Another Half-Baked Terror Plot Herocially Foiled

Another kooky, ill-considered "terror plot" was thwarted this week. And wouldn't you know, all signs once again point to the plot being more pipe dream than pipe bomb. Sound familiar?

Hell, even the reporter from Fox News called the plot, "impossible to carry out."

But of course the Bush administration and their apologists never let little things like facts mess up some good fear mongering. Thusly, pundits and politicians around the nation wasted no time in filing another notch in the bedpost, as they unsurprisingly hailed this latest bust as at once a justification of their "extraordinary" techniques... and, curiously, at the same time, a reason to continue to expand the legal reach of those techniques.

Attytood brings the goods. From his post:

Look, here's what you need to know about the JFK Four (one suspect is still at large.)They were yet another band of ne'er-do-wells with a homegrown hatred forthe U.S. They had no terror training or know-how, no links to Osama bin Laden,al-Qaeda, or the big-bucks funding mechanisms of the kind that carried outreal terror on 9/11. Their driving force in this plot of "unthinkable devastation"was a government informant, a twice-convicted drug dealer eager towin a lighter sentence. Aside from the most important aspect that their plan was not feasible, they also had no explosives to carry it out.

People who think that violence and bloodshed are an answer to anything are indeed danger to a civil society, so unless the facts are radically different than what's been reported so far, we should have praise for law enforcement, including the NYPD and the FBI, for not letting this kind of nonsense get very far. It shows yet again that the law-enforcement approach to fighting this type of threat -- so ridiculed when John Kerry dared even mention it in 2004 -- remains the one that in most cases works best. That said, the plot was not exactly the biggest thing going on the world right now.

***UPDATE***

Tonight, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann aired a piece about the "nexus of politics and terror," in which the Bush administration's calculated use of these so-called terror busts is chronicled. How they have been used to put political feathers in the president's cap is scrutinized.

Crooks and Liars hosts the video. WATCH IT.