Fear Mongering at the Tribune Review

Take a look at one of today's editorials. Can't really say they're lying, exactly, but the piece is so filled with almost facts that the stuff missing from the text thoroughly changes the whole thing.

Some pooh-poohed the revelation that federal authorities had broken up a suspected Muslim terrorist cell that was planning to destroy John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

After all, the four men accused had no detailed plan, no money to underwrite their terror and no explosives to unleash their hoped-for carnage.

So all they had was the conspiracy to commit the act - fine arrest them for that. Conspiracy to commit a crime is a crime. But with no money, no plan, and no explosives, the airport still had a fair chance of survival.

But all terrorist plots have to begin somewhere. And as plots go, this was pretty involved, including "precise and extensive" surveillance of their target, the feds say.

Wait, didn't the editorial just say one sentence ago they had no detailed plan? Now one sentence later this plan is suddenly "pretty involved."

Nonetheless, The New York Times relegated the front-page news to page 30.

This is not exactly true. As pointed out by Keith Olbermann (see the clip here), the Times had a one sentence headline about the plot on its front page.

The accused, including a former JFK cargo handler, are charged with plotting to blow up fuel tanks and fuel lines as well as airport terminals. Given the number of people at JFK on a daily basis (1,000 daily flights) -- and given that the fuel-supply lines (jet fuel, gasoline and heating oil) run through Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island -- the death toll could have surpassed that of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Yea, if only they'd had some explosives and if only the type of fuel they were looking to blow up was as incendiary as they thought it was and if only the pipeline actually allowed enough oxygen to allow combustion and if only the pipeline was completely open from beginning to end. If only.

As Michael Boyd, aviation expert pointed out on Countdown on June 4th:

Well, jet fuel is not as volatile as gasoline. Unless you have a lot of air and it‘s atomized, it‘s not going to burn real good. As a matter of fact, it takes a minute or two to get it burning if you put a blowtorch to a pool of it. You know, that‘s why the FAA said you got to be off an airplane in 90 seconds after an accident, because they figure that‘s how long it takes the fuel to get burning.

So this argument that if you light it somewhere on the length of the pipeline, it‘s going to blow up all of Rego Park, that‘s just nuts.

Oh, yea the accused cargo handler? He reportedly worked at JFK 12 years ago.

Nearly six years after that devastating day it has become fashionable in some quarters to dismiss talk of terrorists plots as a federal scare tactic to justify the War on Terror. But the real scare here is what these plotters hoped to accomplish.

And for exposing it well in advance of its operational stage, Americans should laud their government's efforts.

In nearly six years after that devastating day, it's become fashionable in some quarters to use fear to try to deflect our attention from the administration's many failures, from the War in Iraq to the War on Terror (so where is Osama bin Laden?). The real scare here is that the Trib's editorial board was looking to set us in a collective panic attack by what the plotters "hoped to accomplish" rather than what they could have accomplished.