With No Evidence, Fox Continues To Ask: Did Al-Qaeda Burn California? - Video Inside

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10-25-2007, 12:21 PM
Gold9472

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
10-25-2007, 01:24 PM
dMole

Yipes, just yipes...
10-25-2007, 08:11 PM
PhilosophyGenius

Talking trash no doubt, but it is in the AQ training manuel to start fire, and there is arson on several places.

But the suspect in one case was white.
10-25-2007, 08:17 PM
dMole

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?
10-25-2007, 09:03 PM
BASE701

I hear and read about this and want to cry out to the world that this is complete BS! What makes it worse is the knowledge that so many people will actually think Al Qaeda is behind these fires. The blatant propaganda that is spread in this country is beyond words for me. So I'll just say this makes me sad.
10-25-2007, 09:09 PM
dMole

Stress

It makes me want to Bitch-slap the 70% that are usually too lazy to vote (although I'm sure AuGgie will correctly jump my shit about that being irrelevant in Presidental Selections) and yell "WAKE THE FUCK UP!", but that's how I roll...
10-25-2007, 10:31 PM
dMole

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...
10-25-2007, 10:37 PM
AuGmENTor

I'd like to clear the air. I started that fire. I used my mind.
10-25-2007, 10:50 PM
dMole

Yeah

I'll bet you learned all those nefarious tricks in that evil Boy Scout book years ago. HSA and FBI are probably already on their way there, AuG- run!
10-25-2007, 11:03 PM
AuGmENTor

STOP HIM!!!!! HE'S GOT TWO STICKS!!!
10-25-2007, 11:03 PM
AuGmENTor

Great, now a fuckin magnifying glass is a weapon of mass destruction...
10-25-2007, 11:21 PM
dMole

Great now I need LASIK

I guess eyeglass lenses are out too (that's the 1 thing that kept me out of the US Border Patrol some years back, when I was still an OCT'er).
10-25-2007, 11:23 PM
dMole

It might be

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuGmENTor

Great, now a fuckin magnifying glass is a weapon of mass destruction...

In my younger days, there were probably several thousand Fire Ants that would have agreed with you (I hade a hate/hate relationship with them as a child).
10-26-2007, 02:37 AM
PhilosophyGenius

I heard an ex firefighter says years and years ago that if someone in a small plane flew along the California coast and dropped something on fire every so often, the entire coast would be gone and there would be no way to stop it.
10-26-2007, 04:09 AM
dMole

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!
10-26-2007, 10:20 AM
AuGmENTor

I, ummmm, didn't know that some years ago when I was in Paso Robles, California. I was sitting on the side of the road, waiting for someone to pick me up. (My truck had broken down.) And I was noticing how easily this "sage" (I think thats what it is, but I'm none too sure) was ignited by a lit cigarette. I was playing this little bordom game of igniting it, and then extinguishing it by pushing it into the sand. Well, the game got out of hand when a pice caught another piece ablaze, and WHHHRRRRUUUUUMPH, like a half mile of grass along the side of the road was gone JUST LIKE THAT. For a minute I panicked, realizing I was the only person for MILES in any direction, thus had little chance of blaming ot on the new guy. Then it became clear that the patch was isolated, and couldn't catch anything else, as there WAS nothing else.
10-26-2007, 12:50 PM
dMole

Word...

Yeah, I lost 2 "Smokejumper" friends in that big Yellowstone blaze about 8 years ago. Their trucks weren't fast enough to outrun it, and the forest burns MUCH slower than the Southwest desert...

On another note, the smoke just reached Northern UT sometime during the night- it's brown and nasty, and JC is there a bunch! [At least it's not radioactive this time, I think...]
10-26-2007, 01:23 PM
AuGmENTor

Quote:

and JC is there a bunch!

Jesus was there?
10-26-2007, 01:23 PM
simuvac

"With No Evidence, Fox Continues to..." [fill in the blank]
10-26-2007, 01:53 PM
dMole

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...
10-26-2007, 01:56 PM
dMole

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuGmENTor

Jesus was there?

Jesus is with and loves everybody (even me but Lord how I've disappointed him over the years), 'cept those NeoCons...
10-26-2007, 02:04 PM
AuGmENTor

Huh. A man of science that believes in Jesus? That's kinda rare. Ever seen the first half hour of Zeigliest? I'm sure I spelled that wrong... But it explains the whole religion thing. While I do believe in God and all of that, I don't subscribe to all of these religions deciding who it's OK to kill, and under what circumstances.
10-26-2007, 02:20 PM
dMole

Agnostic remember?

I might have been joking about Jesus Christ- never met the guy before, so who knows for sure?

According to 'ol Brigham Young, the deepest, darkest pit of Hell is reserved for my kind- eh, so be it. That bunch did reportedly baptize 'ol Adolf for the dead though- that's some creepy shit there.

So I guess I'll be pitifully looking up at Hitler for all eternity (heaven has levels you know, just like our dollar bill). Kinda makes that FEMA camp looka notsa badda...