Doesn’t this just sound like a movie? It’s War of the Worlds! Let’s run for our lives, get out of Manhattan into the Jersey countryside. Convert to Scientology!

In this case, it’s some resident aliens from Albania and the former Yugoslavia. They bought AK-47s, practiced using them up in the Poconos, and were going to go into Fort Dix, guns ablazing, to terrorize our troops! Good job that our crack FBI agents caught these guys, five of whom were arrested just outside of Philadelphia.

Investigators said the men planned to use AK-47s to storm Fort Dix and open fire on soldiers and civilians stationed at the New Jersey base, noting that other military locations were scouted by the terrorist cell.

Three of the unnamed suspects are brothers who are all believed to be Islamic radicals, according to sources. Some of the six arrested men were also born in Albania and the former Yugoslavia, but they have spent a significant amount of time in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, according to authorities.

All six men were expected to face terror conspiracy charges Tuesday in federal court in Camden, N.J.

OK, I’m reasonably cynical. Have you noticed? I’m betting that there’s some level of entrapment going on here, and these guys are so stupid they couldn’t have gotten their act together to do any kind of terror here. As they note in another source, the FBI had to pose as an arms dealer in order to get these guys supplied with their AK47s. This indicates to me the terror guys were a bit short on the brains, money or eligiblity departments in order to get the weapons themselves. So what elese were they short on?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for rounding up folks who want to do us harm. But some of these cases seem to start with a few guys grumbling around while hanging out, then the plot escalates when an FBI informant comes along. No need to hype that, though trying for conspiracy isn’t something I’d argue with. I found this story very early in the process, with only a couple google hits out there for the search terms “terrorist” and “Fort Dix,” and I’m betting it gets hyped pretty high. The Bush PR machine will make that happen, or maybe just the meida will feed (I’ll be looking for this to hit network and all-news channels by noon, and to make it on the FauxNews crawl by a bit after that), and then we’ll risk forgetting all about the hijinks in the Dept. of Justice, the soldiers being killed in the Bush surge (acceleration) of the war, etc.

Yeah, here we go again.

Update 9:50 amTwo hours and ten minutes after posting this story the Gogle news search for the story has grown from two hits to over 200. Yeah, this story is exploding in a very short time period. According to the Washington Post, there will be a press conference by the FBI in Philadelphia later today. Yeah, this story will explode again.

Update 11:20 amAnother hour and a half has gone by, and the number of hits on google for the same search terms have reduced to 13. That was searching for “terrorist” and “Fort Dix.” The reason for the reduction of the hits? There’s been a shift in nomenclature, folks! The guys are no longer “terrorists,” but “Islamic militants.” The hits concerning the incident have actually climbed beyond 350.

So why change the language here? Because they didn’t actually do more than talk? Is the media actually downplaying the story to diminish the scare factor? Then again, “Islamic militants” might be merely more descriptive. Since when has the media avoided scare tactics, though. Hmmm.