They seem to be getting it done:
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, senior government officials have announced dozens of terrorism cases that on closer examination seemed to diminish as legitimate threats. The accumulating evidence against a Denver airport shuttle driver suggests he may be different, with some investigators calling his case the most serious in years.
Documents filed in Brooklyn against the driver, Najibullah Zazi, contend he bought chemicals needed to build a bomb — hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid — and in doing so, Mr. Zazi took a critical step made by few other terrorism suspects.
If government allegations are to be believed, Mr. Zazi, a legal immigrant from Afghanistan, had carefully prepared for a terrorist attack. He attended a Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, received training in explosives and stored in his laptop computer nine pages of instructions for making bombs from the same kind of chemicals he had bought.
And then there is this:
A 19-year-old Jordanian citizen is expected to make an appearance before a federal magistrate in Dallas this morning after authorities accused him of attempting to blow up a downtown Dallas skyscraper.
Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested Thursday after he parked a vehicle laden with government-supplied fake explosives in the underground parking garage of Fountain Place, a 60-story tower in the 1400 block of Ross Avenue at North Field Street, authorities said.
These seem to me to be success stories, and real threats (unlike that one group of clowns in Queens a couple months ago). I also like how they are sort of taking it in stride and not having big, showy press conferences with Eric Holder trying to scare the shit out of us.
Legalize
Po-lice work.
The Grand Panjandrum
I guess the plastic sheeting and duct tape lobby have lost their pull with a new administration in office.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Wow, and we didn’t have to invade a country. Regardless, you can bet the wingnuts will find something to whine about. They have made a habit of derisively laughing at any mention of using law enforcement to go after terrorists.
It doesn’t fit in with the War on [insert scary problem] theme the Repubs love to run with.
Kudos to the law on this though, I am glad to hear it.
MNPundit
It’s too bad actually, I would hope they could use this to push for expanding health care coverage. The Bushies never lost a chance to stay on message.
PeakVT
Gee, the law enforcement approach to terrorism works. Score another one for the DFHs.
John Cole
In fairness, you have to wait until all the details come out to find out how they succeeded here, and then determine if any of the Bush era changes to those agencies were continued on before you start the “OBAMA BETTER THAN BUSH ON TERRORISM.” Remember, these are professional agencies and agents with a good bit of operational continuity regardless of who is President, so don’t be stupid like the wingnuts and start acting all partisan about it and using it as a political hammer. Yes, they would. But that was wrong.
Ash Can
It’s a real relief having grownups in charge.
dricey
And they didn’t have to waterboard anybody. Jack Bauer will be outraged!
srv
I’ve done a sandbox test, and this appears to be plausible.
SANDBOX TEST: A reference to any plausible physical event that wingnut bloggers have discounted because it is physically impossible. Appeared during the Beauchamp Affair when wingnuts asserted his story about running over a dog in Iraq with an APC were impossible.
JenJen
@John Cole: But former McCain campaign lackey Nicolle Wallace was just on my teevee, saying even the President of France is tougher than Obama, and that it is moments like this that people wish Hillary Clinton had been elected (vis-a-vis developments in Iran). A year later, and I still can’t stand that woman…
In other news, Michelle Malkin is stalking children again.
geg6
And once again, it’s the law enforcement people who actually stop terrorism. Kudos to them.
Xenos
Just wait. The proliferation of plots being identified and foiled will soon be used as evidence that Obama is losing the larger war on terror. I give it three days at most before we hear that line being used.
MNPundit
@JenJen: She stopped?
RememberNovember
Scary,cops and FEderal Agents actually doing their jobs and not standing about for photo ops. My how times change.
Though it seems the NYPD inadvertantlly cockblocked the feds with their informant the Imam.
El Cid
Anyone remember how Republicans mocked John Kerry for suggesting the law enforcement & investigation model of anti-terrorism?
It got so bad that the formerly lawnorder Republicans suddenly all became deriders of cops in favor of foreign invasions, because using cops & real investigations was gay and only bombing the shit out of various countries proved our anti-terror resolve.
Bill E Pilgrim
Okay I’ll start: Obama better than Bush on terrorism.
If nothing else, the massive advertisement for widespread hatred of America that was the invasion of Iraq and hanging of its President would pretty much lower the bar on being worse than Bush as far as preventing terrorism.
The entire world was on our side after 9/11. I know, I was out there living in it. I’d wager that Al Queda would already be a memory now, had the war in Iraq never happened. The world, including the Arabic and other Muslim countries, was against them and turned much more so by 9/11.
