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Two interesting articles for everyone to read that I found yesterday...

The Muslim Student Association: A Wahabbi Front by Steven Schwartz (a Muslim) - orginally published on NationalReview.com Author Bio: Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. A vociferous critic of Wahhabism, Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.

How I made "Jihad in America" and lived to tell about it by Steve Emerson - Chapter 1 Online at the AIJAC Emerson is a former staff reporter for CNN... Book Excerpt mentions (among other things) a meeting of the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) that he sat in on back in 1992 in Oklahoma City, OK. Incredible information about the state of terrorists in America. (Thanks to Iris Blog for pointing out this link).

Shoddy journalism indeed. This editorial engages in its own form of rumor mongering. As Coloradan notes, Rep. Cole did not confirm anything. He's repeating what the FBI told him. Or, more correcly, what he thinks he heard the FBI tell him. Then, there's a further filter: the reporter's own understanding of what Cole told her he heard from the FBI.

It's instructive to go back to what it's been reported that Rep. Cole actually said:

Mr. Cole said he also asked the agent specifically whether the FBI found the student intended to get inside the stadium.

"He said, 'We may never know. We have no evidence of a plan to do that, but we also couldn't tell you definitively he didn't try to do it and was rebuffed. We just simply don't know,' " Mr. Cole said.

We have no evidence of a plan
We just simply don't know.

Quite a different thing than what subsequent pieces try to promote. The FBI could be dancing on the head of a pin here. Having no evidence of a plan does not at all preclude them having a boatload of other damning evidence.

More Cole comment: Mr. Cole said the agent also told him the FBI found nothing indicating Mr. Hinrichs attended a mosque near his apartment.
Mr. Cole said he asked the agent specifically whether jihadist material was found in the apartment, which was widely reported on Internet sites. "He told me there was absolutely none – nothing that would suggest links to terrorist groups."

Well, which is it? "absolutely none" or "nothing that would suggest links to terrorist groups"? Two entirely different things. And it would appear to me from the context that Cole himself knew that....first saying "absolutely none", then correcting himself with the followup.

The qualifier "known terrorist group," is a loophole you could drive a truck bomb through.