Aohell

TERROR PLOT or Bumbling Fellow-Travelers?

While Fox News screams about the arrest of six men who planned to attack Fort Dix as being part of a major terror plot to attack bases - yes, plural, as if they could survive after hitting one - the BBC has the same story buried deep in their "Americas" page. The BBC also notes these guys had no connection to any other group.

Fox News opens with how three of the six were illegal immigrants, but does mention they entered the country when they were boys of 1 to 6 years old, around 1984. The other three include two guys with green cards and a US citizen. These guys had been living here in the US for a very long time. None were recent subversives planted by the tentacles of some massive conspiracy to attack the US. They were local whackos, just like the eco-guerrillas, remnants of the Macheteros, or the occasional over-the-top militia group.

They weren't caught because of USA-PATRIOT observations, ethnic profiling, or even following up on one guy's 19 outstanding traffic violations. They were caught because a video store clerk felt a little freaky when he worked on transferring a video to DVD of a bunch of guys shooting guns, acting tough, and yelling in Arabic.That's not your typical tape of a weekend of LARP or paintball action. The feds infiltrated the group.

16 months later, the feds swooped in.

Hold on, 16 months later? After the guys tried to buy guns from the feds? Oh man, I hope it's not another case of the feds infiltrating and then encouraging the guys they infiltrated to commit crimes they weren't really planning to pull off. That's always embarrassing when those cases come to light.

Even if we can take the feds' report at face value, that these guys were the genuine article, they have a lot more in common with the Virginia Tech shooter than they do with the professionals who executed 9/11. Controlling them isn't counter-terrorism. It's good police work - and, again, I stress that's only if they weren't set up in a poorly-planned sting.

These guys are minnows, the sharks are still swimming free, and our biggest problem is the final act of The Battle of Algiers playing out in Baghdad when Iraq turns into a seething pirhana tank.

Watch out, but not necessarily where your government is conducting a show trial.