My point here is that by treating criminals like criminals rather than raging across the world declaring a national state of “war” on criminal acts, this administration is already helping to reduce the threat of terrorist acts against us from the previous. Score: Much, much better.
Thinking that Bush was a spectacular failure in every way is not “partisan”, BTW. It’s what almost everyone thinks.
Demo Woman
@John Cole: Am I missing something? At this point no one said that Obama is better than Bush on terrorism.
Peak’s comment refers to the grief that Kerry took on the campaign trail and The Grand Pan’s comment is right on.
Home Depot probably misses the good olde days!
JK
This definitely sounds encouraging. On the flipside, I was reading wingnut reaction to Obama’s speech at the UN and he’s being portrayed as if he just announced that the US was surrendering to Iran or Al Qaeda.
Hugh Hewitt-
Source: http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/4ab6767b-b426-4217-b28c-3b804cfb27b0
Rich Lowry –
Source: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/prez_comes_across_as_gullible_sap_iThpnFL1g7RTYvQyCZjvQP
I just hope law enforcement can keep up the good work thru the end of Obama’s first term. If, God forbid, there’s another terrorist attack on US soil under Obama’s watch, jackasses like Hewitt, Lowry, Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Beck, et al will be screaming for his impeachment.
Demo Woman
@Bill E Pilgrim: Kudos! You said it much better than I.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Demo Woman: Well to be fair to JC I sort of sidestepped his point to go to another, i.e. the general approach to the whole issue worldwide.
As far as who’s “better” at using law enforcement to counter terrorists domestically, I actually see his point, too soon to tell plus it’s not the commander in chief alone and etc etc etc. I just thought the general “don’t judge Obama vs Bush yet” was going way too far, Bush was a tragedy on the subject in general. Obama still has years to go but I’d be amazed to see him fail that massively.
kid bitzer
no press conference? no color-coded alerts?
if obama were really serious about terrorism, he would be working to keep the american public in a state of terror.
seriously–it will be interesting to see how fox handles these successes. it confronts them with a dilemma.
Punchy
Weak sauce.
BC
Yeah, not Eric Holder nor Janet Napolitano (DHS). If this had been in 2008, Michael Chertoff would have had his skeleton at every press conference and been interviewed upteen times. Publicity hound, that Chertoff.
asiangrrlMN
Way to go law enforcement people. That’s what I like to see–as long as there is due process.
@Punchy: So, Punchy, how does it feel to have made it into the fabled Lexicon?
General Winfield Stuck
Not a question of Obama being better than Bush on terrorism. It’s a matter of Obama, according to wingnut propaganda, palling around with terrorists and helping his bro’ mooslim weathermen waste us all. The bar was set by Sarah Serendipity and the likes of Atlas Juggs, and it’s a low one for success.
And Jen Jen, I was wondering who would be the first bushie neocon to say Obama was a sissy compared to Nik the baddass GOP Frenchie. So it was Wallace, not a big surprise there.
cervantes
I also note that they didn’t need any illegal wiretaps, they didn’t torture anybody, and they didn’t disappear any of these people to Diego Garcia without recourse to lawyers.
I say, if you don’t torture them, the terrorists win.
robertdsc
Mind-blowing, if you pardon the pun.
Just Some Fuckhead
If President Obama was serious about terrorism, he’d order the military to destroy Denver and Dallas. Anything less is just letting the terrorists win.
pk
I will go one up: Obama is better than Bush on everything. Admittedly it is a pretty low bar, but try as I might I cannot imagine a situation where Obama can screw up worse than Bush. I’m not saying Obama can’t screw up, but you have to be a very special type of loser to fail at every single thing in life the way Bush did.
JenJen
@General Winfield Stuck: Jamie Rubin was on the Morning Joe panel when she said it, and the camera briefly showed him rolling his eyes.
The President of France is tougher than the American President. Neocons iz funniez when they’re not in power!!
General Winfield Stuck
@JenJen:
Yes, I saw that. Jamie explained the good cop bad cop ways of diplomacy that had happened with the UN presser.
Just Some Fuckhead
This must be where the police are getting all their insider information. Score one for the Mission Undercover President! I smell a Starz Original Movie.
Max
@JenJen: Yuck. Makes me thankful I live on the West Coast and MoJoe is too early for me.
