I think in the confusion it's easy to mistake a lone gunman for multiple people. I suppose it's possible that there was more than one shooter. It becomes increasingly unlikely that it wasn't Bales at all, but given some of the circumstances I'd be willing to hear all the evidence before making a decision.
The problem I have with the "roaming mercs" theory is that this event was not in any way helpful to the Obama administration and even less so for the war machine itself. I'd wager public support of the war dropped another 5 points overnight when this happened (the reason I say only 5 points is because that would still be a decrease of nearly 20% of its current level of support), and voters were reminded before the election that Obama has failed to bring all of our troops home after 4 years. If you can give me a motive beyond "for Obama" I might consider it. Punishment for Afghanistan? Why not blow up a village and blame it on the Taliban then...much easier to accomplish and less blowback. Motivation to end the war? We already have that, and it seems quite clear that the Pentagon and Obama are not leveraging this event to draw down troops. I really can't think of anything that we'd have to gain from this that we couldn't accomplish with much less effort and risk of exposure.
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"Take the cheese to sickbay!"
