Patterico's Pontifications

11/28/2010

Glenn Greenwald: The Portland Terror Plot Was Entrapment, But We Deserved the Death and Destruction It Would Have Caused

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 1:07 pm



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

In some ways, this is a predictable rehash of Patterico’s post yesterday, only we are switching out who is being silly this time.  I mean the title of Greenwald’s post “The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot” tells you most of what it is about, but of course this is done with extra paranoia.  For instance, he finds all kinds of paranoid conspiratorial goings on in the fact that the FBI was unable (for technical reasons) to record one encounter with the defendant.  And of course you have to love the sheer snottiness of this passage:

That’s why we have what we call “trials” before assuming guilt or even before believing that we know what happened: because the government doesn’t always tell the complete truth, because they often skew reality, because things often look much different once the accused is permitted to present his own facts and subject the government’s claims to scrutiny.

Mmm, get in a good whiff of that there liberal condescension.  (Summoning my thickest redneck drawl…)  Gee, us bumpkins never heard of this thing called a try-elle—can you tell us, more you sophistercated city guy?

Okay, I will stop that now (and AD, for the record all bad grammar and spelling in the foregoing paragraph was intentional).

It goes on explaining that part of the reason why he turned to jihad was because he was so poor and the mean U.S. government prevented him from obtaining any gainful employment:

In June, he attempted to fly to Alaska in order to work on a fishing job he obtained through a friend, but he was on the Government’s no-fly list.  That caused the FBI to question him at the airport and then bar him from flying to Alaska, and thus prevented him from earning income with this job (para. 25).  Having prevented him from working, the money the FBI then pumped him with — including almost $3,000 in cash for him to rent his own apartment (para. 61) — surely helped make him receptive to their suggestions and influence.

You get that?  According to Griswald Greenwald, the correct course of action would have been to allow this man who was plotting to engage in terrorism to board a U.S. flight. And further because we prevented him from working in Alaska that meant there was absolutely no employment he could obtain, anywhere.

But where this post really sets itself apart is where Greenwald then decides to argue that this plot—which he believes is a frame up—was our just deserts for eight years of Chimpy McHitler:

There are several statements attributed to Mohamud by the Affidavit that should be repellent to any decent person, including complete apathy — even delight — at the prospect that this bomb would kill innocent people, including children.  What would drive a 19-year-old American citizen — living in the U.S. since the age of 3 — to that level of sociopathic indifference?   He explained it himself in several passages quoted by the FBI, and — if it weren’t for the virtual media blackout of this issue — this line of reasoning would be extremely familiar to Americans by now (para. 45)[.]

But in fact it is all quite familiar and indeed tedious.  We have been hearing it since 9-11.  This version is we get the terrorists claiming claiming that our soldiers target civilians as justification for terrorism.

But here’s the thing, Glenn, our soldiers don’t target civilians as a general rule and when they do they are very often arrested and rightfully punished for doing so.  So where on earth would he get the idea that our soldiers as a matter of policy regularly target civilians, Glenn?  Oh, right, from lefty propagandists like you.

And notice how Greenwald infantilizes these terrorists.  According to Greenwald, we are intentionally murdering civilians in Afghanistan and that is a horrible crime that justifies the murder of innocent civilians here at home—even in cities that decided to sit out on the war on terror.  But on the other hand, the murder of American civilians on 9-11 doesn’t justify the murder of Afghan civilians, does it?  And you get the feeling that it is because the perpetrator is dark skinned or belonging to a certain religion that he does not believe this young man is as responsible for his actions.

In which case, if true, would justify all kinds of things Greenwald opposes, such as racial profiling in TSA scan or grope procedures.  I mean if we can’t trust “those dark, exotic, foreign-seeming Muslims” to be willing to endure the murder of civilians without resorting to the murder of civilians, then all kinds of profiling is justified, isn’t it?  And thus once again a liberal who condemns bigotry engages in precisely the same kind of bigotry.  It would be funnier if it was not so predictable.

