Via Gawker, the ringleader of this plot attended the 2008 Republican National Convention as a page:
Isaac Aguigui, the Army private and alleged ringleader of a plot to assassinate Barack Obama and “take over” Ft. Stewart in Georgia, apparently served as a page at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Minn. That’s his mug shot after he was arrested for the alleged murder of Pvt. Michael Roark on the left. At right is a 2008 Reuters photo with the caption: “Republican National Convention page Isaac Aguigui watches from the edge of the floor at the start of the first session of the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota September 1, 2008.”
No comment.
Lee
I honestly have no snark for this.
At what point do you think the Republicans will realize they have a serious problem on their hands?
Xenos
@Lee: They will realize they have a serious problem when one of their own gets targeted from the right, night-of-long-knives style.
MonkeyBoy
From the RNC pic he does give off a certain “rent-boy” vibe. Has he continued to aim to please Republicans?
Jeffro
@Lee: It’s Obama’s fault for driving the right wing so nuts like this. Guy could have thrown the election beforehand or resigned at any point since, but no, look at what he’s gone and made folks do.
Ugh…made me sick to even try a little snark there, and sicker realizing that in some fashion, we’ll hear some of the usual crowd on the right making nearly that very argument tomorrow.
Hypatia's Momma
Does that make him the proverbial “overzealous intern” so prevalent in the Republican party?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
They are playing with fire. Very near an oil tanker.
Jeffro
@Xenos: Maybe. That FRC shooting seemed to just make them double down on the hate rhetoric, though.
beltane
@Lee: It’s not their problem, it’s our problem. They will only see it as their problem in the event of some future war crimes tribunal or Truth & Reconciliation Commission. I preemptively refuse to forgive them.
Roger Moore
@Lee:
How does never sound? Does never work for you? They aren’t going to realize they have a serious problem on their hands until they lose elections regularly, and they’re going to waste a lot of time exhausting every variant of “not conservative enough” as an explanation for their losses before they even think that the crazy might have some role in their failures.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
This x 1000.
1badbaba3
I blame Obama, and his meddling time machine.
Although, it is pretty handy….
El Cid
Could be true, I’d wait a bit for some more verification. Just sayin’.
1badbaba3
@Lee: To the extent that they are largely creating the problem as well as exacerbating it, I think it is safe to assume they already know.
But grifters gotta grift, dontchaknow, also too.
arguingwithsignposts
@Baud: you’re both optimists.
arguingwithsignposts
Also, this was probably already mentioned in the previous comments section, but the AP story calls it “an anarchist militia group.” Everyone knows anarchists are left-wing, therefore, this is a left-wing plot.
Agree with others, what a sick world.
Steve
I read that the guy’s wife died last year in childbirth with a stillborn baby. That’s very sad. I felt some sympathy.
But then he got a $500,000 insurance payout from his wife’s death and used it to buy a bunch of guns for some crazy plan to overthrow the government and then he killed two people to try and keep it a secret? Okay, sympathy time is over.
I sure hope he enjoyed all the “Culture of Life” speeches at that convention though.
patroclus
@Steve: Sure he enjoyed the Culture of Life shtick…but, you know, there were some “loose ends.”
Anya
Okay, I really REALLY hate the Republican party and everything they stand for but the alleged ringleader attending the 2008 Republican National Convention has nothing to do with anything. What does it prove other than that he’s a republican? I don’t get how these tenuous links are proof of group culpability.
Richard
Well, I’ve long thought that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of John Wilkes Booth. This is the clearest example yet.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Roger Moore: This.
Reklam
@Xenos: Why would the Republicans have a problem with the Night of Long Knives? Ernst Röhm was a gay socialist. Definitely never worked with Bibi at BCG either.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Anya: How many right wingers need to engage in mass shootings of brown people, shootings of public officials, murdering of doctors who perform abortions, bombings of federal buildings, and presidential assassination plots before you’ll accept the idea of group culpability? I’m just trying to get some sort of idea of a metric here, before I start posting the links.
arguingwithsignposts
Cross-posted in hopes of getting some kind of answer: Okay, so someone explain to me how this member of the military isn’t being tried in military court. Surely plotting the overthrow of the US gov’t has to break some military rules.
