Friday, April 01, 2005

Bush Administration Terrorist Who's Who (and who's not)

DeLay’s vague threat against judges yesterday wasn’t just offensive, it was dangerous, especially given the serious threats against judges and others involved in the Schiavo case. Florida Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge George Greer has been “under 24-hour protection by two U.S. marshals due to increased threats against his life by those unhappy with his handling of the Schiavo case.” Last Thursday, police arrested an Illinois man they said robbed a Florida gun store as part of an attempt to “rescue Terri Schiavo.” The next day, FBI officials took into custody a North Carolina man for placing a $250,000 bounty “on the head of Michael Schiavo” and another $50,000 to murder Judge Greer. And police yesterday said they had “logged several bomb threats” to the hospice where Schiavo died and “the circuit and federal courts that refused to order her feeding tube restored.”

You can read Tom DeLay’s statement here.

  Think Progress post

Embedded links are in this post at Think Progress so you can follow them to the sources. There is also a post citing Senator Kennedy's comments.

Now let's take a look at whom this administration calls terrorists:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation’s security.

According to the list — part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security — between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups.

It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans.

[...]

In 2003, for instance, a Texas man prosecutors say was a white supremacist and anti-government radical pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. Authorities had discovered enough sodium cyanide bombs to kill hundreds of people; machine guns and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition; 60 pipe bombs; and remote-control explosive devices disguised as briefcases in a storage space he rented. The man, William J. Krar, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

[...]

The conspirators behind the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and wounded more than 500, were inspired by radical right-wing movements. Eric Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which killed one woman and injured more than 100, was a member of the radical anti-abortion group Army of God. Initially, Rudolph was the object of a massive North Carolina manhunt in connection with a Birmingham, Ala., abortion-clinic bombing that killed a police officer and seriously maimed a nurse.

[...]

Last October, the FBI arrested a man in Tennessee who tried to buy sarin nerve gas and C-4 explosive to attack a government building. The man, Demetrius “Van” Crocker, had also inquired about obtaining nuclear waste or other nuclear material, according to the FBI.

And in 2003, a Pennsylvania man was convicted of mailing hundreds of letters containing fake anthrax to abortion clinics around the United States.

[...]

“They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat,” said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. “If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that,” said German, who left the FBI last year. “Hopefully it’s an oversight.”

  CQ.com article

Yeah. Sure.

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