Set up the crime and stop it: victory!
I was going to comment on how the FBI basically held little Johnny Jihad’s hand and walked him through how to blow up a building so they could arrest him later. And how we’re all supposed to be impressed by that. I mean, gee, brainwashing an impressionable youth into doing something stupid is so hard. I held off that comment until I realized other folks were having the same thought.
September 25th, 2009 at 9:57 am
The FBI, widely criticized for inciting anti-government protesters during the 60’s and 70’s, purposefully tried several times to convince Johnny Jihadi that there were other avenues of jihad than violence. He insisted on carrying out acts of violence against America as his form of Jihad.
The real problem here is that he is facing criminal charges, instead of a military tribunal.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:33 am
The interesting point is while there was intent, other than some more minor infractions, no bomb as actually exploded. Our Criminal system is pretty much built around arrest after a successful event, from the criminals point of view. I know this has been muddied in recent times with the women who contracts an under cover cop to whack there hubby.
On the other hand, he is a whack job and since we have closed all the sanitariums all that is left is the penitentiary.
September 25th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I’m ok with them going for the ‘intent’ on this. After reading the DOJ paperwork online, I think they gave him ample opportunity to say no and back away.
This looks like a case of Johnny Jihadi unspooling more than enough rope to hang himself. The Fibbies were just holding the spool.
What would a rational person do? Think it over and say “This is just wrong and I shouldn’t try to blow up buildings?”
Regards,
Rabbit.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
As an aside, it’s not like they brought him a couple of shotguns and insisted (with threats) that he cut off the barrels to a less than legal length. (coughRandyWeavercough).
I suspect someone learned something about how not to use coercion and entrapment as a means to prosecution.
Regards,
Rabbit.
September 25th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa090925_lj_qandq.1b5d03879.html
September 25th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Can you say “Job justification”?
I knew you could…
September 25th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
When I heard about this case this morning on my drive in to work, my first thought was to recall all those conspiracy theories surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing: namely, that OKC started out as a federal sting operation that went horribly wrong.
And here we have the FBI doing just about everything for the Springfield jihadi but parking the truck for him. Hmmm.
It’s not too hard to imagine a bunch of feds a few years ago standing around, slack-jawed and dumbstruck, looking at what was left of the Murrah building and going “Wait a minute, I thought he was parking a FAKE bomb truck…?!”
September 26th, 2009 at 9:46 am
The terrorism business is worth billions in revenue to the government. They have to produce some terrorists to terrorize us with, or the money might dry up.
Is it really a crime if the whole thing was set up as a fraud?
September 27th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Actually preventing a real terrorist is hard and dangerous.
Finding little jihaddi wannabe mouthing off on the internet, and leading him around by the nose is safe and easy …
… until the wannabe gets loose with a real truck bomb, and becomes a real terrorist, like Timothy McVeigh.
September 27th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Something very like this happened a couple years ago in Illinois. A wannabe jihadist tried to bomb a shopping mall. Grenades in trash bins, was his plan.
Each and every person he was working with, was a fed.It got to the point where he was going to trade stereo speakers for explosives, and they arrested him.
September 27th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
There was another one a while back in NY I think. The .gov started making some offers to sell some stinger missles to a guy that would have never gone out nor had the connections to do it himself. The stingers were brought in by the .gov, unarmed…they then made an arrest.
I had mixed feelings about that one as well.
In my mind…it’s like if they gave a guy a bag of flower and told him it was cocaine. If he really didn’t buy cocaine, then is it a crime?
September 28th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Paul: Hiring a hit man is itself illegal, which is why “hiring the cop to kill your husband” gets you sent to jail; the charge is something like conspiracy to commit murder or some specific “hiring an assassin” charge, I believe, not murder.
These guys will get taken down for conspiracy and, if there is such a crime, attempted terrorist attacks.
Blake: It’s illegal to sell “simulated drugs” in lots of places. I don’t know if any make it illegal to purchase them, but on the other hand intent is important in a vast number of crimes (and intuitively to most moral reasoners).
If I thought I was pressing a button that would murder a busload of nuns, but instead it caused a lever to pet a kitten, would I be a nice guy for pressing the button, despite believing I was murdering a busload of nuns by doing it?
(Crime apart, if it’s wrong to buy cocaine [ignoring questions of the stupidity of the War On Drugs], I don’t see how it can be not wrong to try to buy cocaine and fail only because you were ripped off, just like it’s wrong to point a gun at some random person, squeeze the trigger, and not shoot them only because you someone put a blank in the chamber.)