Big Terror Plot Foiled in Miami
It appears that a government informant managed to convince a group of losers to talk to him about something that could perhaps suggest some ideas that may have some relationship to potential conversations that might be construed to be tangentially associated with terrorist-type discussions - hard to tell from the initial reports. While no bombs or weapons were found in an extensive search, one of the suspects went so far as to "take an Al Qaeda oath."
This could be good news - that actual terrorist activity inside the U.S. is so non-existent that the government is reduced to making up threats in order to entrap some pathetic fools into an arrest. Or it could be bad news - that despite all the surveillance and supposed-intelligence gathering that we are still unable to find the real terrorists and instead are manufacturing them for public consumption.
Or - who knows - this might turn out to be the real thing, but I very much doubt it.
This could be good news - that actual terrorist activity inside the U.S. is so non-existent that the government is reduced to making up threats in order to entrap some pathetic fools into an arrest. Or it could be bad news - that despite all the surveillance and supposed-intelligence gathering that we are still unable to find the real terrorists and instead are manufacturing them for public consumption.
Or - who knows - this might turn out to be the real thing, but I very much doubt it.
posted by ziel | 6/22/2006 11:45:00 PM
18 Comments:
After seeing the CNN interview of one of the brothers, it looks like you are right. He didn't act intelligent enough to formulate a plot.
These guys would have trouble knocking off the local 7-11 store, much less engineering a sophisticated terrorist plot.
I think it´s pretty simple. Now that Karl Rove is off the legal hook, we are already seeing some of his handiwork here. There will be alot more of it leading up to November. I wish the Democrats had someone as good as him. Goebbels would be proud. Orange Alerts anyone?
Oh Yee of 10000 Katrina Deaths...
On Karl Rove,
Its been one of the profound dissapointments of my lifetime to see the Republicans stoop to the level of dirty tricks one associates with the Democrats.
Lying to your base (anti-mass immigrationist, evangelicals) to get what you want (a corporate dominated nation in culture, finance, uneven and unfair scholastic and opportunistic hegemoney for the gated-community right) is wrong. The Democrats have long lied to their base (beer-and-pretzel union hall working people, poor minorities) to get what they want (multi-culti-godless-France, but worse), but we expect it from them.
Professional sleazers like Rove, Bob Shrum (there's got to be a reserved space in hell....), Carville, et al are always going to gravitate towards dirt because they are paid to get results and dont have that little concious-thingy most of us are born with.
Its pathetic to say this, but a terrorists "hit" on a commuter train or some suburban shopping mall in say......OHIO, would help the Republicans in the next election. I KNOW that in some wet dreams of the neo-con right at least one SOB has thought......I wonder if there are any down-on-their-luck-former military/CIA guys who wouldn't like to help their country "stay strong" and aid Mr. Cheney/Jeb/McCain by "reminding" AmeriKa that we are in a "terror war".....I mean "its for the greater good of Isra----ummmm, America" and all. Just a sacrafice of a few, for the betterment of us all. We build a corny memorial to them.
YOU KNOW this has run through the mud-slingers faustian minds. Admit it.
I had the same reaction you did. There are stories claiming the men wore turbans, but one witness said: "All you could do was just see their eyes. They had their whole head wrapped up. Just the eyes showing," which suggests to me they were costumed as Ninjas. (Didn't some of Lee Malvo's drawings include depictions of Ninjas too?)
Yeah, I heard a kid on the news say they sometimes wore face coverings and I thought that's odd because Muslim MEN don't cover their faces - but the Ninja angle makes sense.
This has the ring to it of the Kansas City Star (we love that newspaper) reporting that the Royals are close to, possibly, signing a "promising" new high school prospect. Trying to make an alternative fuel from sh*t.
Nothing substantial is being accomplished on the true anti-terrorist fronts (borders, cargo vessels, mass trans (except airline shoe checks & lighter collection) so let's manufacture a big bust.
