With No Evidence, Fox Continues To Ask: Did Al-Qaeda Burn California? - Video Inside
With no new evidence, Fox continues to ask: Did al Qaeda burn California?
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_hy...eory_1025.html
David Edwards and Nick Juliano
Published: Thursday October 25, 2007
For the second straight day, Fox News stood virtually alone in advancing thinly supported speculation to raise fears that the wildfires ravaging California are not the result of a confluence of arid heat and high winds but were set deliberately by al Qaeda terrorists bent on destroying America.
Fox & Friends, the conservative cable channel, was panned Wednesday for breathlessly reporting a sketchy, four-year-old FBI memo as if it offered new information linking America's enemies in the "Global War on Terror" with a plot to burn down southern California.
The morning team was back at it Thursday, as anchor Alisyn Camerota introduced a segment on the fires that again mischaracterized and over-inflated warnings from a 2003 interview with an al Qaeda detainee.
Camerota said Fox's fear-mongering was "based on some information the FBI sent to local law enforcement in California and other Western states ... that there was a plot afoot to set three or four different" fires. Left unsaid by the Fox news-reader was that the FBI warning was sent more than four years ago, described a potential plot that made no mention of California, could not be proven accurate and did not raise alarms from forrest-fire officials at the time. (Such caveats all were included in an Associated Press report on the warning at the time.)
"How do they determine what's arson and what's terrorism?" she asked, noting accurately that authorities believe arsonists were responsible for at least "some of these fires." (Authorities say arson has been shown to have caused only two of more than a dozen fires so far.)
Terror analyst Erick Stakelbeck served as Camerota's foil in boosting the terror fears. Although he did clarify that the FBI memo was from 2003, the vintage of the intelligence didn't squelch his terror speculation; Stakelbeck warned that the fires appeared to be the result of a "coordinated effort ... over a large area."
"In a post-9/11 world, we have to consider all possibilities," Stakelbeck intoned.
Even if al Qaeda isn't involved -- and no one but Fox seems to be seriously suggesting they were -- the fires are still an example of "domestic terrorism," Stakelbeck said, although he was sure to note that law enforcement would be checking to see if arson suspects in custody fit the "terrorist profile."
Whoever is responsible for the fires, Stakelbeck couldn't help but note the ease with which such devastation can be wreaked with just some matches, kerosene and dry brush:
"What a cost-effective means of terrorism," he marveled.
The following video is from Fox's Fox & Friends, broadcast on October 25, 2007.
Video At Source
And the Boy Scouts too...
I think the Boy Scout Handbook has a HUGE section on how to start fires- those little "terraists!"
There was a lot of arson in LA after the King Riots- was that Al CIAda too?
http://www.cnn.com/NATURE/9908/26/we....01/index.html
That one must have been a AQ practice run- it happened before 9/11/01
They've gotta be who shot Phil Spector's wife- there's no doubt about it!
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0918/p01s03-ussc.html
Before the Sierra Club shut down the grazing back in the early 1950s, the BLM actually used to get PAID to have the "scrub" eaten (instead of buying a small herd of wait-listed Fire Dept. goats). The Oakland Tribe has an oral history of deliberately setting fires every 5-10 years or so, just so this EXACT thing doesn't happen, but what do those ranchers and 'Injuns know?
Gawwd I had to actually WATCH it!
My nephew forced me to watch the damn thing (I'll need therapy if I see much more Faux News Chunnel). [shuddering silently]
Anybody else see where Alacyn Camerota says "Well, what is arson? What is terrorism?" That's RICH- Dubya declares "War on Terra" in Sept. 2001, and now we don't even have a definition of what terrorism IS! [Although I've been saying you can't fight a war against an abstract since Nixon's War on Poverty and Reagan's War on Drugs] Fuck, we couldn't even figure out how to win a war against the NVA- and actual breathing, walking, organized army.
Will somebody stick a cawwk in Camerota's mouth already and shut her up!? Quite frankly, she just doesn't do it for me- she's not even good for that!
Jeebus...
Don't really need an airplane
Having fought the Western Brushfire on rural volunteer fire crews and watched countless of them fly out windows, I'd say that beyond a SHADOW of a doubt, a MUCH more probable cause is a cigarette (or several) carelessly flicked out a car window. PM SPECIFICALLY TO SMOKERS: use your fucking brain! [ok, off soapbox now- sorry] Southern CA has how many people and what kind of traffic again? And it rains/snows exactly how often again?
Or lightning, or faulty wiring in the cardbord-staple-n-glue shitty-then-stuccoed "monster homes" that I once helped build during my VERY brief stint in SoCAL years back...
The whole place is a grossly-overbuilt tinderbox for crying out loud!
Stick Simuvac's post, I'd say
Quote:
Originally Posted by simuvac
"With No Evidence, Fox Continues to..." [fill in the blank]
A few of us actually ARE starting to learn from our mistakes- that ought to be a "Thought for the Day" or on a calendar or something. Bildo O' Really best not "dress me down" west of the Rockies anytime soon though!
It'll be smackdown whoopass, or I'll die tryin...