FBI Nab another nut job wanna be terrorist

Hawkeye he could had gotten a hold of a gun or two so he is not a complete non-threat even it there is no indication that he could even had build a simple pipe bomb by himself.

You do not need to be a martyr to shot people at random with a gun look at the Washington area sniper team

I have seen enough crime shows to doubt your assertion.

Thomas wrote:

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.

A "guilty mind" is never enough without an act. There must be both mens rea and an actus reus.

I have seen enough crime shows to doubt your assertion.

OK, then what is the "guilty act" when I smuggle what I think is contraband, but what is in fact legal to import?

• The idea for committing the crime came from the government agents and not from the person accused of the crime.
  
• Government agents then persuaded or talked the person into committing the crime. Simply giving him the opportunity to commit the crime is not the same as persuading him to commit the crime.
  
• The person was not ready and willing to commit the crime before the government agents spoke with him.

OK. So the would-be terroris''s guilty act would have been his attempt to blow up a bomb in the middle of that Portland crowd. The attempt was factually impossible, but that's no legal defense.

If the "Wikipedia test" accurately describes how the defense works—does it?—I don not see how either of the criteria are met. This sting doesn't even close enough to be a moral equivalent of entrapment.

But the FBI's approach has come under fire from some Muslims, criticism that surfaced again late last month after agents arrested an Oregon man they said tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. FBI technicians had supplied the device.

In the Irvine case, Monteilh's mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.

He had helped build a terrorism-related case against a mosque member, but that also collapsed. The Justice Department recently took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against the worshiper, who Monteilh had caught on tape agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said. Prosecutors had portrayed the man as a dire threat.

Compounding the damage, Monteilh has gone public, revealing secret FBI methods and charging that his "handlers" trained him to entrap Muslims as he infiltrated their mosques, homes and businesses. He is now suing the FBI.

Officials declined to comment on specific details of Monteilh's tale but confirm that he was a paid FBI informant. Court records and interviews corroborate not only that Monteilh worked for the FBI - he says he made $177,000, tax-free, in 15 months - but that he provided vital information on a number of cases.


Some Muslims in Southern California and nationally say the cascading revelations have seriously damaged their relationship with the FBI, a partnership that both sides agree is critical to preventing attacks and homegrown terrorism.

Citing Monteilh's actions and what they call a pattern of FBI surveillance, many leading national Muslim organizations have virtually suspended contact with the bureau.

"The community feels betrayed," said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques

Quit trying to construe everything I write as some kind of nefarious plot to twist your words and make you out to be a hypocrite. It just makes you look like a paranoid crybaby.

What argument would that be Joe? I didn't notice anything new, just questions that I felt I'd already answered. I'm not interested in repeating myself but if there is something of substance that I have missed please point it out.

So far all the arguments from you that I can identify center around misrepresenting my arguments. Correcting your misrepresentation of my position is an appropriate response to these so-called arguments whether or not you devolve into namecalling as a result.

One story has now been openly reported – that Mohamud’s own father turned him into the FBI nearly one year ago -- an event that ultimately led to the FBI sting operation and the arrest.

Many Americans of all backgrounds are wondering why instead of using the tip to help the teenager, the FBI instead allegedly groomed him for entrapment. Why, instead of stopping a young alleged would-be terrorist from becoming radicalized and a danger to others, the FBI apparently assisted him in continuing along that very path.

Perhaps no one second-guessed these things because the tight-knit Somali-American community as a whole never had reason, until now, to feel that one of their own could be "used against" them, as Yussuf says many feel. Mainly because the community is authentically grateful to have been welcomed in the United States. "We the people who came to this country are the peace-loving people. We are happy to be in this country. This is the only country right now we have left for us," Yussuf adds.

Now that he has been arrested, many people, including his lawyer, are considering the possibility that any double life Mohammad Osman might have lived could have been bolstered by a very powerful -- and presumably for a teenager, intimidating -- source: the government itself.

"The information released by the government raises significant concerns about the government manufacturing crime -- or entrapment," his lawyer stated this week. But whether he was brainwashed and intimidated by authority figures or, as the government alleges, he acted on his own, Mohamud has a long road to travel before he can clear his name, if ever

Reports are that he is going for the entrapment defense.

I would say that at this point you can only say, "it turns out to be alleged". How did you get all the way to "true"?

Robert Gentel wrote:

What argument would that be Joe? I didn't notice anything new, just questions that I felt I'd already answered. I'm not interested in repeating myself but if there is something of substance that I have missed please point it out.

You can start by answering my questions in this post.

Well then what is your problem? If the government didn't entrap the guy, and it wasn't complicit in his crimes, then what exactly did it do that was so wrong?

If you were talking about morality, then you were necessarily talking about obligations, since there are no morals if there are no obligations to be moral.

Untoward? What does that mean in this context?

Please point out where I misrepresented your argument.