Enemy Witin

[thingfisher]

Frontline was on last night and did a one hour puff piece of journalism... again. PBS is supposed to be the last bastion of real investigative jouranlism in America right? This show once again did just enough stirring of the waters to muddy things up for those of us who want a deeper understanding of things. Basically it exposed the fact that most of the efforts of the FBI since 911 to deter domestic terrorist threats have been based on poor information and very weak cases, often relying on questionable informants and incitement.
What ever the true merits of the cases (which uniformly appear to be very dubious indeed) they do have the immediate effect of keeping domestic terror in the headlines and in the consiousness of the American public. This seems to me to be the real purpose of these shabby investigations. Even Mr. Keene of the 911 commission cover-up viewed the cases featured as very week and in no way related to domestic Al Quaida (whatever that is supposed to be) cells.
The unfortunates swept up in these investigations posed no threat to domestic tranquility, but they did provide a context for propaganda that apparently shows that our FBI is "on the job". Now that virtually anyone can be singled out as an enemy combatant, it should be easier than ever to keep the water stirred as there will be no shortage of suspects to harrass and intimidate in the name of national security.
All agencies recieving hefty Homeland Security dollars will be competing with one another to justify their budget requests which will add more incentive to make arrests, regardless of the true merits of the cases.
But I'm not worried. They haven't come after me yet.

[Marie26]

1. How is that a puff piece?

Frontline said most terror investigations are based on incitment & bad information, and are overblown for possibly political reasons. That helps Bush, how?

[thingfisher]

2. How

I felt that the information that was presented was meant to come across as hard hitting and to impress us with its information which is as hard hitting as we get in this country these days. It just seemed to me that the show declined to take things to the next level. Why is a top agency like the FBI wasting its time on this kind of activity? Now in the case of the Chinese illegals and the tip, I realize that it had to be treated seriously until the truth came out and I'm sure there may be these kinds of events that happen from time to time.
I hoped that the reporters might bring up the issue of the propaganda value of keeping terrorist items in the news (regardless of their true merit)to keep the populace on message with the administrations continuing usurpation of powers. The Atlanta case was by far the most laughable and could have served as an excellent example of flogging a dead horse for propaganda. In the end the veracity of the stories doesn't really matter since the substance is soon forgotten by the masses but the incident itself gets filed away as "threat prevented".
Maybe my paranoia is creeping me out.
:shrug: