Noonday in the Shade
n April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon — a cyanide bomb — big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building.
Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, its owner. He didn't even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. Jose Padilla, the accused "dirty bomber," didn't have any bomb-making material or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr. Ashcroft put him on front pages around the world. Mr. Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr. Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened.
Incidentally, if Mr. Ashcroft's intention was to keep the case low-profile, the media have been highly cooperative. To this day, the Noonday conspiracy has received little national coverage.
I've often wondered what happened to the coverage that the right-wing militias and terrorists were getting back in the 90's when Clinton was president and they were all barricading themselves in and waiting for the gubmint to come and try and take away their guns. Did they just give up? Nope. They're out there, they are still determined and fully capable of killing on a large scale, but they aren't Arab so Ashcroft and the media don't really care. Ashcroft has, however, identified eco-terrorists as our most important domestic terrorism threat (Perhaps he can employ the help of Laurie Mylroie and she can link the enviro's with Saddam in the Oklahoma City bombing and clear McViegh and the other lunatics altogether!).
This is the first I had heard about the Krar case and, apparantly, this is for good reason. The State Department did apparantly issue a press release about this in Novemeber 2003, but was careful not to use the phrase "domestic terrorism" therefor assuring that our lazy, spineless, I-only-repeat-what-I-read-in-the-NYTimes press would never pick it up (and they haven't disappointed them yet).
Fortunately for us, Ornicus has been following the case for a long time. Check the link out. He has been following this story from the beggining and has more info can be found in the comments of his post.
When you are done there, check out the following (in case you missed it). John Stewart of the Daily Show interviewed Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard on his shitty little new book "exploring" the ties between Al Q & Saddam. His information is not from the CIA, the 9/11 commission or any other reputable source, but from Douglas Feith and the Office of Special Planning that was invented with the express purpose of shifting through poorly sourced and completely fabricated information that the CIA had already determined as bogus to try and make a case for invading Iraq:
John Stewart interviewing Stephan Hayes
HAYES: No, I think that's a good point. On the other hand, I think that Iraq, in this case, presented a unique threat. Because...
STEWART: Why?
HAYES: Precisely because of its weapons of mass destruction, because of its demonstrated use of weapons of mass destruction...
STEWART: Iran has done the same.
HAYES: They've used weapons of mass destruction?
STEWART: Yes.
HAYES: When have they used weapons of mass destruction?
STEWART: In the Iran/Iraq war. They both were mustard gassing back and forth.
HAYES: Well, that's one theory. I don't think that that's been shown.
STEWART: Well, you're no one to talk about what's been shown!
So John Stewart does a better job of asking the right questions and shows the rest of the media how to ask follow up questions and point out obvious contradictions and hypocricy.
In the mean time, no major newspaper or television news show has covered the arrest of a right-wing terrorist that could have potentially killed thousands of Americans. However, there is an article about it in this months Maxim magazine (I'm serious).