I agree with Jimbo that it stinks of Rove. Also agree that the Dems are too shy to make an issue of it.
If the Sears Tower falls tomorrow, will we look bad or will Homeland Security?
I don't think the likes of Karl Rove are needed to make something like this happen - this happens in the normal course of law enforcement, where arrests lead to good things for the officers involved (particularly the bosses). For something like this, someone is sure to be promoted. Career advancement is a far simpler (and thus preferred) explanation than a White House political officer directing FBI investigations.
Now if you want to argue that general White House pressure for results is partly to blame, then you're entering more plausible territory.
That is precisely what I'm suggesting.
No, I don't think Karl Rove was listening in and told the informant what, when & where to dupe these morons but I do think that some subtle message may have been sent to the FBI (as well as others) that we could use a bit of positive Homeland Security activity (wink, nod) to piggyback on the latest Iraq success and keep Georgie-Boy rising in the polls. If this anti-terrortist assualt continues, some campaigning Republicans might actually accept Bush as their leader rather than distancing themselves from (or at least ignoring) him as most have been doing. As I understand it, George's campaign speech schedule is currently pretty light for the mid terms.
I'd like to think Ziel is right about this latest bust, and he probably is.
However, it really disturbs me that the admin's "strong anti-terrorism" (which is more like strong against YOUR privacy) stance puts them in a position to gain NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS. If we get a bomb in some major city (and a really good one that sends shrapnel everywhere disfiguring a few hundred people like a big version of the rat-poisoned nails emitted by a Gaza surprise), the admin will benefit and tell us "if you guys had just gotten behind us and gotten TOUGHER on your own constitiution". If NOTHING happens, they can say "we've protected you since 2001, elect us again for an even bigger screwin'."
Thats troubling. Its either the Corporate-Debt party or the damned hippies. Danny Heartland Voter has nowhere to turn.
If you really want to delve deeply into this issue, ask yourself this salient question: "Just why in the hell does a nation of 300 million need ANY immigrants from the Middle East at all?" We've got em' coming from all over the Western Hemishpere, China, India, Russia, Europe. The Middle East is home to Wahhabism. The ideology of blowing up those who disagree with you. If we simply didn't let them come to America (except for very short visits, but not residency), we proboably wouldn't have to worry about any extensive terror networks rooting down here and growing like cancers.
Of course, something as politically incorrect as that will never be considered. But its seemingly working for China, just like almost non-existant immigration seems to be growing China's economy and like not getting involved in the Middle East seems to keep would-be terrorist states from inciting her (because if they did anything to her, they probably reason-correctly-that her response would be a massive nuclear one, but thats besides the point).
Ah, well.........the North Koreans can get a nuke here NOW, and we dont seem as up in arms about it as we do guys in skirts with ridiculous beards and where they tell young lunatics to blow themselves up for 72 hotties.
Ziel, let me clarify. Sure KR didn´t go down to Florida and coach these guys, etc. What is clear is that it is an important election year (aren´t they all) for the Republicans and Rove is the guy to get the job done. He´s no longer bogged down by the grand jury investigation, and he has his grand design on how to keep control of all of the branches of govt. come November. It´s no coincidence that these things are happening now and they ARE connected.
The administration´s primary purpose is to perpetuate Iraq. How do they do that? As always, by keeping the American public in a state of fear ala Orange Alerts and terrorist cells in Florida, thus voting Republican the security party, while at the same time arguing in Congress and in stump speeches by Bush and Cheney, etc. that the Iraqi war actually serves a purpose of fighting terrorism. Like Harlem mentioned, Rove sends out his instructions to the different divisions such as Gonzalez/Justice/FBI/Homeland Security and they will drum up whatever ridiculousness they can find. It will keep happening with increasing intensity right into November. Again, classic Goebbels.
At least the American public still has the opportunity to wake up and vote these thugs out of office. Coffee anyone?
