues, says The Boston Herald's Howie Carr.
"Basically, what's been going on over the last week . . . is just sort of finger pointing about who is to blame for the Tsarnaev brothers' getting through the web of security that they had," Carr said Monday on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV.
Beyond that, Carr said, many Bostonians were rubbed wrong by Gov. Deval Patrick's statements in the immediate aftermath of the bombings at last year's race and the subsequent manhunt for brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during a shootout with police, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured after being surrounded in a boat in a suburban backyard.
While in that boat,
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly wrote a note explaining that he and his brother had perpetrated the bombings in response to the killing of Muslims worldwide, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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In the days after the bombing, Carr said, Patrick took to the airwaves first to urge people not to lash out at Muslims, and then to deny that there was any known motive for the killings, though Carr said that when Patrick was asked that question by CBS'
Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation," he had to have known about the note.
"It was pretty clear from the start that this was Muslim terrorism. No one's going berserk and, you know, no one's getting tar and feathers out, talking about getting Muslims or anything like that. He comes out, warns everybody on Wednesday – don't take this out on Muslims. Who's taking it out on Muslims, Governor?" Carr said.
"And Deval Patrick says, no, Bob [Schieffer], 'we don't know what made these young fellas do this.' And then a couple of days later the note's released and we know that he had it on Friday night and he wouldn't tell anybody, you know, Massachusetts or anywhere else; the reality of the situation, it was a very unpopular decision on his part to be politically correct."
Carr said he expects next week's race to go off without a hitch, and to be a huge morale boost for Boston and a monkey off the city's back.
"It'll be like the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004," he said.
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