Update: Unintentional spelling error fixed.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

83 Responses to “Glenn Greenwald: The Portland Terror Plot Was Entrapment, But We Deserved the Death and Destruction It Would Have Caused”

  1. Okay, I will stop that now (and AD, for the record all bad grammar and spelling in the foregoing paragraph was intentional).

    Yes, but we’re still waiting for the judges to present their score-cards on the “humor” portion of your performance – I don’t think any “6.0’s” will be forthcoming.

    AD-RtR/OS! (e2c6d2)

  2. Greewald is a Racist?
    Oh, say it isn’t true.
    After all, he’s a dedicated member of the Left, who can only be for what is good and true.
    He (and they) could never harbor a Racist thought; after all, they are so concerned about the welfare of those that don’t have the advantages thay they do, even if those that are so disadvantaged are incapable (if you listen to the Left) of attaining the exhalted, self-enlightened postion found within the community of the “credentialed”.

    No, Glenn is not a Racist, he’s just a Moron (even if he is a Racist)!

    AD-RtR/OS! (e2c6d2)

  3. Gren Gleenwald is a constitutional scholar and has had his work read into the congressional record. He towers over your feeble intellect, and scoffs at your pedestrian criticism and ankle biting.

    JD (6e25b4)

  4. “You get that? According to Greenwald, the correct course of action would have been to allow this man who was plotting to engage in terrorism to board a U.S. flight.”

    Well yeah, considering you know this posed no threat and never does, it’s kinda hard to argue with. The no-fly list having been almost as successful in counter-terrorism as my toaster has been.

    Apparently according to you it’s not completely retarded to provide every person who’s the subject of anti-terrorism investigations with a convenient check on whether they are.

    This guy had no plot to bomb anything when the completely useless no-fly-list advised him that he was suspect. The same security measure that serves only to piss someone off at an airport before letting them leave and use any other form of mass transit, go wherever they like, do whatever they like.

    It’s the security equivalent of canceling your library card and the names of completely innocent people on it dwarfs any actual suspects. Statistically speaking, cab drivers getting lost on the way to the airport probably have a better record of stopping terrorists boarding flights.

    Vek (b11060)

  5. Yeah, I know, he’s a giant among turds (Piled higher and Deeper).

    AD-RtR/OS! (e2c6d2)

  6. Vek is a 1st rate apologist for the leftist nonsense.

    JD (0d2ffc)

  7. Probably another of Gleenwalds’ socks.

    AD-RtR/OS! (e2c6d2)

  8. He defended a murderous Klan nazi preacher and wannabe atty, in Matt Hale, so much for principles

    narciso (9d0688)

  9. Living with Leftists: It’s like trying to maintain order and decency in a family which is at least a third comprised of sociopathic children. Every issue, every challenge, every problem we face and try to understand is complicated by their idiotic and bellicose eruptions. I wonder if we can survive them. And if so, how.

    rrpjr (2357b7)

  10. “Weapon of Mass Destruction” changes meaning in funny ways. Some days it means a device that instantly kills 1 million in a NYC thermonuclear explosion. That’s certainly mass destruction. Other days it means the groin explosives some guy tried to use to take down his plane. Iraq either had or did not have WMD, depending on what definition of WMD you want to use. Iraq certainly had enough explosives to pack into their groins, didn’t they? That’s WMD. Today it means mud disguised as a real bomb in a van.

    Enough, already. Accurate descriptions of these things are bad enough. No spin is needed.

    Wesson (019671)

  11. “Vek is a 1st rate apologist for the leftist nonsense.”
    Comment by JD — 11/28/2010 @ 1:55 pm

    Apologist? Do tell champ, what here do you even disagree with, let alone think requires an apology? Care to share?

    Greenwald points to the feds preventing this kid flying to Alaska to work in the fishing industry, then becoming his terrorist plotting meal ticket as a significant factor in him becoming a terrorist plotter.

    The author cannot disagree with that, but opts out instead to suggest that preventing him going to Alaska was necessary to protect the safety of that domestic flight when nobody has suggested any plot existed at that point and this is contradicted by the sources cited.

