I try not to be a cynical person. When mainstream news outlets report on disrupted terrorist plots, my first instinct isn’t to question the timing or doubt the validity of the report, but rather to cheer.
But when it comes to disrupted plots, the Bush administration’s track record is discouraging. Too often, threats have been irresponsibly hyped far beyond the facts. Like the boy who cried “wolf,” the Bush gang has bred cynicism, making it almost impossible to consider news like this at face value.
Six “Islamic radicals” involved in a plot to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were arrested Monday night, the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey said Tuesday.
One of the suspects was born in Jordan, another in Turkey, the U.S. attorney’s office said. The rest are believed to be from the former Yugoslavia, “either U.S. citizens or living illegally in the United States,” the office said in a statement.
“Their alleged intention was to conduct an armed assault on the army base and to kill as many soldiers as possible,” according to the statement. […]
The men were planning to use automatic weapons to shoot soldiers at the Army post, according to a federal law enforcement source and a senior government source.
The men, some of whom were related to each other, had been doing surveillance and planning “for a while,” and they trained in the Poconos Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania, according to the federal law enforcement source. They played paintball and test-fired weapons, a law enforcement source said.
Apparently, the plot was disrupted when the would-be killers videotaped a training session, and brought it to a store to have it burned onto to a DVD. The store clerk saw the video, called the FBI, and agents set up a sting operation, posing as arms dealers, to arrest the suspects.
Obviously, this is a great development and encouraging news. The law enforcement officials who were involved with the arrests, not to mention that store clerk, deserve the nation’s gratitude.
That said, there are a few angles to this story to consider.
First, it’s worth noting that today’s success was due to intelligence gathering and law-enforcement efforts — the very techniques the Bush White House has consistently ridiculed as ineffective in counterterrorism. For that matter, as Steve M. noted, “[A]pparently no warrantless wiretapping led to these arrests, no torture of suspects in overseas prisons, nothing liberals have objected to in the Patriot Act. Remember that when you’re told that these arrests prove that we can’t trust liberals and Democrats.”
Second, the alleged “Islamic radicals” may not have been quite as dangerous as the initial reports had led us to believe.
While authorities are glad to have arrested them, the individuals are “hardly hard core terrorists,” one law enforcement source said.
Another source said that while the allegations are “troubling,” they are “not the type that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up.”
And third, let’s also not forget that just about every disrupted terrorist plot the Bush administration has touted turned out to be far less serious than advertised. The plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge wasn’t quite what it was cracked up to be. Jose Padilla was not actually prepared to detonate a dirty bomb in DC. The plot by the “Miami 7” to strike the Sears Tower was billed by Dick Cheney as being “a very real threat” — but the reality was very different.
Moreover, the facts of the British hijacking plot didn’t stand up well to scrutiny, while the plot to attack Los Angeles’ Library Tower turned out to be far less serious than we’d been led to believe.
Obviously, I can appreciate the national security restrictions that prevent administration officials from talking openly about their counter-terrorism successes in any kind of detail, but in recent years, the Bush gang have pointed to about a half-dozen specific thwarted terrorist plots — all of which turned out to be far less serious than the administration claimed.
I’m not saying that the alleged plot at Fort Dix falls into the same category, but I am saying that between the CNN report about the suspects not being “hard core terrorists” and the administration’s track record, one need not be a cynic to be skeptical.