Question re: Oklahoma City

Not that I think OKC was handled all that well (from all sides) - but - how come after the "worst terrorist attack on American Soil" (and I'm still sick of hearing that phrase), we didn't need a Patriot Act or secret spying on citizens? Now, to qualify this - yes, 9/11 was "worse", and yes, I'm sure it wasn't a good time for people who checked out the Anarchist's Cookbook from the local library. But - this was a very shocking thing. A homegrown American turned crazy bomber - who knows how many others like him there might be? And yet, Clinton didn't see a need to toss out constitutional rights. And still, we didn't have another incident like that.

So can we say that scary things may happen, from time to time, that are beyond control and anticipation? And that it's better for 99.999999% of Americans to retain their rights, even if 0.000001% might snap and do something terrible?

and a Christian, so we didn't need a Patriot Act. It's them furriner Mooslims that are a threat and we should kill them all because they are DIFFERENT than US :sarcasm:

n/t

Tim McVeigh looks too much like them to be a terrorist. It's the same reason those folks in North Carolina who admitted selling food to Eric Rudolph aren't in Gitmo for supporting terrorism.

First, al Queda was behind 9-11, McVeigh was just a patsy. I heard it on some right wing talk show, so it must be true.

Clinton was a wussy boy without the courage to deal with these evil doers.

Every American should be glad George W. Bush is in the White House and will stop at nothing to protect them.

:sarcasm:

oh wait, now I'm confused again. it depends on which speech you listen to, right?

that's what I meant to say.

And everyone knows, al Queda and Saddam are pretty much one and the same.

It was a Mooslem Terra plot!

get a small portion of the controls that Bush now has in place due to "the Patriot Act" . . .

But the Repukes screamed bloody murder about BC turning this country into a police state . . .

"The Terrorist Next Door" covers this in some depth (IIRC, it's been 3 years since I read it.)

try driving around, oh say for instance, the backwoods areas of Idaho with Kerry bumper stickers or maybe in a car with Federal Government license plates.

The worst leftwing act of terrorism was the arson of the Vail restautant in 1998. No one was hurt
The worst rightwing act of terrorism was the OKC bombing. 168 deaths and over 500 injuries.

Need I say more?

The Weather People killed a few in their day, and the SLA got in that shoot-out with LAPD that got most of them killed.

I would say that both groups were left-wing terror networks. Both spouted extreme left beliefs, and really were no different than McVeigh/Nichols and the militia types out there, except for their political beliefs.

Yes, we can say that.

Furthermore, if you read about the OKC bombing, you'll find that the FBI had so many undercover people at that Elohim City place (where McVeigh hung out), they probably outnumbered the actual, real, Elohim City nutball supremacists there. (I'm exaggerating, but they DID have an undercover presence among those people.)

The FBI has often infiltrated white supremacist groups such as Klan chapters, and the result has sometimes been that the FBI guys end up running the show. I'm talking about agents provocateur. I mean, agents provocateur are a very tried-and-true part of plots throughout history. "Just give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves", the Hitler fascists may have said of the communists, before the Reichstag Fire. But what happens when your dumbass political opponents are just taking too long to "hang themselves" with all that rope you're giving them? You have to get in there and organize them and hasten them on the path to whatever atrocity they were contemplating... then, once the atrocity is accomplished, YOU and your group appear to "save the day".

I remember that a lawyer (son of a lawyer who'd represented, of all people, James Earl Ray) told myself and some others that there wasn't a single federal judge present in the Murrah Building that morning. (And there were lots of judges housed there.) Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

Notice how quickly they executed McVeigh.

Before OKC, the militia groups were getting stronger and stronger. Wingnuts were afraid of the Clinton administration, so they kept organizing in militias. After OKC, the militia groups were THE Enemy. It became Our Federal Government's patriotic duty to shut them down. And it did shut them down. How convenient that the horrible atrocity of OKC was committed by two members of a militia group.

and yet it hasn't stopped terrorism there.