However, such geography means that my entire getting ready for work in the morning is spent with D Rattigan in the background. I’m not sure how I feel about him. He has J Capeheart on a lot, and I like him very much.
Bootlegger
When do we bomb Jordan?
The point Glenzilla has been making the last few years that law enforcement does work, has worked, and will work seems to be true in the US and not just in such weird places as Spain and England.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JenJen:
The President of France is currently having one of his opponents in the past Presidential race tried for slander, surrounding acts during the campaign. Think Obama having McCain put on trial and facing prison for having said bad things about Obama during the campaign, and you’ve basically got the picture.
It’s not quite that simple (forgery and other stuff is being charged) but that’s really essentially it.
So yeah, the Wingnuts would love that, they can only aspire to that level of creepy.
On the other hand, Sarkozy supports single-payer universal health care and is staunchly anti-death penalty, so by those two things alone, by Winger standards he’s a DFH if he’s a day.
danimal
As a public servant (aka bureaucrat), I appreciate the Obama approach. When the top brass gets out of the way and lets people do their jobs, good results occur. When the top brass parachutes in to a situation and holds press conferences while micro-managing every last detail of things they don’t understand, bad things happen. I’ll take low-key and professional over the publicity-hound approach seven days a week and twice on Sunday.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
Don’t forget the two guys in North Carolina last month, plotting to blow up Quantico: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE58N6YT20090924 (sorry, don’t really know how to do the whole cool link embed thing), and the Springfield, Illinois, where Michael Finton/Talib Islam tried to re-enact the bombing of the federal building http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2447383520090924.
Xenos
Jonathan Capehart and Eugene Robinson are the token sane people at the Washington Post.
The Moar You Know
@kid bitzer: Hahahahaha. No, it does not. Obama isn’t strapping the subjects to a waterboard mounted on top of a JDAM, burning the guy’s nostrils out with a soldering iron, and then dropping the suspect, waterboard, and JDAM out of a B-52 onto an orphanage full of Iraqi (or other equivalently brown) children, therefore he is weak on terror, a total pussy, and a dirty Muslim communist Kenyan rapist.
Even if Obama did do all those things, he’d still be a dirty Muslim communist Kenyan rapist.
Fox is never going to have a dilemma about Obama at all.
The Moar You Know
Whoops, I’m in moderation. My bad.
JenJen
@Bill E Pilgrim: Interesting about Sarkozy and his former opponent. Can you suggest a good place to read up? I actually love political intrigue stuff like that.
My head still reels at the suggestion that anything French could possibly be tough. This country has picked at the French for decades, but It wasn’t long ago that they were all cheese-eating surrender monkeys for not marching behind us in Iraq, right? And we were pouring out their wine and champagne! Watching that ridiculous, meaningless act (the spirits had already been purchased, obvs) always made me wail in sorrow. But suddenly, you know, Frenchies are tough!! Because the US President is a Democrat!
I can’t stand these people. A few months ago they all suddenly became fiscal hawks, and now they’re Francophiles. What’s next?
kid bitzer
tmyk–
my thought was just that fox usually loves to make a huge deal about any terror-bust or even terrorism-related rumors, because it is (was?) in their interest to keep america terrorized. america’s fear is fox’s lifeblood.
but it will be hard to over-hype this event without indirectly giving credit to the obama peeps for handling it well. as you say, though, they’ll figue out a way to smear obama, one way or another.
Ash Can
@JK: “If, God forbid, there’s another terrorist attack on US soil under Obama’s watch, jackasses like Hewitt, Lowry, Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Beck, et al will be screaming for his impeachment.”
After they finish high-fiving each other.
Ash
I like all the numbnuts who keep getting caught when they try to use those fake set-up explosives provided by undercover agents.
Like, really guys, REALLY, think a little before you try to blow shit up.
General Winfield Stuck
@JenJen:
Me neither, there is not an ounce of intellectual honesty amongst the lot of them, not that there ever was a lot, but it is now 100 percent pure wingnut wankery on everything, and I mean everything on EVERYTHING Obama does. Nothing is done right or even slightly so.
The hatred for the man is palpable, and with the non racist side of the wingnuttosphere, it has to do with his style and their mortal political fear that he might succeed. No patriotism with these sour grapes. It’s all tribalism, all the time. I can’t read anymore of their whiny swill today, it is becoming to hard to contemplate./
Demo Woman
Remember when they would put Tom Ridge in front of a mike every few days to warn us. He’d have a press conference every time a Muslim sneezed.
