Foiling terrorist plots against the United States is no laughing matter, and with the arrest of six men in New Jersey yesterday who were allegedly planning to attack Fort Dix, the threat has been brought home once again.
It's hard for the press not to run with stories of possible domestic terrorism, and for good reason -- it's serious and scary business. That said, not all plots are created equal, and lumping them all together into one grab bag of thwarted domestic terrorism cases is something reporters should avoid, especially given some of the absurd plots that have been uncovered over the last couple years. This is not to say that all leads shouldn't be investigated -- they should -- or that anyone discovered in any stage of planning an attack shouldn't be scooped up -- they should-- but we've seen a couple of cases in the last few years be blown way out of proportion, and that makes us wonder what the Fort Dix story will become.
The New York Times this morning offers a good example of this grab-bag coverage when it says that the Fort Dix case is "the latest in a series of plots, targeting sites in the United States, that authorities said they have foiled. These included one last June in which seven arrests were made in Miami after the authorities described suspects talking about blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago and the F.B.I.'s Miami headquarters. In June 2003, the authorities said they thwarted a plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge, and in 2002, six Yemeni-Americans from Lackawanna, N.Y., near Buffalo, were arrested and linked with Qaeda interests."
As we all remember, the men who were planning on blowing up Chicago's Sears Tower and the F.B.I.'s Miami headquarters last year -- the hilariously confused "Seas of David" group -- were so inept, so deluded, that the "plot" was the stuff of farce. Yes, the group swore fealty to Al Qaeda (or more precisely, to an informant posing as an Al Qaeda representative), which is enough to put them under surveillance and haul them in for questioning, at the very least. And what they wanted to do was serious enough to make them a threat, albeit one that was overblown by both the Justice Department and the press at the time.
Then there was the "Lackawanna Six," the group of young men in the town next door to Buffalo, NY, who are currently serving prison sentences for having trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. They, too, were hardly the criminal masterminds that they were initially made out to be. As The Washington Post put it in July 2003, "there was no evidence that the men had spoken of or planned an attack." The Buffalo News said that same year, "They never built a bomb, never hijacked an airliner and, as far as the U.S. Justice Department can determine, never made any plans to commit terrorism."
The Bush administration's Justice Department has a vested interest in portraying every "plot" it busts as the next 9/11, regardless of how embryonic or feeble. It serves as a distraction from the administration's failures in Iraq and elsewhere, it perpetuates the state of fear that has served this White House well in recent years, and it justifies the massive Homeland Security bureaucracy. Journalists, meanwhile, are at a decided disadvantage when trying to determine the seriousness -- or lack thereof -- of the threat, because the government holds all the cards. That's why a healthy dose of skepticism -- given this administration's track record with truth -- is crucial to the press's handling of stories like Fort Dix. These would-be terrorists in New Jersey should be taken seriously, at least until we have reason to believe they shouldn't. We're only a couple of days into this story, but it's never too early to watch for the hype, and watch for how the press either runs with it, or turns a skeptical eye.
That damned "criminally inept" Chimpy Bushitler just won't quit!...
Just LOOK at what he's doing!...
Sending his flying monkeys out in their brown shirts to arrest even more Muslims!...
Now he's arresting terroists and delberately inflating their threat in order to further his "vested" blackhearted Rovian interest! (A lame duck, vested, blackhearted Rovian interest, admiitedly, but an OBVIOUS one, nonetheless)
Everybody knows that Chimpy has a lousy "track record with the truth" (though, you never actaully see McLeary provide any expamples of such a record, we all KNOW that Chimpy is liar)
Now we have to keep ourselves looking a least a litlle sane, so it's time for the standard McLeary dislaimer...
We need to take the arrest of "would be" terrorists seriously (BUT of course we can't mention their religious motivation here- that's a CJR "no-no")
AND we sure as heck better make damned sure that we don't report any of the facts in any way to make Chimpy look good, dammit!...
In McLearyland, this little misunderstanding is just another example of non-religious "domestic terrorism" (even though ALL of the terrorists are aliens and THREE of them are illegal aliens)..
Instead of risking putting anything in print to make it look like Chimpy or his minions are doing their jobs....
The press should REALLY be working to free tha falsely imprisoned Lackawanna Six- those noble, harmless simple-minded peasants of Islam that Chimpy sent to prison on jacked-up charges...
Anyway... We SURE don't want to talk about way these terrorists came here (first-class on Air Clinton, out of Serbia).. And we definitely can't make any association with Islam- which is of course a Pure Religion of Peace, Tolerance and (Burka-Enhanced) Enlightenment...
Nearly 300 words, and so very little to say. You do realize that you are a troll, right, padkiller?
Here are words that did not appear in this article, but that you took the opportunity to introduce into the discussion: criminally inept, Chimpy Bushitler, flying monkeys, brown shirts, etc., etc., on and on and on and on.
When you argue with the voices in your head, do you find yourself winning or losing, and how do you tell the difference?
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go apply a blowtorch to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Apparently, a little satiric criticism is lost upon the hapless McLearyites.....
And of course... Anyone who offends liberal sensititivites is immediately branded a "troll" here...
I'm used to such shallow castigation, and I am remarkably unsurprised by the ad hominem of yet another fact-dodging moonbat...
However, I feel that I must point out that it was in FACT Paul McLeary (an not me) who characterized President Bush as being "almost criminally inept" in one of his CJR rants...
Furthermore...
The substance of my criticism stands out plainly through the irony, to all but the most egregiously afflicted simpletons....
McLeary managed to vomit his entire piece here without mentioning a few rather key facts...
Downplaying, for instance, what he repeatedly wished to be, at worst, an act of "domestic terrorism" while omitting the rather salient fact that ALL of his "wannabe" "domestic terrorists" are in FACT aliens (and that THREE of them are in FACT ILLEGAL aliens)...
Oh...
And there is the rather HIGHLY relevant matter of the Islamofascist motivation of these alleged terrorists.... A little slice of politically unpleasant reality that seems to have utterly slipped Mr. McLeary's mind, since his article contains not a PEEP about it!...
The position of the CJR self-proclaimed "watchdogs" is clear enough... They bristle at the very notion of any bit of news being construed by anyone in any manner to shed a positive light on the Bush administration... And these unprofessional, biased wanabe "journalists" will do ANYTHING the can get away with to keep this from happening... Including downplaying an Islamofascist plot to slaughter American soldiers...
That's just how it is....
It's just reality....
Deal with it....
Yawn.