FBI Nab another nut job wanna be terrorist

The whole damn thing seem to be nothing but expense government theatre aim at the public.

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The whole damn thing seem to be nothing but expense government theatre aim at the public.

the government putting on security theater is not exactly a new show.....

Why are you asking me this? I made very clear that I think the police should have acted sooner, rather than later and you are construing my position as if I call for them to "stand back" for some reason (probably because it's an easier position to argue against).

I think they should have charged him with the weaker charges that being a wannabe terrorist soliciting help to commit murder allowed them. This would have allowed them to prevent further attacks without being so complicit in the logistics of the fake attack.

Was there any realistic chance that this was was going to be a successful terrorist?

Is a fake truck bomb a "weapon of mass destruction"?

Should agents of the US government EVER be hatching plots to attack america?

they surrounded this kid with agents and play unneeded games with him all a year or so!!!!!!! .

2009
August: Mohamed Osman Mohamud e-mails unindicted associate one (UA1) in Pakistan.

December: In code UA1 and Mohamud discuss "traveling to Pakistan to prepare for violent jihad."

2010
Early months: Mohamud makes multiple attempts to contact a second unnamed associate (UA2) but uses the wrong e-mail.

June: Undercover FBI employee contacts Mohamud, posing as an affiliate of UA1.

July 30: The undercover FBI employee meets Mohamud in Portland; Mohamud says he thought of putting an explosion together but needed help doing so.

Aug. 19: Two undercover FBI operatives meet Mohamud in a Portland hotel. Mohamud says he has identified a potential bomb target: the annual Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Sept. 7: The two operatives meet Mohamud again at a downtown Portland hotel. One agent tells Mohamud to do "what's in your heart." The agents ask Mohamud to buy bomb parts and find a "place to put the bomb."

Sept. 27 and 30: An undercover FBI operative receives bomb parts in the mail from Mohamud.

Oct. 3: Two FBI operatives and Mohamud meet at a Corvallis hotel and discuss logistics and the need for Mohamud to leave the country after the explosion.

Nov. 4: The three meet in Corvallis, travel to remote Lincoln County and detonate a test bomb. Mohamud gives the agents a thumb drive with maps and instructions for the attack. "I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured," Mohamud says.

Nov. 18: The operatives and Mohamud drive from Corvallis to Portland to scout the area and identify a spot Mohamud thought would inflict the most casualties.

Nov. 26: The FBI operatives show Mohamud an inert bomb in the back of a van. Mohamud says it is "beautiful." At 4:45 p.m. they leave a Portland hotel and drive the van to a parking spot designated by Mohamud. From a different location, Mohamud twice tries to detonate the inert device by dialing a cell phone. Agents arrest him

Source: Criminal complaint filed Friday by FBI Special Agent Ryan Dwyer

Mohamud gives the agents a thumb drive with maps and instructions for the attack

No, you didn't make that very clear at all, but thanks for making that explicit now.

By helping Mohamud "dig his own grave," so to speak, the government wasn't being "complicit" in the crime. After all, the government lacked any intent to commit the crime -- indeed, it was actively working to prevent the crime.

Mohamud, on the other hand, willingly took each additional step forward toward furthering the plan -- you yourself admit there was no entrapment here.

Let's say that the plan to explode the bomb in Portland consisted of steps 1, 2, 3, and 4. The steps are sequential, and at each step Mohamud could have stopped and said "I won't go any further." In addition, at each step the government could have stopped and arrested Mohamud, although the crimes increase in magnitude at each step, so that step 1 would be of a lesser magnitude than step 2 and so on. Now, if Mohamud was willing to go all the way from step 1 to step 4, why is the government morally obligated to stop him at step 1?

In post #4431134 I said "they could have charged the guy long before the mock terrorist attack scenario took place."

I don't think legal impropriety has taken place and have also already made that clear (Edit: but I would agree that my colloquial use of "complicit" is not). My position is that the government over-engineered this sting and let it go much further than necessary by providing logistical opportunity, even if it was fake. But, yes, this is not legal "complicity" to any crime.

Yes, I "admit" (it's not a confession or even a concession Joe, it's my original position that you twisted into an appeal to "stand by") that the government did not break any laws in doing what they did.

I never said anything about any "obligation" moral or otherwise that the government has, this is wording you introduced to the thread. That might be hawkeye's point but I haven't used any moral absolutism here and have only called it "dubious" morally.

I don't think the government has any legal or moral obligation to not hand its citizens a rope to hang themselves but I find the degree to which the government helped provide opportunity to be untoward. They had a strong enough case to act against him without providing fake supplies for the bomb plot. Though it would have been a lesser crime it would have served the purpose of deterrence and involved less provision of opportunity on the government's part.

But I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know when a guilty mind is enough to convict someone in the absence of a guilty act.

I'm a bit late to the conversation, but I think there's a significant line that is crossed when someone actually pushes a button that they think will kill people.

Because there's a difference between someone who thinks they would like to kill people, and someone who actually attempts to kill people

to make sure the dumbass is actually working alone.

Nice theory, but it fails to account for a whole raft of suicide bombers in the Middle East. A tool is a tool

My impression is that they want people who are older, more reliable in their sustainable hatred for the West, mid twenties at least.

When you wrote "they" you had to be speaking of more than one specific instance. When you wrote "people", do you really intend for us to understand that "people" speaks of one person and one instance?