Obama Fails to Stop Bush Era Targeting of Veterans

On top of our recent discussion about how the Fauxrage inspiring DHS report on right wing extremist groups was actually ordered during the Bush administration, there is now news the the FBI is “targeting” veterans for similar reasons. While this will doubtless be blamed on the current, veteran hating president as well, these investigations also began during the prior administration.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier this year launched a nationwide operation targeting white supremacists and “militia/sovereign-citizen extremist groups,” including a focus on veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to memos sent from bureau headquarters to field offices.

The initiative, dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle, was outlined in February, two months before a memo giving a similar warning was issued on April 7 by the Department of Homeland Security.

The documents outlining Operation Vigilant Eagle cite a surge in activity by such groups. The memos say the FBI’s focus on veterans began as far back as December, during the final weeks of the Bush administration, when the bureau’s domestic counterterrorism division formed a special joint working group with the Defense Department.

While we wait for the inevitable howls of protest over how the evil Obama administration failed to stop these unpatriotic efforts by the evil Bush administration, the report includes something we should all have been keeping in mind since the beginning of this non-story.

A Feb. 23 draft memo from FBI domestic counterterrorism leaders, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, cited an “increase in recruitment, threatening communications and weapons procurement by white supremacy extremist and militia/sovereign-citizen extremist groups.”

The aim of the FBI’s effort with the Defense Department, which was rolled into the Vigilant Eagle program, is to “share information regarding Iraqi and Afghanistan war veterans whose involvement in white supremacy and/or militia sovereign citizen extremist groups poses a domestic terrorism threat,” according to the Feb. 23 FBI memo.

When our Fauxraged friends come down off their hind legs and take time to think this through, perhaps we can all come to understand what should have been clear from the beginning. The government is not targeting all of our veterans. They are responding proactively to threats which have surfaced in the past, and nobody should be surprised if we see some upticks in the current climate. The fact that extremist groups would find veterans desirable recruitment targets should come as no surprise to anyone.

And while we’re all blustering about the veterans – again, including your’s truly – let’s try to remember one thing. Every year in the United States of America, we see a handful of people who turn out to be mass murderers, rapists, child molesters or thieves. This does not somehow define all Americans as immoral, criminal people. We have, literally, tens of millions of veterans and active duty service people in our country. Out of a pool that large, you’re going to occasionaly run into a few here and there who don’t conform to our ideals.

What truly amazes me is that many of these same people who are complaining the loudest today had absolutely no problem with government targeting mosques and other organizations where Muslims gather to seek out terrorists. It wasn’t a statement that every Muslim in America was a terrorist, but apparently they were prime areas for recruitment.

But don’t let any of that bother you today! Even if all of this started under the Bush administration, let slip the dogs and open up with both barrels on the Obama administration for hating veterans!

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