I sort of half-ignored this story in the Tombstone Tumbleweed last week: "TWO GROUPS OF MIDDLE-EASTERN INVADERS CAUGHT IN COCHISE COUNTY IN PAST SIX WEEKS." You'd be ignoring it, too, if not for the Blessed Google Cache.
Basically, the story is a "this guy says that" and "Official Guy denies same" sort of story:
On or about the early morning hours of June 13, 2004 Border patrol agents from the Willcox station encountered a large group of suspected illegal border crossers, estimated to be around 158, just east of the Sanders Ranch near the foothills of the Chiricauha Mountains. 71 suspected illegal aliens were apprehended; among them were 53 males of middle-eastern descent.According to a Border Patrol field agent, the men were suspected to be Iranian or possibly Syrian nationals. “One thing’s for sure: these guys didn’t speak Spanish and after we questioned them harder we discovered they spoke poor English with a middle-eastern accent; then we caught them speaking to each other in Arabic…this is ridiculous that we don't take this more seriously, and we’re told not to say a thing to the media, but I have to,” said the agent, who spoke to the Tumbleweed with the promise of anonymity.
Adame confirms the groups of illegals were apprehended on those dates in the same area but stated, “There were no middle easterners in the group. Every single one of them was Mexican.”
Today, from the NYT, we have this: "U.S. Warns of Terror Threat Against Financial Buildings."
Nestled amongst the feel-good threats to buildings near where I work are the following warm and cozy thoughts:
Saturday's warnings appeared to be linked to the arrest on July 19 in Texas of Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed after she entered the United States from Mexico by crossing the Rio Grande and crawling through the brush.According to several news accounts, she had an altered passport along with several thousand dollars in cash and an airline ticket to New York. CNN reported that she was charged with illegal entry, making false statements and falsifying a passport.
[...]
The ABC report said intelligence sources had described a plan by Al Qaeda to move non-Arab terrorists across the Mexican border into the United States.
Just moments ago, they closed the Holland Tunnel to inbound commercial truck traffic.
I've asked it before, I'll ask it again: are we at war here or not, people?
...American officials said the new evidence had been obtained only after the capture of the Qaeda figure. Among other things, they said, it demonstrated that Qaeda plotters had begun casing the buildings in New York, Newark and Washington even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Among the questions the plotters sought to answer, senior American intelligence officials said, were how best to gain access to the targeted buildings; how many people might be at the sites at different hours and on different days of the week; whether a hijacked oil tanker truck could serve as an effective weapon; and how large an explosive device might be required to bring the buildings down.
What's it going to take? Striking, iconic aerial footage of the CitiCorp building lying canted on its side against other buildings? Maybe a dramatic close-up from the helicopters of survivors crawling out of windows, and standing on the building's shattered face, as though they were on the keel of a capsized ocean liner? Or perhaps images of a succession of skyscraper-dominos, a smoking wreckage that's twenty blocks long and eight blocks wide? Or maybe a truck bomb? Two truck bombs? Three? How about one in front of the Stock Exhange? Oh, right--they've got those big concrete barriers now, so you can't actually get a truck near it. Which means that they'll set the explosives off on the other side of the barriers--near, for example, my "financial building." Thank goodness we've got that nifty new shatterproof film on all the three-story windows in the lobby. That way, I can stagger out into the carnage free from wounds caused by flying glass...just like on September 11.
The evil spectacle of massive buildings crashing to earth in murderous ruin wasn't enough. The deaths of thousands of fellow citizens on live television weren't enough.
Can happen here? It did happen here.
What's it going to take?
