Official: 7 arrested in Sears Tower plot

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

As part of the raids tied to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door. One neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a "military boot camp."

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.

[...]

Security at the 110-floor Sears Tower, a Chicago landmark, was ramped up after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the 103rd-floor skydeck was closed for about a month and a half.

A spokesman for Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Illinois officials had been in contact with the FBI about the arrests. He would not comment further, referring additional questions to the FBI.

The FBI's headquarters in Miami sits near a residential neighborhood just east of Interstate 95.

clickhereforallofit

Those last three lines are how I think we should be defensively fighting terrorism. Bombing countries is offensive and does virtually nothing to solve the problem, if not actually make it worse, which is something I've asserted many times before.

So there are still Muslim fanatics living in the States. Bombing Afghanistan didn't drive terrorists away from our soil, and the civilian deaths over there and in Iraq are tailor made to ignite even more hatred of us with even more people who originally could have been ushered on our side had we left them alone. My point: the overseas "War on Terrorism" doesn't make us safe from terrorist attacks. I've lost count of how many times I've written about this!