Another Rightwing Scary Story Bites The Dust

Over the last few days, while concentrating on scaremongering the British "liquid bomb" plot, the Militant Right have been happily connecting that plot to a homegrown scary story. The tale was that three men of Middle Eastern origins had journeyed from Texas to Michigan and had been arrested with a whole load of cell-phones. The suspicion was that they were planning to use those thousand phones as triggers for bombs (a thousand of them?) to blow up the Mackinac Bridge.

Scary story.

Such a pity it wasn't true, and neither was another similiar case the wingnuts had been bandwagonning.

The Michigan State Police and the FBI have said they have no evidence that three men arrested in Caro, Mich., were planning terrorist acts.

The FBI said the men, charged Saturday with terrorism-related crimes after they were found with a large amount of cell phones and pictures of the Mackinac Bridge, had no connections to terrorism, The Detroit News reported Tuesday.

"There is no information to indicate that the individuals arrested have any direct nexus to terrorism," said Daniel Roberts, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office.

However, the men remained in custody and the charges had not been dropped Tuesday. An official from the office of Tuscola County Prosecutor Mark Reene, who filed the charges against the men, said Reene was studying the FBI's statement Monday.

Meanwhile, terrorism charges were dropped against two men in a similar case in Ohio. However, the men, who were arrested after attempting to buy a large number of cell phones, face misdemeanor charges of falsification after they gave inconsistent accounts during a traffic stop.

The Militant Right's coverage of the story is instructive, however. A representative sample:

Ace of Spades spent some time making racist remarks about how the three arrested men didn't seem Texan - by which Ace meant didn't fit his own stereotypes of white redneck males.

Maruan Awad Muhareb, aka "Cactus Jack" Muhareb, aka"Deuce-In-The-Hole" Muhareb, aka "I swear upon Mighty Allah, I mean, upon Daniel Boone, I have seen every episode of Walker, Texas Ranger ever made, and have the Criterion Collection DVD of Lone Wolf McQaid (pbuh) as well" Muhareb

Offensive to most Texan white men? Probably. Offensive to the majority of Texans, who nowadays are of hispanic origins? Definitely. Making a laughing-stock of the idea that the Right wants to see assimilation of immigrants - helping them think of themselves as American first and foremost? You betcha!

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler just wanted to presume guilt - no "due process" for people without white-guy names. "Enjoy Club Fed, assholes, and don’t forget to always pick up the soap when you drop it in the showers." Meanwhile, his wingnut commenters seem to only trust the FBI when it is doing stuff they agree with: "the FBI decided that they were not “a terrorist threat”. I hear by declare that the FBI now stands for “Fuckedup Bunch of Incompetents”."

Conservative Digest just led with the presumption of guilt, then followed by calling these Texans "murderers".

And this isn't even the only talked-up faux-story in the last week's Rocky-Politicians Horror Picture Show.

How many retractions do you think we will see from Militant Right bloggers?