[white rice]

What kind of terror is it working on Mr.CAPS person?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

...The case began to unfold in January 2002, when the package was mistakenly delivered to Staten Island. Investigators traced it to a mailing and business center near Tyler, then to Krar and Bruey, who lived together in Noonday.

With Bruey's permission, they searched a storage facility the couple had rented. The firepower inside shocked law enforcement officers.

Investigators found nearly 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs and briefcases that could be detonated by remote control.

Most distressing, they said, was the discovery of 800 grams of almost pure sodium cyanide — material that can only be acquired legally for specific agricultural or military projects.

The sodium cyanide was found inside an ammunition canister, next to hydrochloric, nitric and acetic acids and formulas for making bombs. If acid were mixed with the sodium cyanide, an analysis showed, it would create a bomb powerful enough to kill everyone inside a 30,000-square-foot facility, investigators said.

Also discovered were anti-Semitic, antiblack and antigovernment books and pamphlets, according to the FBI's affidavit.

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Critics of the Bush administration say federal officials and the mainstream media are suffering from tunnel vision — that they are so focused on international threats that they have failed to give sufficient attention to threats at home.

At most, the critics say, increased attention to this case could have brought more answers. At the least, they say, if the defendants in this case had been people with foreign backgrounds or Muslims, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft himself would have announced the arrests and the guilty pleas.

Instead, details of the case were revealed in a half-page press release sent to local media. Officials say the case was at one point included in President Bush's daily security briefings, but it remains virtually unknown outside East Texas — even though, critics point out, it represents an instance in which federal authorities discovered a weapon of mass destruction.

Much of the criticism has come on Internet Web logs, known as "blogs." People who operate the websites, or "bloggers," have seized on the Krar case and what they perceive as the inattention it received from the Bush administration and major media.

The fault, critics say, lies not with law enforcement officers, whom they believe prevented a deadly plot from developing. Instead, they say, the fault lies with an administration that adheres too closely to a script.

"If anyone wanted evidence that the 'war on terror' is primarily a political marketing campaign — in which war itself is mostly a device for garnering support — they need look no further than the startling non-response to domestic terrorism by the Bush Administration," one blog, called Orcinus, said recently. The blog, which uses a killer whale as its mascot and targets the nexus of politics, culture and journalism, is written and compiled by David Neiwert, a Seattle resident and former journalist.

Robert Jensen, an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas in Austin and director of the College of Communication's honors program, agrees with the criticism. He says that the Bush administration, to promote its efforts overseas, "needs a public that is afraid and sees these wars as justified."

"The primary justification is a fear of people 'out there' who want to come here and get us," he said. "Arrests of foreigners are very effective arrests to publicize. It has a political function. Domestic terrorism may be, in some ways, more of a threat. But there is no reason to publicize it. It doesn't have any political benefit."