Gone are the days of the color coded alerts, now we get real arrests! Increasingly living in the twilight zone, a place where our government is able to produce terrorist plots to order. Literally.
This is a editted version of an item crossposted at
Texas Kaos.
The case of the "Florida 7" is on point:
From today's Houston Chronicle: The announcement came two weeks after the arrest of an unconnected group of men in Miami and Georgia on charges that they were talking about blowing up skyscrapers in Chicago.
In that case, an FBI official described the group of mostly U.S. citizens as "more aspirational than operational," with no explosives, funding or ties to established terrorist organizations.
So is this one:
LINK In May, a Brooklyn man, Shahawar Matin Siraj, was convicted of plotting to plant a bomb in a Manhattan subway station, despite defense claims that he was a patsy coaxed into discussing a bombing by a government informant
The article summarizing our most recent terror victories listed five since January first. All are characterizes best, in the words of the unnamed FBI agent above, " 'more aspirational than operational,' with no explosives, funding or ties to established terrorist organizations."
Lets add to that these cases: Abu Zubaydah,the Brooklyn Bridge "plot," Jose Padilla, Hemant Lakhani, and the "Miami 7," [these via Carpetbagger Report
Now the nunmber of suspect cases is fully half of those reported
here, when the Prez'dent last tried to rally himself by playing this card.
The critic in the Chronicle article goes on to complain the obvious:
"This is starting to look like the president's version of rounding up the usual suspects," he said. "There is a pattern of dramatic announcements, followed by revelations that these plots weren't as serious as we all initially thought."
But, as the article points out , juries are willing to convict anyway , so what's the problem? I mean we got to stop terrorists, don't we?
The obvious answer is yes we do. But let's think about this for a second. We have an administration that has blatantly and consistently used fear and division to govern. Every time the press gives them a free pass on their claims, the more likely they will repeat this tactic. Worse, now the administration can produce a terror success anytime it wants to. It simply picks up on loose chatter, amplifies it using its agents to push the level of the bluster and intent to a satisfactory one and then busts the 'cel' so inflated, all to wide public acclaim. Of course, it then spends the next week backing down on how important or imminent the threat was in the first place. By then it does not matter, the announcement has had its intended effect.
I don't know what , if anything , can be done about this, besides changing administrations. We have no way of really calling them out on this that I can see. The press is actually doing a better job, but it is not apparent that this is making much of a difference on public perceptions.
Clearly the guys they have picked up were doing some talking. The administration makes the case that they can't wait until these guys become more organized before they strike. It is also apparent that they can wait until it is convenient for them though and they can selectively enhance chosen plots using undercover agents as well. In other words, they can manufacture plots to order. Given their track record, can we trust them to focus on real threats and not simply on politically useful ones? I know my answer, what is yours?