You don't have to go to a prestigious law school, say, for instance, Vanderbilt University, to know that playing video games leads normally healthy teens and young adults to commit horrible acts of violence. Execution style shootings, the bludgeoning of a houseful of sleeping innocents with aluminum baseball bats, the snapping of necks of toddlers with bright futures, all commonplace for owners of a PlayStation 2. But are you aware of the deadly link between playing Halo and pushing a militant Islamic agenda to the point of plotting a series of truck bombings in the greater Toronto area?

Apparently there is some sort of nebulous relationship between the two, one that the Chronicle Herald of Halifax, Nova Scotia sees fit to report on. See?

In early 2004, [suspected terrorist and LiveJournal-calibre poet Zakaria] Amara's major preoccupation in life was a hugely popular, shoot-em-up video game called Halo — a game he would forgo polite conversation to play, according to thousands of Internet postings uncovered by the Globe.

Forgoing polite conversation should have been our first warning! That's only two steps away from stockpiling truckloads of fertilizer and remote triggering devices.

Who would have thought that a member of the mainstream media would attempt to make a connection between being entertained by a first person shooter set in space and a suspected ring of 12 terrorists hellbent on wishing death and destruction? Still, the Chronicle does mention the following potential link to his criminal behavior:

Amara had just married a woman whose own take on Islam was often far more extreme than his own, and his own attitudes soon began to shift, the postings suggest.

Hmph! Women! Clearly this is our nation's, nay, our world's, biggest problem, not video games. Your suggestions about what we can do with all these wimmens would be greatly appreciated. Michael McWhertor

Report says terror suspect was video-game obsessed teen (Thanks for the tip, Dorcas!)

Send an email to Michael McWhertor, the author of this post, at .