I know its dopey but I have this childlike trust that professional anti-terror cops are out there protecting us. You know, just like Jack Bauer tracking down sleeper cells with Chloe O'Brien and her magic lap top back in headquarters telling him about the layout of the plumbing system in the terrorist's apartment building so that Jack can sneak in through the toilet and waste the bastards with only seconds to spare.
Then last week, just after this season's 2 hour finale of 24, reality had to rear its depressing head. Instead of Jack. I was stuck watching an army of state, local and federal cops, huddling together to make sure they were on camera, at a press conference called to announce the bust of some broken down ex-con jihad wannabes in Newburgh NY who thought they were about to blow up a jewish center in Riverdale.
Apparently, an informer ensnared these guys, who couldn't have found the local K Mart without help much less Riverdale, and handed them the keys to a ready made, make believe, terror plot concocted by FBI agents and funded by taxpayers. Then like shooting fish in a barrel the cops parked outside the Jewish Center target, chosen by the Feds, and waited for the entrapped geniuses to arrive with their trunkful of government issued fake explosives.
I don't know about you but I don't feel any safer. Of course, I'm glad about the arrest of guys who thought they were about to murder people. But what I want to hear is some monotone gum shoe in a cheap suit describe how boring old fashioned police work brought down a real sleeper cell. It doesnt do it for me to hear a bunch of well dressed big shots bragging about how they used limited taxpayer anti terror funds to trap some anti semitic shit heads with a "paint by numbers" plot.
Maybe this deters would be terrorists on the fringes. But I'm worried that when real al quaeda terrorists, working in real sleeper cells on real plots that take years to hatch, see this story on the 6 o-clock news they just laugh and go deeper underground - that's what scares me.
Jack? Chloe? Renee? Help me! I'm not sure I can hold out until the fall.
