It’s starting to sound like this is all one more case of lame-o terrorist wannabes who end up making those accusing them look worse than the ‘terrorists’. Just teaching the real terrorists much about how our society and government (mis)functions so when they go at it for real, they know all the weaknesses.
The JFK Pipeline “Plot”: Another “Chilling” Example of Political and Media Hyperbole
The JFK pipeline plot appears to be the work of yet another gang that couldn’t jihad straight.
Its ring leader made a living exporting broken air-conditioner parts to Guyana. Talk about your boom market! Where can I buy stock?
There was no set plan. There was no financing. They didn’t have any explosives — and yet government officials were quoted calling the amorphous plot “one of the most chilling plots imaginable” that almost “resulted in unfathomable damage, deaths, and destruction.” And people wonder why the public has become cynical about how the war on terror is being used for political purposes.
What’s more, the wave of red alert press coverage turns out to have been based on a misunderstanding of how jet fuel pipelines work. “Such an attack would have crippled America’s economy,” wailed AP’s Adam Goldman. And people wonder why the public has become cynical about how the media uses the war on terror to boost their ratings and circulation.
Then we have fear-mongering presidential candidates like Rudy Giuliani wasting no time laying the JFK plot and the Fort Dix plot at the feet of “Islamic terrorists” — raising the specter of Osama bin Laden.
It’s almost comical how Giuliani keeps trying to present himself as a national security expert. Let’s not forget: this is the guy who strongly backed the scandal-plagued Bernie Kerik to be in charge of Homeland Security.
While these guys may never have been able to do anything, they have connections to people who may and other global terrorists who may be operating in different ways than we are preparing for.
Better to overreact than underreact to this type of thing. All you need is one group of whackjobs to succeed.
That being said, yes the media hype machine is running full speed – hype sells.
Well, I’m not in the FBI, or Homeland Security, or any branch of Law Enforcement, so I am not privy to the details of the case. But, in a free society, it’d be pretty easy to come up with explosives and implement a plan if I had a desire to commit a terror plot and cash in hand. Don’t discriminate these guys just becuase they were poor. Should we have waited until they had financing? Or a plan? Sure, it’s not the breaking news that everyone thought it was, but, by definition, it was a terrorist cell, albiet one of insignificant means and ability.
The issue isn’t that after investigating we found they weren’t all that much. The government should have gone all out to find out what they were up to. The issue is how those in the press and politics went nuts on the preliminary facts, scaring the public for political gain. If the goal of some terrorists is to simply scare us into being fearful, changing routines, etc., they just learned again that it doesn’t take much.
It’s a real chuckle to watch the clowns who get their rocks off over invading other countries fumble over themselves to justify their fear and cowardice.
Neocons have the backbone of Jello. Integrity to match.
This is just one more cluster of lawyer-politicians hyping their egregious careers. So, they found some semi-homeless incompetents to bust. What a surprise. Meanwhile, the public gets yet another meaningless fear-rush over a “plot” that couldn’t have served to roast wieners.
terrorism is real, there is in fact a global network of madmen hell-bent on breaking america’s back.
conservatives are simply, honestly trying too keep that simple fact in people’s minds, so we, as a nation, don’t go back to sleep. they aren’t really trying to score political points.
the problem is that conservatives take it personally — they each feel like they themselves are a target, and by proxy, a victim, and they want revenge.
we liberals know that al queda et al cannot be defeated on the battlefield and that seeking vengeance will only drag us into a gangland-style vicious-circle.
what we need to do is go back to treating al queda like criminals and bore the world with endless trials and life sentences, instead of tempting islamic youth with opportunities for martyrdom.
duh.
The first clue that this was being overblown was when I read the following in the first news reports:
“They even used the internet to view satellite photos of JFK airport!!!”
I thought… “Oh… they used Google Maps. Like anyone can do that”. But the story was written in a way to make it sound sinister, like they had managed to tap into a secret Internet criminal underworld of classified satellite photos for sale.
#1 Better to overreact than underreact to this type of thing. All you need is one group of whackjobs to succeed.
Overreacting can be just as harmful as “underreacting”. After 10 false positive one will simply start ignoring alarm even if the 11th will be the true positive….
