1 Islamist plot to terrorize America foiled! 999 to go…?

…plotting to attack the Army’s Fort Dix [in New Jersey] and kill as many American soldiers as possible.

And the competitive elbow to the ribs of sister agency, the CIA, was not lost on me when U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie stood before his FBI agents and sang their praises as follows:

Perhaps.

But if I were a New Jersey resident, far from resting assured, I would have been unnerved by the misplaced confidence law-enforcement authorities exuded during this news conference. After all, but for an alert video-store clerk, they would have been as clueless about this plot as they were about the path to 9/11. Because, according to the Washington Post, these wannabe terrorists practically gave themselves up when they took a video of themselves preparing for their mission to a video store to be dubbed onto high resolution DVDs. And, thank God, the clerk alerted the police.

Moreover, I am mindful that the FBI are fond of citing how their sleuthing foiled the Millennium plot to blow up the Los Angeles Airport in December 1999. Yet, in that case, but for an alert U.S. immigration officer at the Canadian border, they would have been clueless about this plot as well. Because, after finding this wannabe terrorist suspicious, this officer ordered the search of his car which turned up the massive amounts of explosives he was carrying to execute his mission.

Beyond this, however, I wonder how many plots are now underway that will not be foiled by such fortuitous circumstances. After all, I recall Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s dire warning that President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” will inspire 1000 bin Ladens to plot attacks against America. And, this foiled attack only reinforces how terribly easy it is for them to do so. (The chickens are coming home to roost….)

Nevertheless, I suppose there’s honor in (and we can derive some comfort from) the fact that the Fort-Dix six were targeting a military base instead of a shopping mall, football stadium or university campus (although they probably deferred here to American students who seem to have a monopoly on this terror enterprise…).

Meanwhile, am I the only one who finds it ironic that four of these jihadists, including including Eljvir Duka and his two brothers, are “ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia”? After all, the American soldiers they were plotting to kill are the very ones who helped liberate their people in Kosovo from their “Serb oppressors”. Never mind that this is no more ironic than the fact that – after liberating them from their Sunni oppressors – Iraqi Shias (under the Machiavellian leadership of Cleric Muqtada al Sadr) now seem every bit as hell-bent as Sunni insurgents are on killing and driving Americans soldiers out of Iraq. Go figure….

Alas, I fear it’s a fool’s errand to seek reason and understanding in the genocidal devices of Islamic militants. Indeed, here’s how one of the six who were arrested yesterday expressed the holy crusade they’re all so diabolically committed to:

It doesn’t matter to me whether I get locked up, arrested or get taken away….Or I die, it doesn’t matter. I’m doing it in the name of Allah.

And, on the 16 months of surveillance recordings the FBI gathered on them, another jihadist reportedly chimes in as follows:

God help us!

NOTE: FBI assurances that these men were not affiliated with al Qaeda should disabuse anyone of the notion that the invasion of Iraq is the casus belli for the clash of religions or civilizations that Islamic militants from all over the world seem so determined to fight.

Related Article:

Path to 9/11
1000 bin Ladens plotting terror attacks

* Published originally yesterday at 5:33pm

Fort Dix terror plot