Weapons cache seized in Alabama

[ck4829]

Now, before I go any further, I've got a question for you.

Who do you think the cache belonged to:

Islamic Terrorists

OR...

A Far Right Group?

If you said the former, you are dead wrong.

"Residents of this small town in the piney woods of DeKalb County knew Jeff Osborne as a wooly-bearded Vietnam veteran who dressed in a dirty Confederate army replica uniform and carried an old Army-issue 9 mm pistol in a shoulder holster. He scraped out a living selling surplus military gear from a used camper shell he purchased for $400 and occupied in a squatters' camp. Though he occasionally muttered about the looming collapse of the American economy, terrorist attacks and Mexicans taking over the country, for the most part Osborne seemed like a harmless local eccentric.

Then, in the pre-dawn hours of April 26, federal and state law enforcement officers raided his camper shell along with several other residences in the Collinsville area. They rooted out 130 homemade hand grenades, an improvised grenade launcher, a Sten Mark submachine gun, a silencer, 2,500 rounds of ammunition and nearly 100 spindly marijuana plants. Five men were arrested on illegal weapons and explosives charges, including the man known to his neighbors as Jeff Osborne. Federal agents said his real name was Raymond Dillard.

Dillard, 46, was a fugitive from justice. He failed to report to his probation officer after doing jail time for burglary in Mobile, Ala., in the mid-1990s. He is also a petty liar. Although Dillard did serve in the U.S. Marine Reserve for two years in the early 1980s, he's too young to have fought in Vietnam, as he told several of his neighbors.

But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) didn't come to Collinsville to bust Dillard for skipping out on his probation or spinning fairy tales about his military service. According to the feds, Dillard was the founder and self-appointed commander of the Alabama Free Militia, a heavily armed band of paranoid extremists with a taste for doomsday fantasies, homemade explosives and illegal firearms."

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=821

[WGS]

1. Bummer

:wtf:

[Vanje]

2. IOn edit, ;;;DOH!

If Osborne/Dillard is really 46 years old, Isnt he too young to be a Viet Nam vet?

I'm 52, and my classmates were the last draftees to go to Viet Nam.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I'd have learned had I read the whole thing before posting.

[krispos42]

3. Two of them were recent Iraq veterans

Not Gulf War, our current Occupation of Iraq.

<snip>

Fellow squatter and militia member James McElroy, a 20-year-old Iraq War veteran, lived in a makeshift tent nearby. Dillard assigned McElroy the rank of "private."

<snip>

...and "Private" Randall Garrett Cole, 22. Like McElroy, Cole recently returned from serving in the Iraq War.

<more>

Looks like actual-factual machine guns, too. No hyperbole or confusion.

Homemade explosives in large quantities.

And a silencer.

All federal felonies. Oopsie!

:nopity:

<on edit: bad HTML>

[TahitiNut]

4. Another right-wing lunatic claiming to be a "Vietnam Vet"

This is the kind of goddamned bullshit that folks collect to portray veterans as some kind of untouchable caste. Despicable.

Too bad they couldn't liberate the marijuana plants and give them to good homes where they'd be cared for.

[baldguy]

5. These is good 'ol white boys. No terra-ists here.

[jody]

6. As a convicted felon, Dillard lost his civil rights including the right to keep and bear arms.

He should be convicted in federal court and serve a long sentence.