Update October 24th:   Catch up on the trial at Jihad Watch here.

The trial of the Ft. Dix terrorist plotters begins today in New Jersey. (Hat tip:  Blulitespecial)  The Muslim men, one of whom was a refugee who was housed at Ft. Dix following Bill Clinton’s Bosnian War, are charged with planning to bomb soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

CAMDEN, N.J. — A jury will hear opening arguments Monday in the trial of five men accused of plotting to kill soldiers on Fort Dix, a case the government has presented as one of the most frightening examples of homegrown terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The five defendants _ all foreign-born Muslim men in their 20s who have spent much of their lives in the southern New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia _ were arrested in May 2007 and accused of plotting to sneak onto Fort Dix to attack soldiers. The Army base primarily trains reservists for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

My son deployed from Ft. Dix, near where I grew up, on his way to Iraq as did my father on his way to World War II.   So I have some affinity for this sprawling Army base in the heart of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

Nearly three decades ago there was another plot to attack soldiers at Ft. Dix and only the death of three terrorists while building their bombs saved the soldiers’ lives.   That botched bombing attempt, if you think about it, had actually gone further then the one these terrorists on trial today were planning, yet the leaders of the Weather Underground are walking around free as birds and hanging around the neighborhood with a possible future President of the United States.  

Also in 1970, three members of Ayers’s group were killed when a nail bomb – intended for a non-commissioned officers’ dance at Fort Dix – exploded prematurely at a townhouse in Greenwich Village. Ayers’s then-girlfriend and a former roommate of Ayers were among those killed.

i. Referring to the Fort Dix plot and the bombings, Life magazine noted: “A bomb set off in a public place is a message of hate addressed to whom it may concern.”

ii. In the words of one WUO member: “What we wanted to do here [with the Fort Dix attack] was deliver the most horrific hit that the United States government had ever suffered on its territory. . . . We really wanted to give the United States and the rest of the world the sense that this country was going to be completely unlivable if the United States continued in Vietnam, and that was the goal of this group.”

So what difference is there between Obama’s friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden, or the terrorists on trial today in New Jersey?