DUKES OF JIHADIST HAZZARD. Two Muslim men were pulled over Saturday in South Carolina because they were speeding. News sources report:
DeWitt said the men were pulled over Saturday night on U.S. Highway 176 while driving more than 60 mph in a 45-mph zone. When an officer approached the car, he saw one of them men fold a laptop computer, which the officer believed was suspicious, DeWitt said.
The officer asked them if he could search the car, which the men agreed to. When he asked if there was anything in the car he should know about, the men said there were fireworks in the trunk.
DeWitt declined to say this morning exactly what was found in the trunk. However, the FBI has already said the men are not suspected of orchestrating a terrorist plot.
The Tampa chapter of CAIR thinks the materials found were just fireworks, and that the two men were simply on a roadtrip to North Carolina.
Of course, this sort of thing is just bait for certain people on the right to go off on full scale Islamist hysteria. Not to disappoint, Andy McCarthy "broke" the story on The Corner Sunday night with the headline "Two Middle Eastern Men Carrying a Bomb Detained in South Carolina." Today, he writes:
The FBI, meanwhile, seems to be throwing cold water on the whole incident -- sometimes they do that because it really is a false alarm, but they have also been known, much like the mainstream media, to understate things when Muslims are involved, so we'll just have to see.
And later:
An FBI spokesman is also reported to have said there are no "links to terrorism." As the possession of a bomb would actually be an incident of terrorism, not merely a link to it, I have to think this means there is -- at least as yet -- no indication that the men being detained have ties to known foreign terrorist organizations. As the intelligence community's recently released NIE related, however, the mass availability of jihadist ideology (via the Internet in particular) is catalyzing jihadism even in the absence of formal connections to a group like al Qaeda. Thus, the lack of links to known terrorist groups would not be very comforting. I'd also observe that it's been less than two days since these guys were arrested (on a late Saturday night no less), so there has hardly been time yet to do a thorough investigation of their backgrounds and associations.
Rush to judgment, anyone? Now, I have no clue what these two guys were doing, but neither does Andy McCarthy. However, I admit my obvious ignorance. McCarthy covers it up with his suspicion of Muslims.
--Steven White
