Low-Tech Sophisticates

by digby

This article by Walter Pincus in the Wapo indicates that the white house is coordinating with the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee by providing them with selective, unclassified talking points for them to use. This is not surprising, of course, since they have treated the NSA spying as a political campaign and the Eunuch Caucus members on the committee have dutifully followed in lock-step.

The talking points are the usual drivel, but I especially like this one:

“Current law is not agile enough to handle the threat posed by sophisticated international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda”

Wow. Those terrorists sure are frightening. Here’s what we learned just this week in the Washington Post about the “sophisticated” methods of al Qaeda:

Faced with the most sophisticated technology in the world, bin Laden has gone decidedly low-tech. His 23 video or audiotapes in the last five years are thought to have been hand-carried to news outlets or nearby mail drops by a series of couriers who know nothing about the contents of their deliveries or the real identity of the sender, a simple method used by spies and drug traffickers for centuries.

“They are really good at operational security,” said Ben Venzke, chief executive officer of IntelCenter, a private company that analyzes terrorist information and has obtained, analyzed and published all bin Laden’s communiques. “They are very good at having enough cut-outs” to move videos into circulation without detection. “It’s some of the simplest things to do.”

It seems obvious to me that what they really want to do is spy on law abiding American muslims and political opponents and that is wrong on both practical and moral grounds. Radicalizing the first group is the Republicans’ most dangerous and stupid desire, but they seem intent upon doing it. It almost seems as if they are jealous of the Europeans who actually have a home grown threat while we don’t.

Profiling, warrantless spying, conflating their religion with fascism — all this seems designed to make American muslims feel as if they are being blamed for Islamic terrorism. If they persist in doing this kind of thing they will likely succeed in turning some of those Americans into extremists too. But then, Republicans are desperate to make this threat greater than it already is in order to justify their overblown hysteria; if they have to actually create homegrown terrorists themselves, they will.

As for spying on political opponents, well — that’s just a Republican traditional value. And we know how they love traditional values.

Update: For another example of not-so-latent wingnut muslim bigotry, read this. (via)

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