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Oh What A Tangled Web — Why Now?
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Oh What A Tangled Web

Right after learning that FBI Losing Top Anti-Terror Talent because if you don’t apply for a job in Washington after you become the head of a district office the Bureau will demote you, we learn Three held in New York tunnel plot.

If this is real why was anti-terror funding to New York reduced?

This guy is supposed to be al Qaeda and trained at a camp in the Syrian controlled area of Lebanon, in spite of the known hatred between al Qaeda and the Shi’ia Ba’athists who control Syria?

His “playboy” lifestyle was a “cover” for his fundamentalist convictions?

This was a real plot, even though there has been no surveillance of the purported target, no acquisition of materiel, and no appreciation of the problems of getting sufficient explosives into a railway tunnel carved out of the bedrock under the river?

This is real because these guys got together in a chatroom and discussed it?

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember a time when guys would sit around, drink a few beers, and tell each other the most absurd lies about sports, women, cars, and how “bad” they were. The rule was the first time someone started sounding like the truth, you knew it was time to go home.

I realize it’s an election year, but they are going to have to do better than this. I admit it is a better story than the Haitians in ninja costumes in Miami, but still…

6 comments

1 andante { 07.08.06 at 6:53 am }

These guys didn’t even get to the stage of practicing with paintball.

The FBI is going straight from suspicion to arrest without all that expensive ‘investigation’ stuff in between.

2 Bryan { 07.08.06 at 9:34 am }

Next thing you know, you need scale certificates to talk about fishing. When are they going to arrest the winger hate crew?

3 Michael { 07.08.06 at 10:04 am }

Certainly not before the November midterms. They’re going to need all the winger votes they can get. And I can’t help but think that trumpeting the “foiling” of this alleged “terrorist plot” right now had a heck of a lot more to do with the parlous state of the preznit’s approval ratings than with any actual threat to New York City.

4 Bryan { 07.08.06 at 12:38 pm }

I’m getting a feeling from some of the statements from the FBI that the leak came out of the White House and the FBI was well aware that it was bogus.

Having this reported in the Daily News is a bit odd, as if none of the bigger papers would carry it.

5 Steve Bates { 07.08.06 at 9:55 pm }

This is the 2006 equivalent of the color-coded terror alert level. People caught on about that, so they had to find something else. We should create a new scale, a Bush Poll Number Alert, that runs from dark gray to black. For every point drop in Bush’s JAR, we go to the next darker bar, and the FBI announces another “terrorist plot” foiled. I’m not saying there is no genuine threat of terrorism, but I am saying the Bushies wouldn’t recognize it even if it bit ’em on the poll.

6 Bryan { 07.08.06 at 10:03 pm }

I get that feeling, and, on a related note, this was an on-going investigation, so printing this has killed the leads to the other people involved, who might be dangerous. Whatever chatroom these guys were using is no longer a source for information thanks to this reporting.