CANADA CATCHES AQ WANNABES, BUT WHAT ABOUT US TERRORISTS?

And no, I'm not playing the part of one of those "blame America first types," there actually are domestically grown terrorists who want to strike at the US government but first things, first.

You most likely have heard about those Muslims they caught in Canada. Here's a quick clip from [http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7081D27E-B3D5-4333-AC8E-600383D26E1A.htm|a June 3, 2006 article] at English.Aljazeera.Net that explains the specifics:

Seventeen people have been arrested by Canadian police in Toronto for terrorism-related offences and could face charges of plotting al-Qaeda-inspired attacks.

Mike McDonnell, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RMCP), said on Saturday that a group of 12 adults and five younger people that were arrested on Friday "were planning to commit a series of terrorist attacks against solely Canadian targets in southern Ontario".

The group is alleged to have acquired three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, commonly found in fertiliser, and "components necessary to create explosive devices."

Police said the individuals were arrested in co-ordinated raids throughout the wider Toronto area.

"This group posed a real and serious threat," McDonnell said.

"It had the capacity and intent to carry out attacks. Our investigation and arrests prevented the assembly of any bombs and the attacks being carried out."

Right, OK, but the terrorist you probably haven't heard about is a guy called Demetrius Van Crocker and he was found guilty back in April, 2006 after trying to buy Sarin nerve gas from an undercover FBI agent. Here's an excerpt from [http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/13/anti_government_white_supremacist_guilty/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News|an incredibly short April 13, 2006 article] from AP.org and Boston.Com:

A federal jury convicted a white supremacist Thursday of attempting to acquire chemical weapons and explosives to destroy government buildings.

In tapes recorded by an undercover agent and played at his trial, Demetrius Van Crocker said that he dreamed of setting off a dirty bomb at the U.S. Capitol and that he wanted a helicopter license so he could bomb black neighborhoods or spray them with poison gas.

Van Crocker, a farmhand from McKenzie, Miss., was arrested in 2004 after the FBI agent, posing as an employee of the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, gave him a water-filled Sarin gas canister and a small quantity of C-4 plastic explosives.

There are only 5 more sentences left in that article. For real information (and coverage) you have to go a bit farther. There's [http://www.saljournal.com/blogs/?p=693|this post from April 29, 2006] at SalJournal.Com entitled "Demetrius Van Who?" which actually quotes the [http://www.adl.org/learn/extremism_in_the_news/Anti_Government/tennessee_chemical_weapons_041101.htm|Anti-Defamation League] as saying in part:

“According to the arrest affidavit, an undercover federal agent was introduced to Crocker by a cooperating witness. Crocker told the agent that he hates Jewish people, admires Adolf Hitler and that creating a concentration camp for Jewish insurance executives “would be a desirable endeavor.” Local officials familiar with Crocker said that in the 1980s Crocker had been involved with a white supremacist group.

Crocker also told the agent that “it would be a good thing if somebody could detonate some sort of weapon of mass destruction on Washington D.C., while both the U.S. Congress and Senate were in session.”

Then you need to head over to MemphisFlyer.Com and [http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Content?oid=oid%3A15140|this April 21, 2006 article] that explained the story this way:

The United States of America vs. Demetrius "Van" Crocker had all the elements of the hit television program 24: a white supremacist dealing with a crooked security employee at a weapons arsenal to buy stolen ingredients to make deadly Sarin nerve gas; a plot to use dirty bombs, nerve gas, and conventional weapons against federal and state courthouses and the U.S. Capitol, while the House and Senate were in session; a plot that was foiled by an informant; and a dramatic takedown by FBI agents with their guns drawn seconds after the Sarin canister and package of C-4 explosives changed hands.

Except the would-be terrorist, Van Crocker, is a 40-year-old McKenzie, Tennessee, farmhand with an IQ of 85 who was jailed in 2004 for criminal littering in a vandalism case. Crocker scraped together $500 in $20 and $100 bills for the Sarin payoff. In addition to blowing up buildings, he also planned to sew himself a radiation suit and acquire plutonium from a KGB agent by writing to Russian mail-order brides. The "crooked employee" was actually undercover FBI agent Steve Burroughs of Little Rock. The Sarin container was filled with water, and the explosives were mostly inert. The takedown took place in a room at the Comfort Inn in Jackson, with the only shots coming from a hidden video camera.

So, why wasn't this huge news? An American terrorist in our midst! Sure, he was an idiot, but who knows the shoe-bomber's IQ or the IQ of Zacharias Moussaoui?

NOPE!

See, I think the idea is that the Muslim terrorists are supposed to be threatening and scary but American terrorists are just dumb.

The reality is we have little to fear from anyone, but Muslims are being made out to be the bad guys while actual American bad guys are ignored by the media. I can't say that it's a concerted effort by the mainstream American news to ignore American-grown terror in favor of demonizing Muslim terror, but it sure seems that way, doesn't it?