Where is Janet Napolitano? Actually I think she might be in GA with Biden viewing the storm damage.
kay
Obama’s better than Bush on terrorism because Holder isn’t scaring the shit out of people for political gain, but instead seems to be just doing his job.
Liberals didn’t object to the Bush anti-terrorism effort. They objected to the Bush anti-terrorism effort being used as a purely political cudgel, to the point where any results lost all credibility, as the article at the top of the page points out.
And they were right to complain. Because that loss of credibility was corrosive and damaging, and now what’s been lost has to be regained and repaired.
JenJen
@General Winfield Stuck: Word.
Mike in NC
Fixed
Frank Sobotka
Isn’t the second one a clear case of government inciting terrorist plots through agents provocateur? Again? The first one seems like a legit case, but the vast majority of these ‘terror’ cases would never have come to fruition but for the direct intervention of federal agents.
Demo Woman
@Mike in NC: true. There is more important news like the children who sang a song in February about President Obama.
Fulcanelli
Credit where it’s due. Consider this an ‘attaboy’ for federal law enforcement agency anti-terrorism personnel. It’s not the Military’s job and not how they’re trained.
I doubt you’ll ever hear the Miranda Rights being used as a marching cadence shouted by grunts in basic training at Parris Island or Camp Pendleton.
Svensker
@JK:
Yeah, I’ve heard righties screaming today about how Obama is a weakling who has surrendered, surrendered I tells ya, to “Imadinnerjacket” and how the only real leader in the world today (with the occasional exception of Sarkhozy) is Netanyahu.
Yeah, that’s what the U.S. needs — a leader like Bibi. Bomb them Muslims, bomb ’em good, don’t want no ragheads in the neighborhood.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JenJen:
Well, there’s an article in the WAPO today that’s got the basics. For English, that’s sort of all I know of, if you can/want to read French there’s lots, just go to le Monde or any other big French newspaper site, it’s headline news these days.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/20/AR2009092000500.html
Yeah, when confronted with that “surrender” bullshit I usually remind people that the French lost more than 3 million men fighting for their country in WWI.
Imagine us losing something like 18 million soldiers in a war. It might make us just a little more jaded and wary of marching off again to war on the whim of chickenhawks.
RSA
And only until they discover it was some disgruntled white guy who did it. Oh, wait, that’s already happened, and that kind of thing turns out to be Obama’s fault too, for stirring things up…
ericblair
@JK: I just hope law enforcement can keep up the good work thru the end of Obama’s first term. If, God forbid, there’s another terrorist attack on US soil under Obama’s watch, jackasses like Hewitt, Lowry, Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Beck, et al will be screaming for his impeachment.
They’re only holding off on screaming for his impeachment now because that would mean admitting he’s actually the President. No matter what Obama does, they’ll get to screaming about impeachment after the birther crap has run out of steam.
Having enemies like this is actually fairly liberating. It’s like a toddler in the house who won’t stop crying and whining no matter what you do, so there’s no point in actually trying to keep him happy and the best thing to do is put earplugs in your ears and relax.
fortygeek
@Frank Sobotka: Yeah…probably a little bit of agent provocateur in there, and I’m all for it. Get these terrorist fan-boy copycats to commit while we have control of the situation, convict them, and get them off the street in a way that EVERYONE can agree is within the rule of law.
Kudos to good ol’ fashioned police work.
SGEW
@John Cole:
Absolutely. Remember, it’s been said that there was a bit of a shakeup in domestic law enforcement’s approach to domestic terrorism cases before Bush even left office. These most recent arrests might 1) have been initiated before Obama was even elected, 2) be based on Bush era policies that Obama is continuing, 3) be far less “successful” than they appear, and 4) be more about the competence and efficacy of the agents and agencies involved, than about the executive policy that nominally guides them.
However, so saying: We have to admit that the way that the Obama administration is handling them publicly is far, far more reasonable, mature, and professional than the mouth breathing nonsense that emanated from the Bush White House every time some schizophrenic pothead in Florida was caught in a weapons entrapment scheme by the FBI. Hands down.
sparky
why is it that the FBI can set up suspected bombers who are not US nationals with fake explosives and whatnot, but can’t EVER seem to catch domestic terrorists (*cough white males cough*) until they have done whatever it is they wanted to do?
just askin…..
