As I mentioned earlier, the fake terror scare is replacing the fake terror alert as a method of frightening voters in an election year, hoping they can be herded like cattle into the Republican fold, while at the same time trying to make the Bush counter-terrorism disaster look like it’s actually foiling terrorism. Now there’s a new one. FourWorlds pointed out this article by Larisa Alexandrovna at The Raw Story:

One former intelligence field officer says, and two other CIA officials confirm, that the alleged plot by Muslim extremists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in New York City was nothing more than chatter by unaffiliated individuals with no financing or training in an open forum already monitored extensively by the United States Government, RAW STORY has learned.

“The so-called New York tunnel plot was a result of discussions held on an open Jihadi web site,” said Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and contributor to American Conservative magazine, in a late Friday afternoon conversation. Although Giraldi acknowledges that the persons involved – “three of whom have already been arrested in Lebanon and elsewhere – are indeed extremists,” their online chatter is considerably overblown by allegations of an actual plot.

“They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed,” Giraldi added. “Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him.”

Two other intelligence officials with experience in the field on extremist operations concurred–and expressed concern that what could have been an operation to eventually track known extremists (should they eventually make actual contact with funds and training,) seems to have been exposed for political gain.

Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media is not picking up on this story, already a day old. It will probably not make much of it, just like they didn’t make much of the truth that the Florida “terror cell” was just a bunch of jerk-offs doing nothing and going nowhere.

I expect, however, that right-wingers outraged at leaks that could hurt efforts to hunt down terrorists will call out the political opportunists in this case and brand them as traitors, as the political handling of this case may have prevented the discovery of actual terrorists who present a danger to us.

Snark! Yeah, right. That would call for consistency. As if.