It’s seven dipshits in a warehouse, revisited.
left wing liberal pansy cry babies
I saw this reported on Fox at the gym, the ONLY place I ever see Fox, and yeah, you woudve thought “end of world scenario”. wow , we are such idiots.
NPR had a good interview with an expert on pipelines who pretty effectively debunked the “mass destruction” claims of the government:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10741228
The government’s exaggeration of the danger of these “plots” really does undermine their credibility and will cause unfortunate distrust among the public.
Just look at the sorry parade of terrorist wannabes who’ve been caught in the U.S. since 9/11. If this is the best they can do in nearly six years, the threat has been exaggerated. And let’s have a show of hands for all those who believe this is due to the crack antiterrorism efforts of our ruthlessly efficient government agencies.
We knew all along that this would be another group of boneheads, didn’t we? I’m not sure putting incompetent idiots in jail with competent criminals is such a good idea either. Unsure of the solution short of public executions Chinese style.
The guy they wanted in Trinidad simply walked in and gave himself up. Some terrorist!
This can be summarized and analyzed for reality with a single two word phrase… “Bush appointed”.
Name a single ‘W’ appointee (other than Colin Powell) that did not reveal themselves to be an incompetent political hack….
Ok, Given what Uncle Dave said to clarify, I totally agree with him. The 24 hour news cycle is a bad thing, and it’s getting worse. Things that would never have gotten on TV are now “Breaking News”. I bet if I had a penny for every second that CNN has covered Paris Hilton today, I bet I could pay off my car…
#5
You are right….this was over-hyped by the govt. and, mabye more so, by the media. But treating terrorism as a criminal problem was tried in the 90’s. The most notable results…..World Trade Center bombing 1993, US embassies in Africa, USS Cole and 9/11.
I still think Afghanistan and Iraq were the correct moves with Iraq being horribly executed. The jury is still out on Afghanistan .
It’s just another case of the government trying to prove to the public that they’re on top of everything. Meh…
Of course it was overhyped…this type of fear mongering has been the M.O. for the republikan party for years now – Sell Fear!
The only one with a level head here has been the governor of NY…everyone else has been declaring how devastating this would have been, but, in actuality, the ‘masterminds’ (heh calling these 2 masterminds is a streeeeeetch), had no funding, no plans, nothing more than an idea (and an idea that wouldn’t even have worked).
So, right wing hawks, we’re on to your hate-filled and fear-filled ways.
Yeah these terorists look like nutjobs until they succeed. There’s this one group that was planning to take over four planes with knives, and then ram them into some buildings!
We’ve always had homegrown terrorists… think back…in the 70’s we had the Weather Underground, the SLA (symbionese liberation army, or something like that), in the 80’s we had the ALF (animal liberation front) and abortion clinic bombers (did they ever have a name) in the 90’s we had the guy with manure and Oklahoma City, elsewhere we’ve had the Unibomber, and…damn, that’s just off the top of my head.
However, the one thing that they all looked forward to was the terror and mayhem that they could do. Chaos and fear is the point. It’s how we can be controlled…..hysterical pack mentality. The government and media are terrorizing us all with these stupid headlines, and the pushing the fear envelope.
Honestly, a few low life dudes in NYC planning to blow up a pipeline that they know nothing about how it works does not a terror plot make. If anything the way we’re all running around like Chicken Little is making the REAL terrorist plotters laugh. How can it be SO EASY to freak us out? We used to have more resolve and backbone than that! In fact, in the mid 70’s when my company had numerous bomb threats by the WU, it got to a point where we had a mimeographed list of questions we had to ask the call-in threatener. “How big is this bomb” “How did you get access to the building” “Why are you calling” “What is your motive”. We started to ignore them….literally….and just do an “incident report”. Employees on phones were instructed to fill out these long, really dull, boring, lots of work reports, and to not react in any way to the caller. I had one, I was pissed about getting the stupid call, and pissed about having to get the extra work. I know I cussed out the sucker and told him that I’d tear his nuts off if I ever met him. I wasn’t the only one who reacted that way to these supposed terrorist threats. We were all sick of them.