PeakVT
@Demo Woman: Actually, I was thinking about some arguments I had back in 2003 when it became clear to me that BushCo’s approach to the terrorist problem would be to bomb everything. I said that a combined intelligence and law-enforcement approach would work better at stopping terrorists, and with fewer negatives. I wasn’t claiming that Obama administration behind this (apparent) success, just that the approach was the right one.
Bootlegger
@Fulcanelli:
I cracked up imagining that!
Mnemosyne
@Frank Sobotka:
I think the difference between these cases and, say, the Chicago case is that the suspects actually acted by attempting to explode a (fake) bomb. The FBI couldn’t get the Chicago suspects to get anywhere close to that far because they were too busy arguing about who was going to run the head shop that they were totally going to buy to fund their terrorist activities.
gopher2b
I know this must have been said above but it is worth repeating:
And no one’s nipples were twisted to find out about and break up these plots.
Bootlegger
@sparky: Because they wiretap all the brown people, not whitey who would howl like a dog in a leg trap.
SGEW
@Bootlegger: Au contraire. I, myself, know several white people who were wiretapped by the Bush administration (because lefty vegan pacifists are so scaaary).
They just didn’t wiretap right wing people.
Tsulagi
You mean like competent adults just doing their job?
@Punchy: Weak sauce.
Yeah, not a big bang, but was good enough for the London subway bombings.
Not “will” be. They’re already outraged.
There was the Bush Doctrine by that now uncloaked liberal, the purists have the Wingnut Doctrine…Preemptive Outrage!, bitches. Earlier this week from the minds at RedState… Mr. President: Waterboard That Man
gopher2b
@Bootlegger:
Sorry I have to fuck up your worldview.
Because, you know, if the FBI is anything, it’s racist. Idiots.
someguy
Smells like a lot of entrapment of Teh Brown Peepul to me. No telling how long it’ll take to root the Bush plants out of the government.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@sparky:
Because pulling off a sting operation requires that you have agents who can pass as members or sympathizers of the group which has criminal intentions, without anybody smelling “cop”. The crazier the group, the harder that is to do and the longer it takes to build up that capability in a significant number of agents. The obvious conclusion is that our violent white power types are in fact nuttier, more unhinged, and more paranoid and suspicious than your average Muslim jihadist wannabe, and it is taking more time for law enforcement to build up deep cover assets in the former groups than in the latter.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@sparky: Michael Finton (aka Talib Islam, aka the guy who tried to blow up the fed bldg. in Springfield, IL) is a white guy, but he converted to Islam in prison, so I’m sure he’s at least an “honorary” brown person in the eyes of da law.
Martin
Probably because there are massively fewer non-citizen suspected bombers than there are Glenn Beck/Rush/Lou Dobbs/Hannity fans.
Tax Analyst
What I’d like to see is Obama to go on national television, pull out that children’s book Dubyah was reading on 9/11, read a few excerpts aloud and then look up and say, “Oh, by the way, Federal Law Enforcement Agents appear to have uncovered a credible terrorist threat and have a major suspect in custody. Working within the law the facts and evidence they have assembled will be given to the appropriate Federal prosecutors who will determine what charges to enter. In the meantime the suspect will be allowed to employ his legal rights under the Constitution, such as the right to counsel and, if charged, a fair and open public trial. I will now continue reading ‘My Little Pony’. Thank you.”
Comrade Dread
Terrorism isn’t a law enforcement issue. It’s a military one.
We need to invade
Afghanistan,Iraq, Iran now!Tax Analyst
@ #36 danimal said:
“As a public servant (aka bureaucrat), I appreciate the Obama approach. When the top brass gets out of the way and lets people do their jobs, good results occur. When the top brass parachutes in to a situation and holds press conferences while micro-managing every last detail of things they don’t understand, bad things happen. I’ll take low-key and professional over the publicity-hound approach seven days a week and twice on Sunday.”
Man (or woman), you said a mouthful. This is exactly the point.
Mike G
I’m so accustomed to the Chimpster’s hacks overhyping ‘TerristTerristTerristBoogaBoogaBooga’ bullshit threats, like clowns trying to dismantle the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch, that I’m still a little skeptical.
…jackasses like Hewitt, Lowry, Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Beck, et al will be screaming for his impeachment.
Like Bush invading Iraq, they wanted his impeachment the day he took office, they’re just waiting for an exploitable political excuse to present itself.
