Dr. Why?

The British sci-fi series Dr. Who has a couple rabid fans in our household, but even the near-eternal intergalactic Mr. Fixit who is the namesake of the series won't be able to answer the question these three guys pose: "Doctor, why?"

Tariq Daour, Younis Tsouli and Waseem Mughal should have been enjoying the education, opportunity and freedom England offered them, but instead they built an Internet chat room for Islamist doctors intent on "do harm," not "do no harm."

The Telegraph reports:

A group of 45 Muslim doctors threatened to use car bombs and rocket grenades in terrorist attacks in the United States during discussions on an extremist internet chat site.

Police found details of the discussions on a site run by one of a three-strong "cyber-terrorist" gang.

They were discovered at the home of Younis Tsouli, 23, Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London heard.

One message read: "We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America.

"The first target which will be penetrated by nine brothers is the naval base which gives shelter to the ship Kennedy." This is thought to have been a reference to the USS John F Kennedy, which is often at Mayport Naval Base in Jacksonville, Florida.

Why the Kennedy? Because it wages war against the terror-jihadists in Iraq? No:

The message discussed targets at the base, adding: "These are clubs for naked women which are opposite the First and Third units."

The famous Islamic sickness that comes from the over-suppression of normal cross-gender contact rises its ugly head again. Attack the women! I'm no fan of clubs for naked women, either, but my mind doesn't immediately jump to rocket-propelled grenades when I think about how to deal with the problem.

These guys, who are due to be sentenced today, are not to be confused with the Islamist doctors behind last week-end's three mostly-failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow. Police have found no connections between the two cells.

Now that's spooky. Is the jihad itch so strong among Muslim docs in England that they're everywhere, plotting their plots, like cockroaches that aren't effected much when one gets stomped on?

Daour, Tsouli and Mughal had pictures of beheadings on their Web sites and glorified attacks around the world that killed innocent men, women and children. How does that jibe with their being doctors. (Well, one was an attorney so [attorney joke deleted].)

Dr. Sanity, who, as a psychiatrist has been through med school, explains:

This aspect of medicine is not talked about much, but it is very real nonetheless. The physician's own cruel and sadistic impulses are never far below the surface. In the healthy person these impulses are generally sublimated and the instinctual energy derived from them can then be used to benefit society. Nevertheless, this is the dark side of altruism and the motivation to do good, and it is as human as the impulse to do good.

Personally, I find it truly an amazing thing that the worse and most base impulses of the human animal can be transformed into behavior that not only benefits society, but also gives pleasure to the individual who must cope with them if they want to be part of a civilized society. In the case of doctors, it is that side of human nature -- those cruel and often sadistic impulses existing within us all-- that gives them the ability to deal with other people's pain and suffering without diminishing their ability to do what needs to be done to remedy it.

It is a delicate balancing act to keep the two sides in some sort of positive equilibrium at the best of times; and things can get greatly out of balance by a variety of individual, cultural, and environmental factors that influence the the particular doctor.

She then tells the story of a senior resident who, when life support efforts failed and the line went flat, would throw on an ump's hat, mask and chest guard and do a perfect "He's outta here!"

So docs do get crazy, OK. But docs on jihad chat rooms by night and hovering with scalpels in their hands over anesthetized infidels by day ... now that's really, really scary.