Was it because we didn’t buy enough of their crappy cars, I wonder?
So much for “fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.”
I dare say that six guys wouldn’t last five minutes if they started shooting up a military base. Sounds like a half baked plan that doesn’t merit much attention.
I haven’t seen any background yet, just lots of unanswered questions. Did these guys come to the U.S. with the intent of waging war on a U.S. military base? Were they recruited? Was there some alleged point to their attack?
CNN seems to have the most comprehensive info at this time.
It might have cost 'em one or two guys shooting their way past the lightly armed gate guards. Once inside, they could have killed a lot of guys before MPs responded and could take them down. Soldiers don’t normally walk around an Army base heavily armed – most of the arms are locked away unless there is a specific reason to have them out (weapons training or deployment, usually.) The big difference might have been that someone might have intuitively counter-attack with bare hands, but only if he or she was trained to react that way.
Two likely scenarios: they’re embittered Serbs seeking revenge for our role in the humanitarian U.N. intervention halting the Serb-perpetrated aggression against Croats and, especially, Bosnian Muslims; or they’re embittered Muslims from Bosnia, Albania, etc. whose motivation is primarily religious (USA as the Great Satan and enemy of Islam, etc.).
And the idea that you can simulate paramilitary training by playing paintball in the Poconos is a joke. Everyone in 'Jersey knows that if you really want to be a bad mofo, you need to teach in a public school/clerk in a liquor store/pump gas/deliver mail in Camden, New Brunswick, Newark, Elizabeth, or Jersey City. 
Shhhhhhhhhh.
By the way, no MPs (or very few). Most military bases are patrolled by the DOD police force. Civilian federal police officers, not MPs. Fort Dix is no exception.
Hmmm. I was in the military waaaaaay back in the 1970s, before everything was outsourced. Although, I’ve been to two Navy bases to visit my son recently, and they all had Navy personnel on the gates. Aaron was even trained and tasked for temporary duty on 30-day rotations at San Diego as a patrol officer and gate guard. But that was on Coronado Island, which is much smaller than the San Diego Naval Base across the bay. Ah, well, a trifle. It actually does make sense to NOT use combat-trained MPs for peace-keeping and crime investigation on a military base. Consistency and continuity of personnel would be a big plus, I’d think.
Would it really be that easy to get through a gate at Ft Dix? Seems like after 9/11 it would’ve occured to someone that some sort of attack on a US military base was possible and they would’ve upped the number/armaments of the guards and thrown up some barricades and the like. I mean, it doesn’t seem like their would be a shortage of people at such a base trained to guard things.
Of course I guess they could just jump a fence, but even then it seems like someone at the DOD would have invested in some perimeter guards/cameras/etc at some point in the last few years.
There is a driveway of perhaps 100 yards leading up to the gate. This driveway has a series of concrete barriers laid out along its length forcing a driver to zigzag (preventing anyone from getting up to ramming speed).
Once past that, you come to a pretty standard checkpoint – two soldiers with handguns checking IDs before raising a gate to let you in (I assume they may be some heavier arms in the gate booth).
I often see soldiers in full field gear carring M16s walking along the highways that form the base’s borders. I’ve always wondered if they were actively guarding the base or of they were on some sort of manuvers.
Yeah. For the sake of context to people who aren’t local, the Poconos are a popular tourist and vacation spot.
These mugs wouldda shot themselves inna foot, first.
All of em.
While it’s possible that they may have been able to shoot their way in and do some damage before the MPs could respond, the plot is still ludicrous.
I’ve long maintained that if terrorists were really serious about striking within the US we’d see people emulating Cho or Muhammad and Malvo much more often than we do. It’s not like they could kill everybody, but they’d be able to rack up quite a bodycount before local PD could muster the forces to bring them down.
But not a military base. It’s smaller, it’s contained, the population is universally well-trained, it’s designed with attacks in mind, and you know they have heavy weaponry to call on.
Maybe just the smart terrorists are in Iraq.
I’m glad most people feel like you. I have other ideas and reasons for thinking that way which I will not go into.
Before 9/11 Ft Dix was an open post. Anyone could drive on without showing ID. In fact a major road (as major as they get in the pine barrens) went right through it. After 9/11 they changed all that. There was extensive construction at all the gates and now all of them are manned and controlled. For a while a Cav unit from the Guard was activated to be security until they were able to build up the size of the DOD police force on post. Now I have only seen DOD at the gate for a while.
From what I have been hearing on the radio most people don’t understand what Ft Dix is. It used to be a basic training post. It was packed with troops then. In the late 80s it was mostly closed. Instead of getting rid of it all together they left it in place in a much smaller capacity. It was used as reserve/NG training post and as a mobilization center for future emergencies (makes sense due to its location in the northeast and being next to MacGuire AFB). It was a ghost town most of the time. There are very few troops stationed there on a permenant basis. Since 9/11 it has been quite busy because reserve and national guard troops being sent overseas are being mobilized out of there (and demobilized). It is much busier now then it has been recently but it is still not as crowded as it was in the 80s. In fact a large chunk of it is not even military. A large federal prison was built on post after the draw down. There still isn’t a large group of permenant residents.
Apparently, one of the guys was a pizza guy who frequently made deliveries to the base.
Also, three of them went to my high school, and I was there for at least a year at the same time as all of them. Didn’t know them, but the name sounds familiar. A friend of mine lived down the street from them.
It’s an idiotic plan and I hardly think it constitutes a “terroristic plot”, more an “idiotic, poorly-planned plot with murderous intentions”. I’m so glad my hometown’s new claim to fame is not only the home of violent folk, but really stupid violent folk.
So true! (Though one of the articles I read about it said that they were playing paintball in the woods behind their house. In Cherry Hill.) It’s kind of a rite-of-passage in South Jersey: You get your drivers license, you borrow mom’s car, and then one day, oh crap I’m lost in Camden I’m too young to die!