Herb
The law enforcement approach seems to be working, with less cost in blood or treasure. Imagine that!
trollhattan
I dunno about the rest of youse guyz but I’m declaring code red-orange, which means tonight I’m skipping beer and going straight for the zinfandel.
Take that, prototerrieristas. Wolverines!
kathy
i find eric holder incredibly soothing. when i can’t sleep, i think of him gently stroking my cheek.
SGEW
@kathy: I look forward to the inevitable Holder/Rahm slash fic.
binzinerator
@Punchy:
I know nothing about explosives but I’m wondering if hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid, like fertilizer and fuel oil, is not so weak sauce if there’s enough of it.
Suppose McVeigh had been busted in 1994 while he was still planning his attack. The news blurb of his arrest might read something like this:
“Documents filed in Michigan against American militia movement sympathizer and former army vet, Timothy McVeigh, contend he bought chemicals needed to build a bomb — ammonium nitrate, methylammonium nitrate, nitromethane and other petroleum distillates — and in doing so, Mr. McVeigh took a critical step made by few other terrorism suspects.”
In 1994 those chemicals as bomb-making materials would have elicited the same ‘weak sauce’ reaction from a lot of people. People don’t think that any more.
The thing sounds more serious than that guy who planned to drop the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Don’t forget Mr. Finton.
I’ve been trying to predict fReichtard response and come up with four:
1. There wasn’t all this terrorism when Bush was in office, this is all Obama’s fault!
2. Of course the so-called president will insist these animals are allowed to see lawyers, put on trial and jailed in our prisons.
3. Concern-troll special edition vol. I: It is to be hoped that these arrests, which are receiving too much publicity, won’t inflame other terrorists.
4. Concern-troll special edition vol. II: The fact that Finton came to worship the Taliban demonstrates how greatly the LIEberul’s demand for diversity has endangered our country.
Just Some Fuckhead
The Balloon-Juice definition for Neoconservatism can be reduced down to the belief that advantageous political gains can be had by killing the right people.
And you can add Liz Cheney to the Neocon Nepotism entry.
Martin
Hydrogen peroxide, in the right concentration, makes a hell of an effective rocket fuel. The Kursk sank because one of their peroxide powered torpedos exploded (the peroxide propellant exploded). Those cool rocket belts that James Bond once used were powered by H2O2.
At high concentrations (called HTP – High Test Peroxide), H2O2 will spontaneously explode at normal pressure. It’s not easy to manufacture high concentrations, but if you can make it, a H2O2 bomb would be trivial to make and pack a hell of a punch. Pretty dangerous to work with, though, but then so are all rocket fuels.
PanAmerican
@binzinerator:
Them’s the ingredients to make acetone peroxide aka TATP. See July 2005, London attacks.
Mnemosyne
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Not only that, but the foreign terrorist types are generally going to be less familiar with the country and thus less likely to be able to ferret out who’s a Fed and who’s just an immigrant who’s been here for a while. That’s actually the one advantage that we have over Europe — IIRC, the London bombers were all long-time British residents, and possibly citizens.
John S.
Republicans must be very upset about all these arrests.
After all, they are openly rooting for another terrorist attack so they can hang it around Obama’s neck like a millstone. These kinds of activities tend to put a kibosh on that.
CountryPolitics first!steve s
“weak sauce”
“I know nothing about explosives but I’m wondering if hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid, like fertilizer and fuel oil, is not so weak sauce if there’s enough of it.”
I presume Punchy meant it was weak sauce to publish the recipe. Those three chemicals can be combined to form a high explosive. Back in the day I used to glean glass and silicon for physics experiments by immersing them in Hot Piranha solution, basically, a heated bath of hydrogen peroxide and either hydrochloric or sulfuric acid, I don’t remember which. One day a chem-e guy told me “Make sure you don’t use any dish that might have any acetone residue on it. Or that’ll be the end of You.”
steve s
“September 25th, 2009 at 10:58 am Reply to this comment
sparky
why is it that the FBI can set up suspected bombers who are not US nationals with fake explosives and whatnot, but can’t EVER seem to catch domestic terrorists (*cough white males cough*) until they have done whatever it is they wanted to do?
just askin…..
”
I know! They totally let Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammad snipe away, all because they were white….
gopher2b
@steve s:
I’m so glad I was an economics major.
Bill H
Obama is better on his worst day that Bush was on his best day, but… And this has nothing whatever to do with Obama, but with careerists at agencies involved.
