The Miami Seven

In the middle of onslaughts by the Left against various aspects of the “War on Terror”, such as revelations about the tracking of Americans overseas banking transactions as reported by The New York Times, and the just ultimately successful challenges to the legitimacy of Guantanamo Bay and, more to the point, the Bush Administrations prosecutions of terror suspects (The Supreme Court just announced by a vote of 5-3 that the Bush Administration has overstepped it’s legal bounds and advised it to follow Geneva Conventions guidelines) comes yet another assault on the legitimacy of a recent terror arrest involving seven suspects in the Miami area.

These suspects are accussed of seeking to initiate an affiliation with Al-Queda for the purpose of carrying through a plan to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, as well as FBI headquarters in Miami. The left is screaming “entrapment”. They might have a small point, though on the other hand, this has been an ongoing tactic of Federal prosecutors in it’s on-going war against organzed crime. Carlos Marcello, the former head of the oldest Mafia family in the United States, from New Orleans, was brought down in this fashion as long ago as the late seventies or early nineteen eighties, to the objections of no one outside his own legal defense paramaters.

Politicans as well have fallen prey to this brand of “entrapment”, such as the not so awful distant Boptrot scandals that nearly decimated the populaton of the Kentucky Legislature. This as well raised no serious eyebrows. Not even the near entrapment of Al Sharpton, videotaped attemtping to arrange for the purchase of cocaine, caused much of a stir when the information was released (he explained that he was conducting his own “undercover operation” into the drug trafficking in his area.).

Some of the Bush Administration opponents are crying foul and even characterizing the seven suspects as mentally challenged, and as mere “kids”. Actually, their ages range from 22 to 32, and their leader is a self-described self-employed father of four children of his own.

Some have pointed out that, as frequenters of a “Temple”, they are not Muslims, as Muslims frequent mosques, not temples. But actually, and incidentally, these seven practiced a Moorish form of Islam, called “Mohammedanism”, they do refer to their house of worship as a “Temple” (though the true Temple officials of their area have evidently disavowed their actions), and they claim as their holy scriptures and basis for their beliefs the Qu’ran.

Not that that matters. They haven’t been arrested on the grounds that they are Muslims-or Mohammedans. They were arrested on the grounds that they willingly plotted to blow up the Sears Tower, and sought the weapons and finances in order to accomplish this goal, a goal which their leader seems to have proposed to the undercover agent, who claimed to have been an Al-Queda operative.

As for the charge of “entrapment”, even that isn’t necessarilly factual. The investigation of this group of seven was initiated after some area residents complained that they were intimidated by the group, who maintained a private headquarters in a warehouse, where they conducted exercises of some sort. The investigators were really just following through on a complaint, and what seems to be neighborhood tips.

Even at this, it must be stated that these seven men are suspects, they have only been accussed, not yet convicted, and should be given, if only technically, a presumption of innocence. There is always the possibility that the investigators involved did step outside the parameters of their duties. But that will be, after all, for a court to decide.