That’s the Best the Spooks Could Dig Up?

Yesterday, while waiting for the Miami FBI press conference to reveal the details of the arrest of terrorists who planned to bomb Chicago’s Sears Tower, CNN’s so-called security analyst Clark Kent Ervin ramped up the boo-scare quotient with some statistics and his own gaudy rhetoric. Ervin: “The FBI, we're told, knows of about 1,000 al Qaeda sympathizers here in the country, and about 300 extremists are under surveillance. So it's a very big threat indeed. And of course this comes against the backdrop of what the London authorities thought was a homegrown terror plot a few weeks ago, turned out not to be the case, and there certainly was a homegrown terror plot in Canada a few weeks ago.” More Ervin: “The FBI apparently believes that this was a homegrown radical Islamic terrorist program intent upon attacking the homeland, a political target, the FBI building in Miami, and an economic symbol, the Sears Tower in Chicago.” Then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales got on-camera and said, “The convergence of globalization and technology has created a new brand of terrorism. Today, terrorist threats may come from smaller, more loosely defined cells who are not affiliated with al Qaeda, but who are inspired by a violent jihadist message.” Then Gonzales introduced FBI Deputy Director John Pistole who led the investigation and the eventual indictment of the seven young men. Then dweeby, ineffectual, nerd-of-the-year Pistole got on camera and said, “Today's indictment is an important step forward in the war on terrorism here in the United States…The investigation reveals outstanding work by the law enforcement community. It also reminds us that we have much more work to do.” And now today we’re told that the seven who were arrested and were highly touted as a homegrown terrorist cell were more “aspirational than organizational” and that the boys’ club never got farther with a terror plan than yakking about it. If there are a thousand sympathizers and 300 extremists being surveilled by our crack spooks and moles with their state-of-the art technology, how come a bunch of young men who wore homemade turbans were the only terrorists that could be found by a swat team that “swarmed” around their clubhouse and broke in with a blowtorch? It’s obvious that the White House demanded Attorney General Gonzales arrest some terrorists somewhere somehow because the Prez desperately needed a show of strength in his fight against terrorism. But since the Bush administration is so sure that Islamists and jihadists have the organizational capability to attack the US right here and right now, why were teenage wannabes with no weapons and no plan the best the FBI could come up with? The answer is either that the President needs terrorists to be in this country more than terrorists have a need to be here. Or, the Attorney General, Homeland Security and the FBI are useless impotent assholes who couldn’t find a terrorist if he had a glow-in-the-dark target on his back.