Devils In The Details

I've paid little-to-no attention to details of the alleged Iranian terror plot our Fearless Leaders have uncovered, though I gather it involves wicked Iranians wishing to kill a Saudi Arabian diplomat on US soil. (Only a truly wicked country, like Iran, would want to attack an official from a freedom-loving nation like Saudi Arabia, America's chief ally and casus belli in this-here war on terror).

But I let my mind drift out of focus rather than pay attention to the specific details of the plot, for the same reason I drift off when homeless schizophrenics go into detail regarding just how the Illuminati and the Jews use poisonous jet contrails to control the populace: once I recognize a steaming pile of shit, why worry about details like "Just how many undigested corn-kernels of truth might be in here, anyway?"

Or maybe the Iranian terror plot is not bullshit, this time. It could happen; even the boy who cried wolf told the truth once. I was discussing the matter with my friend Thoreau (who blogs at Unqualified Offerings) and he asked a pertinent question: How is it that Khaled El-Masri (who was innocent) gets sent to Bagram after being captured in Europe, but Iranian spies trying to hire Mexican drug cartel assassination squads are sent to court?

I suspect El-Masri's innocence is exactly why he didn't go to court. That would make the US look pretty stupid, trying to convict a guy who's entirely innocent. Remember: where the "war on terror" is concerned, finding and stopping actual terrorists is not the government's primary concern; if it were, the FBI would not consider "goading unstable teenagers into attempting half-ass attacks so they can be arrested" a better use of resources than "finding people willing and able to commit terrorist attacks by themselves." If stopping terror (rather than inflicting it on innocent people) were the government's chief motivator, the TSA would pull a few people off molestation duty to check the contents of airplane cargo holds instead.

Seriously: where our Fearless Leaders are concerned, what the hell difference does it make if the Iranians are guilty or not? It's actually better and more convenient if they are innocent, because shipping them to foreign torture chambers and inventing stories about what they did is a hell of a lot easier than actually finding and producing evidence sufficient for a conviction in a court of law.