And, the reality. The company did take a lot of precautions. We were all pretty wary of people hanging around. The building had tight security, and three levels of cardlock doors. Every employee had a detailed criminal background and bonding search. We had more than a dozen “roving” guards all-round-the-clock. General use of the parking structure was restricted (so only executives had that perk! Which sucked.) It was all rather calm, though. The ploy was to “stop reacting”. Stop making everyone go stand on the street and disrupt our operations. Funny, coincidentally the bomb threats stopped when we stopped being all in “panic mode”.
Mass hysteria is a real thing though….in the 50’s people were freaked OUT about cosmic space dust (making dings in our windshields) and brown spots infecting us from airplanes (was bee poop). We as a group tend to over react and act as a unit if urged to. We are a herd mentality. If you don’t believe this…just think back to BEENIE BABIES!!!
19. MikeN- Hey Mike, shhh! DONT TURN AROUND , THERES A TERRORIST BEHIND YOU BOO!!!!!!!
LOL
No one’s suggesting the FBI “underreact” to any sort of terror threat. They certainly should investigate whatever they hear about. This isn’t about that, it’s about histrionic news announcements designed to whip up public frenzy on the basis of what government officials already know is utter crap. If the FBI, the OHS and the White House don’t know the difference between palpable threats and pipe dreams that don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of happening and don’t comprehend that you don’t bother publicizing the latter, they’re no good to us. If they do know that and they’re doing it anyway, they’re just trying to manipulate public sentiment, which is certainly in keeping with the FBI’s history. (Hoover in the ’20s and ’30s made a career of overinflating both the importance of cases and the FBI’s involvement in them, to build an image of the FBI agent as America’s Lawman.) There are even elements of the Ft. Dix affair, at least, that smell badly of Cointelpro programs of the ’60s, suggesting – and I hope this is just paranoid misapprehension – the FBI is now re-entering the business of manufacturing incidents to exploit. But I doubt any of it was hyped by the media past the point that the Administration wanted it to be hyped; whatever else you can say about the media these days, at least they’ve finally starting cutting down the time again between being hoodwinked by an official press release and admitting they’ve been hoodwinked by an official press release and what the hoodwinking was.
I’m less critical of the press for overmentioning that Paris Hilton’s out of jail and drastically undermentioning (AKA very much downplaying or not mentioning at all) that the Turks invaded Iraq yesterday…
(AKA very much downplaying or not mentioning at all) that the Turks invaded Iraq yesterday…
Well, somebody said the Turks invaded Iraq yesterday, which would be a very bad thing. It’s entirely possible the Turks did invade Iraq but if so, whose fault would that be? Who is in control in Kurdistan these days or does anyone know?
Alas, my first and last visit to “dvorak.org/blog.” Stick to tech, John — I love what you do there. When rabid politics on either misguided partisan side of the aisle are the only fodder for discussion, intelligent discourse is gone — never more apparent than this juvenile stream of commentary that does exactly nothing to advance any solution.
BTW, I’ll still check out your tech stuff in other venues; your “crankiness” is what makes you credible and interesting.
#2,
But, in a free society, it’d be pretty easy to come up with explosives …
Actually, it isn’t easy to come up with explosives. First, there is the paper work, then there is finding someone to sell it to you. The ATF and the industry keep a pretty tight watch over who gets possess explosives.
Wanna try something home made? Be my guest. The raw ingredients for most explosives are not sold over the counter and must be specially ordered. Again, expect to have the ATF notified if it doesn’t sound right. Try to buy a ton of fertilizer; you better have a farm.
It might be a free society, but there are many regulations and vigilant citizens aware of what may be used to make explosives.
#27, Pedro
BOO !!!!!!
There’s a commie Muslim terrorist under your bed.
So there’s a service between Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. There is neither anything sinister nor illegal about that. Your crap about no inspections is bull, unless you have some link you would care to post. You don’t? I didn’t think so.
Since Trinidad doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Iran (probably due to costs), it is perfectly reasonable for someone traveling from Trinidad to Iran would go to the nearest Iranian Embassy. Which just happens to be in Caracas. Also note, he is a Muslim and was attending a Muslim conference in Iran.
Also if you don’t think Muslims get hassled while flying, you don’t read much. But why bother quoting a Syrian official about an Iranian Airways route? Oh I get it. There is a stigma that Syria is part of the Axis of Evil. Right!!!