So transparently bogus is the latest turr’ist threat — you know, the turr’ist threat supposedly dreamed up four years ago against neolib loan sharks (IMF, World Bank, various banks) in Washington by al-CIA-duh-that the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement had to do something pronto: for instance, conduct a “sting” (in other words, frame some Muslims) to make it look like we are indeed threatened by people who hate our way of life and despise our freedoms.
“Two men with suspected al Qaeda links were arrested in a sting operation on an Albany, New York, mosque early on Thursday in a money-laundering scheme to buy a shoulder-fired missile, law enforcement sources said,” reports Reuters. “Another law enforcement source said the two [Muslims arrested] were believed to be linked with Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi militant group suspected of having ties to the al Qaeda network.”
It wasn’t all that long ago that Mullah Krekar, reputedly the leader of Ansar al-Islam, told the al-Hayat newspaper that he met with “a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of 2000,” according to the American Free Press. Moreover, although Reuters never mentions such things or bothers to put things into historical context (we might reach the wrong conclusions), members of Ansar al-Islam trained in the CIA’s Afghanistan camps during the US financed covert war against the Soviets. In other words, Ansar al-Islam, following a long established and well-documented pattern, is probably a CIA-(Pakistan) ISI creation, part of the Islamic Terror Network. Funny thing is, as we recall, Colin Powell attempted to connect Ansar al-Islam to Saddam, a stupid and fatuous claim only the intellectually somnolent — that is to say, most Americans — would buy into.
Even so, a few of us are not taking the bait. “Many people are rightly suspicious, based upon past history going back to Vietnam, the Iran-Contra affair, and 9-11 that the U.S. government will cook the books and manufacture whatever evidence is needed for tomorrow’s dog and pony show,” writes From the Wilderness.
So it is in Albany. Remember, the Bushcons will do whatever they think is necessary to scare you into cheerleading the destruction of civil liberties at home and forever war abroad. Freddy Krugers are needed, and so two hapless Muslims, tricked in a sting by the FBI, are offered up as “evidence” that al-CIA-duh is plotting to kill us, the Good and Righteous and the Envy of the World, because they hate us and, besides, they follow a doggrel religion that preaches hatred and the beheading of infidels.
In the weeks ahead, as the election nears, we can expect more of this sort of behavior from the Straussian Bushcons as they jockey to stage manage another election and deny the other neolib — who is, after all, not part of neocon faction, although his philosophy differs little from the Bushcons — a chance to become CEO of America.
KURT NIMMO is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html . Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair’s, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays for CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire, is now available from Dandelion Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
