Chattering Class

If you get all your news from CNN, you'd be thinking that the FBI broke up a serious threat. Buzzflash knows better:

Let's go back and look at today's reports about the supposed New York threat. Just like in Miami, the plan was "largely aspirational," consisting only of chats on the internet, and, according to an MSNBC.com report, "not advanced and never moved beyond the discussion stage. According to a counter-terrorism official with knowledge of the plot, the plotters never cased the tunnels, never had any bomb-making materials to pull off the job, and were not even located in the U.S, but rather overseas. Apparently some tunnels are more problematic than others, but according to the official, the alleged terrorists in this case were unaware of which tunnels were problematic and which were not."

Interestingly, most of this information has been removed from the page since this morning. Also questionable is that Bush is all too happy to report on exactly how he apprehended this suspect and those in Miami, but seemed horrified when the New York Times reported the SWIFT financial records monitoring by the NSA, even though it was already widely known.

It must be an election year when so much attention is given to a few terrorist wannabes who, according to Sen. Chuck Schumer, "don't seem to be the brightest bulbs in the terrorist lot." With the facts completely opposed to the Republican agenda, all they can fall back on is an appeal to fear.

The CNN talking heads are functioning as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party.