WaPo tells terrorism story from wrong point of view

posted at 11:28 am on May 22, 2009 by Pundette
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How’s this for msm chutzpah? In today’s Washington Post, we learn that the four would-be mass-murderer bombers were “taken in” by the government informant “in their midst”:

For the past two years, people at the small mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., were suspicious that a government informant was in their midst. The man talked about violent jihad, took people to lunch to push his beliefs and even offered some money. Salahuddin Muhammad, the imam of the mosque, said he warned people away.

But four members were apparently taken in, either by him or someone else, and were arrested about 9 p.m. Wednesday in the Bronx as they planted what they thought were bombs in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Riverdale. The suspects reportedly planned to detonate the devices remotely and then drive to the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, about 60 miles north, to shoot down military aircraft with a missile.

Key point left out: this undercover agent or informant, who apparently risked his own skin, was asked by the men to procure bombs. That seems pretty significant, no?

But Post writer Robin Shulman finds someone, a young mother in the neighborhood, who shares her feelings that maybe the sting was more problem than solution:

“You have to be skeptical,” Habif-Afres said. “I was also questioning if the police informant didn’t provide bombs, would these people have been able to get bombs?”

And that’s how they end the story, with the ugly facts about terrorists plotting and executing plans to commit mass-murder sandwiched between spin that they were duped, entrapped, and enabled by the FBI. That’s audacious, even for the Post.

Stings like this one have kept us safe. But perhaps this type of operation, like enhanced interrogation techniques, doesn’t measure up to Obama’s lofty moral standards. The age of Obama has thus far been marked by denial, weakness, and conciliation; maybe Shulman senses that and is regurgitating the party line? I can’t imagine why anyone would try to spin the terrorists as victims of the nasty FBI.

Please see Michelle Malkin’s piece on how terrorism spreads virally in prisons. One more reason not to bring the Gitmo terrorists to the US, even to Alcatraz.

h/t: Laura Ingraham

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