The Boston Bomber says he was radicalized by US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan ?

The marathon was a crime of opportunity.  Terrorist attacks are sometimes focused on targets with symbolic importance.  This was the case on 9/11 where they attacked the Pentagon, a symbol of American military might, and the World Trade Center, a symbol of American economic might.  But sometimes the purpose of the attack is just to hurt people and so the target is just one which presents an opportunity to hurt people.  That was the case in the 2016 San Bernardino attack where a guy shot up a workplace gathering.  In the case of Tamerlane and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the brothers who carried out the attack on the Marathon, the motive was Islamist in nature.  The brothers were Muslim refugees from the Caucasus.  Dzhokar had been fairly integrated into American society, but Tamerlane, who was in his late teens when the family moved here, seemed to have a harder time with it.  Like many European Muslims who become radicalized, Tamerlane had a history of involvement in drugs and crime (he may also have been responsible for a triple murder in the Massachusetts city of Waltham a few years before the bombing (Tsarnaev was friends with the victims and another associate of his allegeldy implicated them both in the murders before his death).  Tsarnaev seems to have become independently radicalized and brought his brother, then a young college student, along with him.  They picked the Marathon as the location because it provided a plethora of targets, and because there was no security which would stop them from walking up with backpacks loaded with bombs

Nothing, but that does not matter, his victom hood or rather his reasons. Have changed with the current political victom talking points. No more, no less, our own rhetoric has given him a number of excuses to fall back on. In this political climate, one of these times, it may just work too.

Terrorism:the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

Cowards attack innocent civilians.

At barely 18 years-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was brainwashed by Anwar al-Awlaki with his brother Tamerlan pushed him into it.

Hiding in a boat in a Watertown backyard lying on his stomach, straddling the side of the boat, his left arm and left leg hung over the boat's side appearing to struggle for consciousness after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing when Boston police found his location before directing a large volume of gunfire at the wounded and unarmed Dzhokhar, stopping only after calls from the superintendent on the scene. Tsarnaev was then hauled down to the grassy ground and handcuffed bleeding badly from wounds to his left ear, neck and thigh due to a skull-base fracture, with injuries to the middle ear, the skull base, the lateral portion of his C1 vertebra, with a significant soft tissue injury, as well as injury to the pharynx, the mouth, and a small vascular injury from gunshot wounds.

Upon waking up at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston he was unable to speak because of the wound to his throat and according to one of the nurses he had cried for two days straight after waking up in regret as psychologists confirmed he was never truly radicalized.

7 years later Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is currently being kept alive on feeding tubes because he refused to eat.

Its sad a 20 year old kid brainwashed by his brother and extremists is now sentenced to death for something he showed immediate remorse for.

This is no different then 9/11.  Our countries own actions and history resulting in a reaction.

“God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.” -  Osama bin Laden, 2004

Yes, there is a disconnect.