Let me just take a moment to stroke my own ego and point out that I’m not the only one calling bullshit on Judicial Watch’s report about terrorists planning to attack from Mexico. Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, called bullshit as well:
The United States’ senior counterterrorism official said on Wednesday that there is “no credible information” that the militants of the Islamic State, who have reigned terror on Iraq and Syria, are planning to attack the U.S. homeland. Although the group could pose a threat to the United States if left unchecked, any plot it tried launching today would be “limited in scope” and “nothing like a 9/11-scale attack.”
[…]
But Olsen, whose organization was set up after 9/11 to assess terrorism intelligence and “connect the dots” about potential attacks, painted a more measured picture of the fundamentalist group. “ISIL is not al Qaeda pre-9/11,” Olsen told a Brookings Institution audience on Wednesday, Sept. 3. Osama bin Laden’s network had covert cells in European countries and Southeast Asia, as well as a home base in Afghanistan. The Islamic State is “not there yet,” Olsen said. There is “no indication at this point of a cell of foreign fighters operating in the United States.”
If you look up Judicial Watch, the organization cited by the fear mongering article on Allen West’s site, you’ll notice that it’s a neoconservative watchdog group. More often than not neoconservative watchdog groups peddle fear whenever neoliberals are in power in an attempt to scare Americans into believing that the military isn’t strong enough, the police aren’t well armed enough, and the border isn’t enough of a fortress.
The fact that the news of terrorists supposedly planning to team up with drug cartels to invade the United States came from Judicial Watch should have been the first red flag. Red flag two should have been the claim that Mexican drug cartels were working with the Islamic State (IS). Mexican drug cartels don’t want somebody like the IS in power because it would likely punishes drug producers and consumers far more harshly than the current regime. Neoconservatives and neoliberals spend a lot of time trying to make it appear as though Mexican drug cartels want to kill all Americans but the fact is Americans are those cartels’ biggest customers. This becomes apparent when you look at most of the violence committed by drug cartels and see that it’s mostly aimed at threats to its business. In other words drug cartels are just like states in that they use violence to hinder competition.
As a general rule if I see an article that paints a very scary picture I label it bullshit unless some concrete evidence proving the article truthful is available. Fear is the favorite tool of tyrants. When somebody is telling you to be scared then they are most likely trying to get you to kowtow to them.