Jimbo,
Rove was asked himself a couple of months ago "what this election will be about" in some publication or another.
He said "security", that "This election will be about security". The columnist whose column this appeared in (Leornard Pitts) translated what he menat for us. "Fear" is what Pitts wrote. "This election will be about fear", according to Leonard Pitts interpretation of Rove.
I think he's right. What else could the Repubs run on in their performance under Bush? Spending? ha, Immigration control? Duck, Deficits? Clinton was better Personal Debt? Its 1929, Culture? any better than the 90's? Race quotas? same as it ever was, Personal income? down for the vast majority relative to inflation. Cost of housing? astronomical, Energy independence? Cheney or Warner kill every new idea through backdoors as fast as they can..........we will get no more hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear as long as these guys have anything to say about it. Shale oil? not until they own the land its brought up from. Ethanol? they just wont make Detroit "do it".
Get em' out. Id even vote Dem (other than Hillary, Kerry, or any Kennedy) to get em' out
Here is all you need to know about Karl Rove...
According to journalist Ron Suskind, when he was doing an interview with Rove at the White House in 2002, Rove made sure he heard the following exchange and duly reported it:
Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. “We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him.”
According to James Moore, author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential", he has been on the Transportation Security Administration's No Fly list ever since the book came out (2004). He still can not fly on an airplane anywhere in the country.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/branded_b_13272.html?p=2
Thats a link about James Moore being on a no-fly list.
If true, thats a Clintonesque tactic. Wev'e got to get these folks out of Washington.
Here's my theory,
This entire multi-trillion dollar Internal State Security apparatus that has been built up in recent years has very little to do with battling the armies of Muslim radicals we've supposedly got lurking in this country. The real reason for the massive Homeland Security bureaucracy, the Patriot Act, etc. is that our Federal government knows that our hollowed out, debt-ridden economy is going to spectacularly crash one of these days, and so they want the trappings of a police state ready to be put into place when the collapse occurs and mass political unrest breaks out.
Why else would the Federal govenment be having Haliburton build a 40,000 bed concentration camp in the Mojave Desert? There aren't 40,000 Al-Qaida members in the whole world, let alone the United States. And they sure aren't going to toss illegal aliens in there, as everyone by now has figured out that the gov't wants them to stay. Why the massive eavesdropping campaign against people who have nothing to do with Islam, and the harrassment of outspoken critics of the Bush Administration (including the thousands of U.S. citizens put on the No-Fly list? No, these are the actions of a wannabe Fascist dictatorship. They are just warming up now, in anticipation of when it becomes politically expedient to formally implement martial law and throw out the constitution (such as mass riots and looting in the wake of an economic meltdown).
And the sad thing is, they'll get away with it, as most Americans now are culturally dumbed-down, politically disinterested morons.
I apologize for sounding like a crank.
But from my perspective and from talking to and listening to people from different parts of the country these days, I get the distinct impression that this country is losing its marbles.
A while back I was down at Baltimore-Washington Int'l Airport waiting to pick somebody up, and the level of paranoia I witnessed was almost comically absurd. Here it was late on a slow weeknight, and the place was teeming with state cops and TSA geeks with walkie talkies, constantly circling the airport on their little electric Segway scooters, just like the luggage going around the conveyor belt over and over again, watching the airport goers closely and suspiciously. It was like George Orwell's "1984", as produced by Mel Brooks.
A couple of weeks ago I read that the CEO of Intel Corp., Andy Grove, said that the United States is going down the tubes and that most of the public was clueless about it. I'm afraid he could be right.
Well I think the Halliburton detention facility is a bit of an overblown concern - it's a contingency, which will only occur in a declared emergency. But I generally understand your point. There is a general 'security' mindset that treats every individual as suspicious and every situation as indistinguishably perilous as any other. We have trained an army of such people just by having so many cops. They retire young and then pursue security careers. We'd eventually have to create a Homeland Security department anyway just to give them jobs.
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