Homegrown Terrorists?

In case you have missed the headlines, the Tri-state area is buzzing about the new case of 'homegrown terrorists' that have emerged from Newburgh, NY. Apparently, 4 African -American men with extensive prison records had hatched a plan to blow up a couple of Synagogues in the Bronx while simultaneously shooting down military jets at the nearby Stewart International Airport, a widely known military base.

The reason I am choosing to write about this case as my first post as I return from my hiatus is because I believe that it is a very controversial case. Why is it controversial? Well, the media will chose to spin this in whichever direction they please. If you turn on Fox News, they will make it seem as a large invasion of Homeland Security and that  the US is still under heavy risk of attack from our 'enemies'. And then if you turn on to any other left-leaning media source, they make it seem as if this was an inevitable terrorist attack, that only fell through because of the well coordinated efforts of the FBI, and the overall idiocy of the 'terrorists'.

Now, I may not be a very trusted news source, but since I can be classified as the independent media, I will try and call this case for exactly what it is.

Now lets go back and analyze this case. These four men have extensive prison records, and according to the NY Times, they also have mental issues. Here is an interesting quote I found about one of the suspected bombers;

"An assistant imam at the mosque, Hamin Rashada, said that another one of the four men, Mr. Payen, seemed disturbed. Mr. Payen often talked in circles, showed signs of paranoia and kept bottles of urine in a messy apartment." (NY Times)

So, we firstly see that these men are not really the most sane people on earth, but I guess we can also argue that terrorist are not really the most judicious people around. But what I found to be most interesting about this case was how foolish these "terrorists" really are. Apparently the reason they decided to hatch these half-baked plans is because they were unhappy about the large amount of Muslims (all four of the suspects converted to Islam while incarcerated) and by setting off these bombs at synagogues and by shooting down military aircrafts, they will prove a point. That's just plain foolish and I simply do not see the connection.

And therefore, these men started attending mosques in their area looking a way to commit Jihad against the US, and that is when they met an undercover FBI informant, posing as a connect to a Pakistan based terrorist group (the media is still unsure whether it is Al-Qaeda or not). This man therefore set these men up with the bombs and surface-to-air missiles they would need to carry out their attacks. But since these men were completely untrained the FBI informant tricked them by giving them fake bombs and fake weapons, and they were oblivious to this until they were caught.

So on the day they planned to carry out their attacks, the men went to 2 synagogues in the Bronx and planted the bombs and planned to drive down to Stewart Airbase and blow up the so called bombs from a cell phone activated detonator while shooting down military aircrafts, but they were apprehended by the FBI, and other Homeland Security services that had worked with the FBI, before they left the scene.

In conclusion, I fail to believe that this case should be sensationalized in the way it is being shown. These were just a group of mentally unstable ex-convicts who sought to carry out attacks against an undefined enemy. They were completely untrained, and therefore failed miserably. But I am glad to see that the FBI is staying on top of Homeland Security like this. They have really proven themselves as hardworking, and I do feel a bit more secure now. Therefore I salute the brave men and women that thwarted this half-baked scheme, and look forward to more of these heroic moments.

Additional info on this topic;

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/nyregion/22terror.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

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