Rep. Myrick: Hezbollah threatening southwestern U.S.

You think Israel is the only country facing Hezbollah terror? Think again; according to Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), the group may be active along the Southwestern U.S. border – maybe she thinks they’re infiltrating alongside beheading-crazed illegal aliens and Mexicans bent on the “reconquista.”

According to the Charlotte Observer, the lawmaker has “ renewed her call for Homeland Security officials to establish a task force on whether Hezbollah is operating on the U.S.-Mexico border.”

What a great combination for the angry right: illegal aliens and Hezbollah terrorists. The only thing better: if some of them were gay and bent on officially sanctioned marriage.

The problem is, pretty much nobody else has gotten the memo about Middle Eastern terrorists with their eyes on Texas and Arizona.

Sure, it’s a possibility, one terrorism expert told me – it’s a possibility Hezbollah operatives could come in through Canada, too, or on flights from Europe, or maybe by parachute – but there’s no evidence any of that has happened, or is likely to happen anytime soon.

But that doesn’t mean Myrick hasn’t latched on to a good formula for getting some public attention and probably some campaign bucks from campaign givers from the terrorist-behind-every-bush persuasion, including, no doubt, some in the pro-Israel community.

And it doesn’t mean right-wing news sources aren’t already trumpeting her conclusions and using them as more “evidence” the Obama administration is pro-Muslim and anti-Israel.

This strikes me as an almost textbook example of how what passes for information these days gets disseminated in modern America and becomes part of the political debate, no matter how far fetched.

A Web site publishes it or a public figure says it; commentators comment and elaborate, the story snowballs across the Internet, and pretty soon it becomes part of the conventional wisdom. And, of course, denials from other public figures are just taken as proof of the information’s validity, since those deniers are part of the great conspiracy of silence.

Don’t get me wrong; fighting terrorism and preventing new attacks on America are a matter of vital national interest. But it’s hard to see how the battle will be won if our leaders are guided more by self-serving spin and made-up or exaggerated facts than by accurate information about our adversaries.