Here. We were going to go to the event, but cancelled at the last minute. Good job by the FBI and all the agencies involved to catch this little asshole.
A few years back, one night at work, I overheard a couple of guys talking animatedly about the various places around town that terrorists might hit. I rolled my eyes and chuckled, and said to another coworker “gimme a break - there are so many other places in the nation that are much bigger targets. The terrorists aren’t coming to Portland.”
His response… “the only reason I could see it would be to show that an attack can happen anywhere.”
With the mysterious pipe bombs that have been detonated in parks in the past, it gives one pause.
Seems to me if someone really wanted to strike terror big time, rather than hitting the big, splashy targets, they should hit some little town - like Mayberry or the home of the Cleaver family - some all-American mom and apple pie town. Except places like that, it’d probably be tricky because everyone knows everyone’s business - not anonymous like a big city. But it sure would get a lot of people pissed off, striking at the heart like that.
I had to take anti-terrorism training some years back and I seem to remember being told that being tortured and maimed was more of a terror tactic than murder, because the victims are alive to tell the tale, a walking (limping?) talking advertisement of the whacko cause. There seemed to be logic in that.
Well, don’t get me wrong on this, I am glad that the Feds are trying to smoke these guys out. But in this particular case the FBI was stringing this misguided fool along for a ride. They built the phony bomb for him and had contact with him for a long time. They were his only bomb supplier all along. Of course, if they hadn’t got involved he may have found someone else to build him a real bomb.
But it isn’t like the FBI foiled a major bomb plot that was about to kill mass people. It was another fanatic young muslim with an idea to kill people. And that is enough to remove him from society.
This incident makes me worry more about the terrorists with real plans, and real bombs, because if they are out there, the FBI isn’t catching them.
How do you know? Do you really think the FBI would report every foiled attempt, thereby letting the bad guys know how they foiled the others? I’d like to think professional law enforcement personnel are smarter than that…
I’m afraid your logic is escaping me. This guy was certainly a serious threat, and they gave him every opportunity to say “Just kidding!” and back out. By running a sting on this guy, they most certainly did short-circuit a bomb plot to kill a lot of people. The FBI just happened to get to him first. Neither you nor I have any idea what the FBI and other agencies are tracking or monitoring.
The New York Times link on the OP is a bit more sensationalized than the local news take. It is all over the national and international news links now, that our Homeland Security has kept us safe from a near miss once again. My personal feeling is somewhere between that and ‘stupid teenager asks FBI to build him a bomb’.
I would have the same ambivalence except for the undeniable fact that he drove the van to the event and attempted to detonate what he thought were real explosives. The moves it completely out of the realm of ‘stupid teenager’ and into ‘terrorist’ territory. This was not an angst ridden teen who was despairing about his acne and upset about being teh gay: it’s a guy who deliberately set out to murder and maim hundreds of innocents.
Recipe for instilling fear in the people:
Take one stupid angry teenager.
Intercept his email.
Egg him on.
Puff up his ego.
Plan an attack for him.
Arrest him.
Declare that you’ve saved America from another terrorist attack.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
Fair enough. I agree, I just get a feeling of impending doom whenever the people who are caught seem to be soo stupid. Where are the real bad guys?
And I hope that the only bad guys out there in our neighborhood are as foolish as this guy.
My last post was in response to Chefguy.
Yup. This American Life, IIRC, did a report on something similar a while back. Get a disaffected angry young man who doesn’t know a thing about building bombs. Fire him up with sympathizers and a fake terrorist cell. Give him a fake bomb. Voila, a major terrorist plot has been foiled, hooray!
Except that he wasn’t a major terrorist and never had a real bomb, and may never have had one. Some people are content to make angry statements about what they’d do ‘if only’ - but they never have people saying, “Awesome idea, you’re so right!” and eventually giving them the materials to carry out what had been muttered angry ramblings.
Just a little stage-managed *“What part of ‘we’re at war’ don’t you undestand?” *to quell our holiday grumblings about TSA pat-downs.
That’s what I was wondering?
Did he decide to do this and, an FBI agent took notice and offered to help him?
Did an FBI agent approach him and ask him if he’d be interested in setting off a bomb in Portland, oh, and BTW, I can get you all the stuff to do it?
Or, and this is what I suspect, Does the FBI have some of it’s own agents working inside the terrorist groups? “Hey, I heard you say you wanted to blow up Portland, here, call this number, he’ll get you all set up” "Hey, Jeff, I just gave this kid Mohamed your number, he’s gonna call you about setting him up with some cell phone controlled explosives, can you take it from here? Good, when you’re ready to bust him let me know so I can disappear).
I guess what it comes down to, is, if the FBI didn’t catch this guy would he have been a real threat? Don’t get me wrong, the fact that he went this far tells me he’s not someone I want around me, but without the FBI, would he have managed to pull this off? Could he have acquired the parts? Could he have assembled the explosives? Etc???
One could make an argument that this is just the FBI showing off, but I don’t see a problem with that. It’s probably a good thing if people and groups like this are constantly worried that their connections/suppliers/builders might be feds. On a smaller scale, shoplifters might not steal from a certain store if they hear about enough of their friends getting caught there by undercover security. OTOH the real terrorists might be sitting at home thinking “WTF? Who’s that? If that’s the type of person they’re looking for, we’re not going to have a problem”
I’m sure you’re right, and that all of this has been nothing but a conspiracy to make us afraid. :rolleyes:
Are you kidding? I feel personally triumphant as an American. This is absolutely the second best thing to the apprehension of Osama bin Laden.
a dog and pony show is still a dog and pony show, even if the dog and pony are sincere.
One question-can we send this worthless POS back to his homeland?
Why am I forced to support efforts to bring such garbage to America?
Don’t we have enough domestic scum, that we have to import such a waste of life from Somalia?
My only hope-he meets a swift end in prison.
This is his homeland: he’s a citizen. How would you go about screening immigrant children as potential criminals?
How are you being forced to support these “efforts” as you call them? What efforts, exactly?
When he does go to prison, it’s likely he’ll be kept in isolation for however long he is there. They don’t put people like him into the general pop.
19 years old and in jail the rest of his life. That is so sad. I do not know what the truth is yet. It generally wanders around a bit but he will pay a terrible price . That I am sure of. He actually never had a bomb. He just thought he did. But it seems he would have used one.