The Conspiracy/Setup Smear

I get to see Ground Zero every workday, from both riding the PATH and having a bird's eye view of the former Deutsche Bank building and Ground Zero out my office window (and folks wonder why I'm constantly reporting on the Rebuilding of Ground Zero in my multipart series).

That's the hard reality - the missing towers, interminably slow rebuilding, and conspiracy nutters dishonoring the memories of all those who were murdered not only on 9/11, but the six people murdered by the terrorists in February 1993 and the more than 1,000 injured in those attacks.

And yet, there are people who are trying to claim that the four men in the synagogue bomb plot and the Stewart Airport missile attack plot are just dupes who were conned into going along - that this is part of some ginned up government operation to show that they're cracking down on terrorists and improving security.

That was the headline on today's NY Metro.

Are ‘Bronx bombers’ FBI’s hapless dupes?
Critics charge gov’t with setting up witless men for slam dunk cases

The media is quick to get quotes from civil liberties groups and other supporters who think that these men were setup, but more often than not, the evidence has shown itself to be overwhelming in these kinds of cases. The evidence shows that these men were predisposed to jihad, and were more than willing to make statements calling for jihad and wished that the WTC was present so as to carry out an attack to blow them up. So, let's just say that I am not predisposed to smearing law enforcement doing the unenviable job of protecting the nation from another terrorist attack.

The FBI and NYPD stopped this particular attack by managing to infiltrate the terror cell, and for this they get smeared and claims of a setup become the norm. Yet, had the terror cell succeeded in carrying out the attacks, these are the same people who would have demanded heads roll because of the failure of law enforcement to stop the attack.