The more than comes out about these busts the more bogus it sounds. Again we have plots which consist of one guy with a grudge and the IQ of a houseplant, aided and abetted by a bunch of FBI agents egging him on to do some sort of terrorist act with play-dough, ending with some Attorney General standing at a podium prating about having pulled us back from the brink of disaster. Only one guy arrested, everyone else in the plot was FBI agents. These guys were so dumb they not only got in bed with one agent, they got in bed with a whole bunch of them and could not tell real explosives from fake.
I am glad they are getting these fools off of the streets, but all of the chest thumping and braying about it afterward is embarrassing. If I were the FBI agent involved, I would want to wear a bag over my head while I was being awarded the medal for arresting an idiot.
The Zazi plot sounded like the real deal until we started hearing that it was “potentially the biggest attack since 9/11” and where he got his explosives. He was making explosives out of hair care products which he bought, not wholesale, but on a walk-in basis at hair salons. Maybe that’s just an incompetent presentation by ABC News, but…
The worst part is all the chest thumping and hyperventilating afterward, and then a charge of “attempting to use weapons of mass destruction.” Oh, please. Committing a terrorist act, sure. Maybe even mass murder if you must, but I think that would be stretching it.
Svensker
@John S.:
No, they are actively sneering at Obama for not waterboarding the guy — because if he doesn’t, one of his accomplices will blow up a bus or a train.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@binzinerator: My favorite passage from the article you link to:
“But despite its financial problems, the city spent $207 million last year on antiterrorism security. No one wants to see that effort cut back. Yet Republicans in the House of Representatives are currently attempting to slash the amount of federal aid destined for high-threat big cities. Some House leaders have been quoted as saying the money is no longer needed because the threat is abating.”@John S.: Openly rooting? More like aiding and abetting. As long as we’re renaming political parties (i.e. “Democrat” party), maybe the GOP can become Republiqaeda? or Republiban?
liberal
@Bill H:
But you know, don’t, that the statutes define some pretty wimpy stuff as WMD? I mean, I’m talking really really wimpy.
DZ
The French are quite effective at combatting terrorism through law enforcement. They’ve been experiencing it for decades. Sarkozy is far to the left of Obama, but, if you’ve ever encountered a French Marine, you would rethink any thoughts of the French being wimps.
MTiffany
@liberal:
Well, yeah, of course the laws now define conventional and improvised explosives as WMD. The whole point of the war on terror is to redefine crime as a form of terrorism. That way what was once an insult to society can be viewed as an injury to the state. The former gets you due process, the latter gets you designated as an enemy combatant (and an unlawful one at that, too! Ha-ha!) and all the attendant tender mercies that entails.
someguy
@ Bill H
No shit it’s ginned up scapegoating though I’m no longer certain it’s limited to the agencies, but wondering if this isn’t political cover to slide through health reform or something else. But while we’re playing Make-Believe-Existential-Threats, maybe they can explain or break up the Dreyfus plot, the imaginary ring of Red spies running the State Department and the Army in the 50’s (and the 2009’s, if you believe Rushbo), the Soviet controlled 60’s U.S. peace movement, the Kennedy family, the illuminati, the Nation of Islam mothership, Jewish control of everything in the world except for the one neighborhood in the world where Jews actually own all the houses, and David Stern’s rigging the ’85 NBA draft.
Bill H
@liberal:
Does that mean the DHS is going to bust my door down over my wife’s bottle of friggin Breck shampoo?
Mnemosyne
@Bill H:
I think it was an incompetent presentation. The two “lone wolves” look pretty sketchy, but if the details in this AP story are accurate, Zazi looks like the real thing. He was apparently buying a dozen bottles at a time at multiple stores, presumably to avoid suspicion.
cj
No no no, what is this? Why are there no color alerts going on my teevee screen? This just doesn’t feel right. It’s like the quiet before a big, huge ass storm about to blow my house away.
I need the bells and whistles to scare the sh*t out of me. How else am I going to allow the government to control my life. It’s the American way DAMNIT!
John Miller
Don’t think I’ll return to this site. If you knew anything about Islamic fundamentalism and jihad, you would realize that this won’t end in our lifetimes short of all-out assault. Get out of gas-guzzlers or switch to fuels that are on your soil and cut the rope to the Saudis. 23 credible terrorist plots on US soil since 9/11 and all so many wish to do is nitpick and blame the CIA. Great thinking – even better in a graveyard.
bob h
Dick Cheney seems to be uncharacteristically silent.