Rudy Giuliani is wisely sticking to terrorism as the main theme of his
campaign, which makes sense, since, as a pro-choice twice-divorced
cross-dressing former mayor of New York, he's not your average
Republican presidential candidate.
At the debate last week he attempted to bolster his credentials by
dodging his first question of the night, which happened to be on the
subject of withdrawal from Iraq:
CHRIS WALLACE:
Mayor Giuliani, in our interview the other day you said that
congressional Republicans who say they must see progress by September
are, quote, "fundamentally irresponsible," and that in effect they are
giving a timetable for retreat to our enemies.
Is your commitment to winning in Iraq open-ended?
Rudy managed to devote a whole four sentences to that question...
GIULIANI:
First of all, that isn't exactly what I said.
I was talking about the timetable for retreat that the Democrats
passed in Congress, in which they did something extraordinary and that
I've never heard of in the history of war, which is to give your enemy
a schedule of how a retreating army is going to retreat.
That was irresponsible, highly irresponsible.
What the Republicans did, or suggested, I don't think is the right
approach either.
....before ignoring the topic at hand and turning up the fear:
And I think Senator McCain is correct, these people do want to follow
us here and they have followed us here.
Fort Dix happened a week ago.
That was a situation in which six Islamic terrorists, who were not
directed by al Qaeda but claimed to have been inspired by them, were
going to kill our military in cold blood at Fort Dix.
It was a 16-month investigation done by the FBI and the United States
Attorney's Office, and thank God they caught them.
Yes, thank god they caught them.
Let's take a quick look at the Fort Dix case shall we?
According to USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-10-fort-dix_N.htm
He railed against the United States, helped scout out military
installations for attack, offered to introduce his comrades to an arms
dealer, and gave them a list of weapons he could procure, including
machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
These were not the actions of a terrorist, but of a paid FBI informant
who helped bring down an alleged plot by six Muslim men to massacre
U.S. soldiers at New Jersey's Fort Dix.
(snip)
The same documents that prosecutors used to build a case against the
suspects also depict them as somewhat disorganized, lackluster
plotters.
And clumsy and amateurish, too:
The FBI learned of the alleged plot when the men went to a Circuit
City store and asked a clerk to transfer a jihad training video of
themselves onto a DVD.
If this sounds familiar, it should - it's very similar to the case of
the hopeless Miami men who were arrested last year (just before the
mid-term elections) for allegedly conspiring to blow up Sears Tower in
Chicago, despite the fact that they didn't have any weapons, or, er,
shoes.
Now don't get me wrong - of course the FBI should try to track down
potential terrorists and stop them before they're able to carry out an
attack.
But should they be actively encouraging them? After all, bear in mind
that:
....one of the men, Tatar, called a Philadelphia police officer in
November, saying that he had been approached by someone who was
pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the
incident was terrorist-related, according to court documents.
When was the last time you heard of a terrorist calling the cops
because he was worried that he might have stumbled across a terrorist
plot?
I mean really.
But don't worry about whether the plan to blow up Fort Dix was real or
not.
It gave Rudy Giuliani the opportunity to deliver some brainless
podium-thumping rhetoric, and that's obviously what's important here.
By EarlG
Democratic Underground
http://www.democraticunderground.com/
Harry
.
|
