NYC Tunnel Plot Just Online Chatter

From Raw Story via AlterNet:

One former intelligence field officer says, and two other CIA officials confirm, that the alleged plot by Muslim extremists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in New York City was nothing more than chatter by unaffiliated individuals with no financing or training in an open forum already monitored extensively by the United States Government, Raw Story has learned.

"The so-called New York tunnel plot was a result of discussions held on an open Jihadi web site," said Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and contributor to American Conservative magazine, in a late Friday afternoon conversation. Although Giraldi acknowledges that the persons involved -- "three of whom have already been arrested in Lebanon and elsewhere -- are indeed extremists," their online chatter is considerably overblown by allegations of an actual plot.

"They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed," Giraldi added. "Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him."

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In other words some terrorist sympathizers in a chat room were like "hey, we should do this." But they didn't do it, didn't even try, didn't even come close to having the ability to do so, and had no contact with the people who actually might be able to help them pull it off. Strangely, the government thought it was a good idea to plaster this bust all over the news. The article speculates that bad publicity for the White House coming from leaked news last week about the CIA's depriortizing the capture of bin Laden is what's motivated these theatrical arrests, but my take is that it could be anything, low poll numbers, ever-increasing violence in Iraq, the resurgance of the Taliban, high gas prices, stagnant wages, you name it, motivating this bullshit. Whatever the reasons for aggrandizing these would-be terrorists, one thing's for sure, like the bullshit-terrorist arrests down in Florida a few weeks back, this new stunt is just so much PR.

Does anybody fall for this crap anymore?

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