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

[Gold9472]

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

[dMole]

Yipes, just yipes...

[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.

[dMole]

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?

[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.

[dMole]

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...

[dMole]

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...

[AuGmENTor]

I'd like to clear the air. I started that fire. I used my mind.

[dMole]

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!

[AuGmENTor]

STOP HIM!!!!! HE'S GOT TWO STICKS!!!