A real terrorist threat?

by Tom Maertens

The argument that we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them at home certainly took a hit today.

Home-grown terrorists – if that is what they were – were behind an alleged plan to bomb the Miami FBI office and the Sears tower in Chicago.

The evidence is very sketchy at this point, but it looks like there was a lot of loose talk in Miami that never got down to a real plan. The only actions the so-called terrorists seem to have actually carried out were taking an oath of allegiance to al Qaeda, and filming the Miami FBI office.

Whether that constitutes a serious terrorist threat is doubtful. In fact, several police officials, both federal and Chicago-based, said there was no credible threat. No weapons, no explosives, no real plan, no foreign/al Qaeda support.

That raises some doubts about the whole folderol the government is raising about this issue.

The reality is that the administration has politicized the War on Terror to the point where their pronouncements can’t be trusted and their motivation is suspect.

You only have to consider the endless terrorist warnings during the 2004 elections, when one government official after another went in front of the cameras to raise the spector of an imminent terrorist attack.

Since the election, in contrast, there has been only one terrorist warning in almost two years. What was this threat? A computer virus.

But then, once Bush was reelected, the threat disappeared, right?

The election wasn't the first political use of terrorism. Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but the administration announced – from Moscow – the capture of a low-level terrorist the same day that former FBI agent Coleen Rowley was scheduled to testify in Washington about the administration’s missteps before 9/11.

The coincidence today was the publication by the New York Times of information about the administration’s intercepting financial data from the SWIFT network…without a warrant. So were the arrests the administration's attempt to change the subject? Once again, the administration assures us that there are appropriate safeguards in place, but of course not the ones required by law.

We can trust the administration though, right? Karl Rove would never take a sneak peek at George Soros’ financial transactions would he?

Time will tell is the group in Miami was a serious threat, but at this point, it looks like some big talk from some small fry. Or as one of the Chicago papers put it, it was a plot only on paper.