Much Ado About Jihadis At Fort Dix

By Cernig

As usual whenever a report comes out saying there coulda-mighta-been a bunch of deluded wannabe-jihadis about to attack a target in the U.S., the rightwing feardy-cats are out in force.
And as usual, leveller heads inject a note of caution.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog does a good job, quoting CNN:

While authorities are glad to have arrested them, the individuals are "hardly hard core terrorists," one law enforcement source said.

Another source said that while the allegations are "troubling," they are "not the type that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up."

I think this is a hint that law enforcement has seen signs that they're incompetent bumblers even beyond the fact that they were stupid enough to get their video commercially processed.

And noting:

Whatever the case, we'll also hear that this proves that "we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here," even though we are fighting them over there and these guys are here anyway (and they came from Albania, where no one's suggesting we start a surge).

Kevin Drum also injects a note of sanity after reading the WaPo's report.

Let me get this striaght: these guys dropped off jihadi videos at a local store, talked to Philly cops about getting a map of Ft. Dix, were still trying to procure weapons after 17 months of planning, and practiced for the attack by playing paintball.

This reminds me of that guy who planned to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. Or those dudes who wanted to destroy the Sears Tower but couldn't even afford to buy boots and rental cars, let alone explosives. Or Jose Padilla, who, it turns out, was a deluded schmoe who didn't really have serious plans to do much of anything.

Is al-Qaeda recruiting these doofuses just to lull us into a false sense of security? Or maybe they're Jon Stewart fans and want to provide him with fresh material? WTF?

And one of Kevin's commenters points out that, after 17 months of planning, the jihadi wanabes would still only have had paintball guns to go up against an entire base of heavily armed U.S. soldiers and it was an FBI informant who suggested automatic weapons.