A Plot Maxwell Smart Would Love

An army of radical Islamic militants was planning an attack on an American Army base, and the startling part is that this base wasn’t in Iraq, or anywhere else in the Middle East, but in New Jersey! New Jersey, USA! Would you believe it??

“I find that very difficult to believe, Mr. Smart.”

Would you believe… 6 guys with paintball guns were “in training” to attack Fort Dix, and were found because “the men took a videotape of their practice sessions to a store to have it burned to a DVD, and that a store employee contacted the FBI because of the video’s contents” so the cops set up a fake weapons purchase with the guys?

Now, there are a lot of things I could point out. I could say that the least the FBI could do is make up a more convincing story, but I realize that truth is often stranger than fiction. I could point out the futility of 6 guys taking on a military training facility and suggest that they needed to play more video games to disabuse themselves of the notion. I could point out that these fellows did not attempt to get weapons through legal means, such as a legit dealer or a gun show, and thus the case represents the futility of many gun control laws. I could point out that referring to them as “Islamic militants” is causing concern in the larger Muslim-American community, because it whips up ill sentiment against a people who by and large are trying to follow the law and be good citizens. I could even point out that this plot didn’t warrant a rise in the Terror Threat Level — funny how we haven’t heard much about that since the 2004 elections.

Instead I would like to point out that some of these men are — that’s right, are, not were — Naturalized Citizens of the United States of America. That means that Real ID would not have stopped them; they had every reason and right to have completely legit identification. This is the LAST DAY to complain to the Feds directly about this stinker, but you can still do things at the state level.

The rest of the men were illegal aliens. So, if the United States had actually started checking the Interpol database of stolen passports earlier than “later this year”, they might never have gotten here in the first place.

In closing: did anybody else notice that the glycerin that was really anti-freeze came from the same country as the wheat gluten that was really melamine?; maybe the American economy is ok, but it’s anemic compared to some other places; risky mortgages are such a huge problem that one in every 21 houses in Detroit is in foreclosure, a statistic made more alarming by the number of abandoned homes in that city; “Won’t somebody please think of the children??” “Among military personnel with at least one dependent, the rate of child maltreatment in military families increased by approximately 30% for each 1% increase in the percentage of active-duty personnel departing to or returning from operation-related deployment” according to a new study, so lets help the kids and bring home the troops; and finally, this wouldn’t have happened in the States because we have the Third Amendment. I guess rights are only for certain special people.