Five Fort Jackson soldiers
We were talking about it last night in emails when CBN released their story about five Fort jackson soldiers who were being investigated for plotting to poison the food of their fellow soldiers. At the time, I thought it was odd that they were hatching such a potentially complex plan with little chance of success. About that time Fox released their story;
The Army is taking the allegations “extremely seriously,” Grey said, but so far, “there is no credible information to support the allegations.”
Now that sounds fishy – they’ve been investigating for more than two months yet there’s no credible evidence? There’s either no evidence and they stop investigating, or there’s enough evidence to justify two months of investigation.
Crush at Blackfive links to the Palmetto News;
Army officials, however, denied the allegations and said none of the men were Muslim
Crush points out that the soldiers were all in a language program for Arab speakers;
So 09L’s – who speak Arabic, Dari, Pashtu, Farsi or Kurdish as a first language, who may also be in contact with other Jihadists in Pakistan – aren’t Muslim?
There’s funny shit going on in the Army Department. They tried to hide the fact that Nidal Hasan survived his gun shot wounds at Fort Hood, now this. I’ll grant you that this food poisoning plan was childish and ill-conceived, but a threat is a threat. And the Army seems more concerned about the public finding out there’s a Muslim plot afoot than they are about catching these buffoons and punishing them. If there’s some grand plan, I wish they’d tell us what it is instead of waiting for bloggers to throw up a smoke screen for them – that part seems to rate a fail.
In fact, that’s why I’ve been so slow in writing about this story.
Category: Military issues, Terror War
Maybe a certain General is protecting diversity?
I don’t want to say what’s on my mind, at this time, so I’ll leave it at that.
This is the official line as of now…
The Army has been looking for two months into allegations an attempt was being made to poison soldiers at Fort Jackson through the food supply, but the largest basic training post in South Carolina says no credible information to support the allegations has been found.
Fort Jackson issued this statement late Thursday night: “In December 2009, five Soldiers were investigated for potential verbal threats against fellow Soldiers. While the investigation continues there is currently no credible evidence to substantiate the allegations. At no time was there any danger to the Fort Jackson community.”
A local law enforcement official familiar with the reports who insisted on anonymity said Thursday that there was no attempt made to poison any soldiers, adding that a rumor started when several disgruntled soldiers shot their mouths off late last year. There was never any threat, nothing credible, he insisted.
The investigation was first reported by Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Both media outlets reported that five suspects were detained in December and were part of an Arabic translation program called “09 Lima.” According to an article in the Army Times, “The 09 Lima program puts native speakers of Arabic, Dari, Pashtu, Farsi or Kurdish in uniform to serve alongside troops in combat.”
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said he could not release any specifics of the investigation by the Army’s Criminal Investigative Service to protect its integrity.
“I can say that, according to CID spokespersons, they have not found any credible information to substantiate the allegations,” Garver, who’s based at the Pentagon, said in an e-mail.
He said he is unaware of any arrests made in the investigation.
Fort Jackson puts more than 50,000 men and women through entry-level and advanced training courses every year. Its food service spans an array of some 13 dining halls and about 40,000 hot meals are served on the base daily.
This went out on the Early Bird for those familiar with that and my work email here on Jackson.
The comments at CBN are priceless.
Thanks for the update, Finrod.
OT nailed it. A dozen soldiers dead by enemy food poisoning still wouldn’t be as bad as a loss of diversity in the Army.
But you do have to wonder how one would go about poisoning a base food supply these days. Seems pretty far fetched, unless they were planning on the poetic justice of tainting all the bacon and sausage with something to cause Hepatitis C?
Got to love this line.
Is there another basic training post in the state? Hey promote the home team I always say.
I agree with Jonn though, there is just too much missing from this story to run with it. So many of the stories that surface now about alleged terror plots have to be taken with a big grain of salt.