Well, here we are on the Labor Day weekend with another 9/11 anniversary quickly approaching so it is no surprise to find the Wingnut-o-sphere lighting up with madly creative xenophobic expressions. This year's program includes a particularly timely two-fer that bundles Islamaphobia with Crisis On The Border-itis into an apocalyptic package par excellence.
According to this year's narrative, America's new arch-enemy, IS or ISIL or ISIS as you prefer, have recently discovered the tactical value of our famously porous south-west border. They have most likely culled that information from online forums and hashtags frequented by Central American children urging their friends and neighbors to join them in America: Land of Opportunity. Apparently, though, this intel has inspired ISIS' leaders to open yet another front in the battle for the Worldwide Caliphate by invading Texas via Juarez. Fortunately for America's intelligence gatherers, ISIS is so new at World Conquest that they haven't yet learned that "loose lips sink ships" and they are tweeting away 24/7 about their imminent plan to invade Texas.
Word of this troubling development comes to us compliments of Judicial Watch, Fox News and Breitbart.com, to name a few, which seem to be the only media outlets that "anonymous government sources" are willing to speak with, at the moment.
So far, Judicial Watch's Investigative Bulletin: Imminent Terrorist Attack Warning By Feds on US Border wins, hands down, in the Official-Sounding Fear Factor category but I have to give Fox News first place for Creative Sourcing.
More below . . .
Some of you may recognize the name Judicial Watch as the brain-child of Larry Klayman, committed Clinton pest and frivolous litigator extraordinaire, funded mostly, over the years, by Richard Mellon Scaife and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. At one time or another, during his long, illustrious career, Klayman has sued former Vice President Dick Cheney, President Barack Obama, OPEC, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the National Security Agency (NSA) and his own mother.
Whilst plying his trade as self-appointed government watchdog, Klayman has managed to have himself barred for life from appearing in the courtrooms of not one, but two federal judges.
More recently, last October, to be exact, during the government shut-down, Klayman was the agent provocateur calling for a "second American non-violent Revolution" demanding that President Obama "put the Quran down and come out with his hands up."
Still hogging the spotlight a few weeks later, Klayman sponsored a "Reclaim America" rally in Lafayette Square across from the White House, calling for the president's removal. He urged "millions to occupy Washington D.C.," and drew a nice sized group of patriots numbering between 130 and 200.
Sadly, Klayman and Judicial Watch have recently come to a parting of ways; there was an ugly divorce, featuring Orly Taitz and a defamation suit last year, but Judicial Watch's editorial standards seem to have survived intact:
High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources have confirmed to Judicial Watch that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border has been issued. Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat.
Specifically, Judicial Watch sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas. Violent crimes are so rampant in Juarez that the U.S. State Department has issued a number of travel warnings for anyone planning to go there. The last one was issued just a few days ago.
Intelligence officials have picked up radio talk and chatter indicating that the terrorist groups are going to “carry out an attack on the border,” according to one JW source. “It’s coming very soon,” according to this high-level source, who clearly identified the groups planning the plots as “ISIS and Al Qaeda.” An attack is so imminent that the commanding general at Ft. Bliss, the U.S. Army post in El Paso, is being briefed, another source confirms. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to multiple inquiries from Judicial Watch, both telephonic and in writing, about this information.
Curious in light of the recent
DHS announcement that there is no reason to raise Department of Homeland Security threat levels. And even curiouser, as one of my personal preferred sources, the estimable
Dok Zoom, points out that:
Out here in what some people prefer to think of as the “real world,” ISIS and al Qaeda can’t stand each other. Here’s the short explainerer from Vox, which we should warn is written using “facts” and “research,” so take it with a grain of salt:
The key thing to understand about ISIS and al-Qaeda is that they are competitors, not allies, and certainly not part of the same larger group.
ISIS used to be al-Qaeda in Iraq. But the group split apart from al-Qaeda in February 2014 because it wouldn’t listen to al-Qaeda HQ’s commands, including orders to curtail its violence against civilians. (That’s right: it was too violent for al-Qaeda.) This ISIS-AQ divorce is a key reason why ISIS is so unremittingly violent, yet many people still lump the two groups together.
Fox News was slightly more
grown-up circumspect in their coverage, despite citing and linking to the
Judicial Watch bulletin. But they just couldn't help themselves from plugging this in:
“A review of ISIS social media messaging during the week ending August 26 shows that militants are expressing an increased interest in the notion that they could clandestinely infiltrate the southwest border of US, for terror attack,” warns the Texas Department of Public Safety "situational awareness" bulletin, obtained by FoxNews.com.
The three-page bulletin, entitled “ISIS Interest on the US Southwest Border” and dated Aug. 28 was released to law enforcement on Thursday.
“Social media account holders believed to be ISIS militants and propagandists have called for unspecified border operations, or they have sought to raise awareness that illegal entry through Mexico is a viable option,” states the law enforcement bulletin, which is not classified.
Since
Fox News hadn't bothered to share that document in any way, I set off to find it for myself. And I found that the
Texas Department of Public Safety does, indeed, issue "situational awareness" bulletins which they helpfully archive on their website, since they are all about "public safety." So it was just a matter of scrolling through to find the particular SA Bulletin cited.
Scrolling didn't turn it up so I did a site search instead, using the title and date given in the Fox article. This is what popped up:
There was a
SA Bulletin issued on August 28th but it was about tropical storms developing in the Gulf.
So then I just plain Googled it. Guess what? up popped every alternative media source in the entire Wingnut-o-sphere referring back and forth to each others' baseless articles all parroting Judicial Watch. Nothing else.
But, glass-half-full? how serendipitously fortunate is all this? because all of that military junk that American PDs have been stockpiling? well, what if Homeland Security started up a buy-back program and sent that arsenal down to the border to kill two or three birds with one stone?
The cops are over it, they're just getting themselves into trouble and finding out how expensive it is to get your MRAPs and BearCats serviced and insured in places like Eau Claire and Tupelo. Put all that materiel on the border and voila! no more niños wading out of the Rio Grande, with the extra-added benefit of securing Fortress America's southern flank against invasion by homicidal twittering jihadis stationed in Juarez.
That kind of thinking is what makes America so darned special.