Posted on 06/05/2006 4:14:43 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
U.S. officials believe Canadian arrests over the weekend and three recent domestic incidents in the United States are evidence the U.S. will soon be hit again by a terrorist attack. Privately, they say, they'd be surprised if it didn't come by the end of the year, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart.
The first of the domestic incidents, all of which drew little attention at the time, began with the holdup of a string of Torrance, Calif. gas stations last summer. Muslim converts who bonded together in prison planned to use the robberies to finance attacks on 20 Army recruiting stations.
Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton admits they stumbled on the plot during a search.
"Make no mistake about it," Bratton said. "We dodged a bullet here — perhaps many bullets."
Police in Toledo, Ohio, busted another cell in February. This one consisted of three men training to attack U.S. forces overseas. Once again, luck played a role. When they tried to enlist someone in their mosque to help, he turned them in.
"These individuals are often hiding in plain sight in cities like Torrance and now Toledo," says John Pistole, a FBI deputy director.
Two months ago, a pair of Atlanta men, one a Georgia Tech engineering student, were arrested not long after communicating by e-mail with two of the suspects arrested in Canada over the weekend. The Atlanta men are charged with videotaping domestic targets, including the U.S. Capitol and the World Bank.
Analysts now conclude similarities between all the cases were dramatic: All were self-financed, self-motivated, and in each case the men were seeking out others to join their cell.
In short, Osama bin Laden didn't pay for these plots, recruit for them or even know of them. They were all totally homegrown — even amateurish. But if four, including the one in Canada, have been uncovered in just 11 months, officials fear there are inevitably other plots that have not been and are maturing even now.
The next attack here, officials predict, will bear no resemblance to Sept. 11. The casualty toll will not be that high, the target probably not that big. We may not even recognize it for what it is at first, they say. But it's coming — of that they seem certain.
I'd like to just work towards elected more conservative GOPers because I believe that politicians have a difficult enough time getting the message when you say it straight out. Kick them out and the result will be Democrats. The GOP is likely to get the message that they are not liberal enough...and I don't want to run the risk of another 40 years wandering in the wilderness.
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I think your excellent points need to be made again and again and again and again . . .
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I'd like to just work towards elected more conservative GOPers because I believe that politicians have a difficult enough time getting the message when you say it straight out. Kick them out and the result will be Democrats. The GOP is likely to get the message that they are not liberal enough...and I don't want to run the risk of another 40 years wandering in the wilderness.
The "President" isn't doing the damn job we hired him for!
I still worry about our schools ever since that school bus incident a few weeks ago.
Not me, Polly. I'm all for the Limbaugh definition of the military which is to kill people and break things. You feel better including yourself in all that culpability, be my guest, but just keep me out of it, Polly.
Well, if you hired him thinking he was going to build a wall on the border, you didn't listen AT ALL during either his initial "interview" or his subsequence "job performance analysis."
He is doing exactly the job I hired him for. Protecting and defending us from our enemies...foreign and domestic.
Illegal immigrants are definitely a problem and it needs to be fixed, but most of them are not our enemies. And if you think they are, then we just will never see eye to eye. We need to make progress on that issue.
We need to win...when it comes to the WOT.
BTW, putting the word "President" in quotations is a rather strange thing to do. Why did you?
"Well given that BOAC hasnt existed since 1974, I think the latter isnt really an option"
Damn ... does that mean I can't use my Frequent Flyer miles ?
Murtha is being paid to say the things he does. Or, as you suggest he's being blackmailed.
nor Bin Laden and his 6 eyed cohort.
Ditto post 161.
"I still worry about our schools ever since that school bus incident a few weeks ago."
No faith in our investigators who checked it out and found no problem with it ?
But as the papers said yesterday about the Toronto plotters, they're a 'broad swath of society'. /sarcasm
Though one of us should probably change a word ending . . .
I'd like to just work towards elect ING more conservative GOPers because I believe that politicians have a difficult enough time getting the message when you say it straight out. Kick them out and the result will be Democrats. The GOP is likely to get the message that they are not liberal enough...and I don't want to run the risk of another 40 years wandering in the wilderness.
I agree.
I'm just about ready to roll up my sidewalk and let the world pass us by as much as possible. We, as a country have been sold down the river in the name of one world order, and it looks like there is nothing we can do to stop it.
The republican party has left conservatives in the dust.
Oh well, it was a great country while it lasted. I wish my grandchildren could have lived in the America I grew up in.
*sigh*
"They do seem to like to plan major atacks on significants dates 911 for instance."
Curious - Why do you think they arranged their plans to fit OUR calendar rather then the Islamic calendar ?
What do you want us to do? Ban them? Sheesh. Wasted my time looking.
Do you have evidence, or is it a gut instinct thing?
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