General Stuck
@Anya:
Well, one reason is cuz it would take Malkin about 3 seconds to claim these guys were really democrat anarchists, or something. Republicans have been painting false memes on dems since Reagan, that run the gambit from commie terrorist supporting traitors, to being the REAL racists, to any fucking thing whatsoever that enters their mean little minds to smear liberals with.
Beginning with the word liberal. And what has our side done to counter this bullshit, up till fairly recent? Exactly nothing, except complaining and playing by some high brow sensibility that Americans are smart enough not to buy GOP garbage, when history is replete of all sort of nasty memes becoming urban legends that is believed. Or at least considered.
New rules. Nothing is left unresponded to, and if the nutters want to sling some shit our way, then we will chunk the septic tank back at em. It is all very primitive, and all very necessary to do something about people eating your lunch for so long. Now they will open their lunch pails to find some libtard whoop ass. It might work for our benefit politically, and it may not. But goddam it, the lard hates a coward, and so do voters when you get right down to it.
I don’t support lying like they do. I do support firing the truth back at them with a double barrel clown cannon.
There is no high road for the new democrat. At least one you can’t roll some liberal rocks down on the wingnuts.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: No reason to expect that they won’t be up on military and other federal charges.
Steve
@arguingwithsignposts: Soonergrunt explained in the other thread that there are still charges pending in the military system, but this news is about a guilty plea he made to the civilian authorities. As far as I know he could still face a military trial.
arguingwithsignposts
@Steve: @Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for the comments. I’ve been away most of the day and this shit seems to be flying fast and furious (pun somewhat intended).
TaMara (BHF)
I just checked the three big networks websites and no mention at all of this “anarchist” militia groups plans/murders and arrests. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but somehow I am.
Anya
@General Stuck:
Although, I do agree with this 100%, I still don’t get the connection between the alleged crime and him attending the republican convention. I get that the republicans are loathsome and they incite hate and use coded language to divide Americans but how is this a solid link?
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
He didn’t just attend it. He was employed by the Republican Party to work at the convention as a page.
Are we allowed to say that employees of the Republican Party have ties to the Republican Party, or is that a bridge too far?
General Stuck
@Anya:
I don’t think it is, or is meant to be solid link. Politics is mostly about perception, rather than anything solid. It is simply framing an issue, or occurrence before your opponent frames it. It is something the republicans, to their dubious credit, have mastered. Framing everything bad that happens as somehow part of the dem party, or liberalism on the whole. That is how you form a resilient narrative over time, to the detriment of your opponent, and the benefit of you (republicans). A lot of little events, over time, add up to be a message that has been nurtured for years, or decades. We change that by offering our own version of events, even ones seeming not very important, or solid. To build your own long term narrative on your terms.
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
Also, too, for me at least the implication is that he was heavily involved in party politics and then decided the Republicans were too far to the left for him. Which is scary in itself.
J R in WVa
I still don’t understand why this isn’t a news story to anyone but a few liberal blogs and a country newspaper in Georgia.
Why?
Why isn’t a plot to attack the government and our President, a plot that includes at least 2 murders, a plot that includes tens of thousands of dollars spent on weapons, why isn’t this a news story?
For God’s sake, this would be a big story if it happened in Georgia, the country between Russia and Turkey, or there abouts, let alone Georgia, the state in the USA.
Anya
@General Stuck: @Mnemosyne: I am not absolving republicans sins, but I am just thinking about the next time someone who volunteered with OFA or worked at the DNC three summers ago does something horrible. What then?
Having said that, I agree with you larger point.
1badbaba3
@J R in WVa: Copycats, race riots, and total chaos for starters. Then, there are no doubt untold undercover investigations underway that have not come to fruition that could be compromised, putting law enforcement personnel, as well as innocent civilians in harm’s way. Unfortunately there will be collateral damage, but if they can do their jobs, it can be minimized.
There’s a reason reichwingers fear Holder.
Mister Papercut
@Anya:
You’re right. A Young Republican who actually enlisted? Already an outlier.
AxelFoley
@General Stuck:
This. All this.
There’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s near.