    So tell us you disagree with Greenwald and that instead you don’t see this Alaska trip as being the actions of someone looking for work in a distinctly non-terrorist field, but that instead he really was just another committed jihadist on his way to work in a ridiculously hard job in the Arctic, as West African terrorists are prone to do on their already committed path to the afterlife.
    Cmon, tell us your brain’s that small.

    Vek (b11060)

  12. No, your brain is plenty small all on its own. I do guess you find it convenient to attribute positions to people in order to call them stupid, but fortunately for me, I recognize your idiocy and mendoucheity for what it is. We all get your position, this was a poor innocent goat herder that became enraged at the US because of Bush and the Patriot act and the no fly list and the FBI denying him the ability to earn a living, and would have never wanted to become a jihadi absent the FBI giving him the chance to do so. It is the position of a feeble minded conspiracy theorist douchenozzle.

    JD (0d2ffc)

  13. WMD?
    The accepted international definition of such are Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Weapons (C-B-R).
    The FBI, to fit crimes into the Terrorist Statutes which allow enhanced sentencing, expands that definition to explosives used to induce multiple deaths; ie, the bombing of an airliner, rapid-transit train, OKC, etc.

    AD-RtR/OS! (e2c6d2)

  14. In reality, the details are unremarkable; they simply provide the opening for Mr Greenwald’s conclusion:

    And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse: that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism — rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism.

    The esteemed Mr Greenwald’s position is a simple one: that the United States should not be a larger, wealthier and more powerful nation than any other, and that fact that we are still should not justify us acting like it, does not legitimize our having global interests, and ought not give us any more leverage than, say, Brazil.

    Our friends on the left, of whom Mr Greenwald is but one, are simply embarrassed by our power and our wealth and our obvious views of American exceptionalism. We must, in their minds, be brought down a peg or three, and if other people in other lands don’t like us, due to our power and wealth and attitude, well we really just plain deserve it, don’t you know? And that we deign to resist, to fight back, against those who would cheerfully give us what we so richly deserve, why that, in itself, legitimizes further hatred and attacks.

    The Dana who sees things clearly (bd7e62)

  15. Vek

    First, do not hurl personal insults here at other commenters. I don’t think I have seen you here before, so I will give you a mulligan on what you have done so far (our host might be less tolerant, but that is his prerogative).

    > Well yeah, considering you know this posed no threat and never does

    Sure terrorists are never a danger on airplanes…

    Seriously, what are you talking about?

    > The no-fly list having been almost as successful in counter-terrorism as my toaster has been.

    I don’t know, it seems to have worked here. Did your toaster work here, too?

    > Apparently according to you it’s not completely retarded to provide every person who’s the subject of anti-terrorism investigations with a convenient check on whether they are.

    By “subject of anti-terrorism investigation” I guess you mean “reached out to foreign terrorists about committing terrorism in the United States”?

    And the rest of that line doesn’t even make grammatical sense. What are you trying to say?

    > This guy had no plot to bomb anything

    “That we know of.” You forgot those words. What we did know of is that he wanted to engage in violent jihad. But even then, you think he still should have flown. Mmm, yeah.

    > The same security measure that serves only to piss someone off at an airport before letting them leave and use any other form of mass transit, go wherever they like, do whatever they like.

    So your objection is we are not doing enough in regards to other forms of mass transit?

    > It’s the security equivalent of canceling your library card and the names of completely innocent people on it dwarfs any actual suspects

    How could you possibly know that? No one knows the full contents of the list.

    > The author cannot disagree with that

    I can’t? Well, I guess I have accomplished the impossible, because I do disagree with that. its wrong to think that the guy was like, “well, gee, I can’t go to Alaska because I have been plotting to kill Americans. So… I will kill Americans.” Believe it or not, a lot of terrorists have gotten day jobs.

    The left always wants to blame us first and infantilize our enemies.

    > someone looking for work in a distinctly non-terrorist field

    As though he couldn’t have, you know, worked as a fisherman for a few months and then, when he came back to the uni, still plotting to murder Americans.

    Narc

    > He defended a murderous Klan nazi preacher and wannabe atty, in Matt Hale, so much for principles

    Actually I would defend Hale in a limited sense. They told him because they didn’t like his attitudes about black people he couldn’t be a lawyer. That is frightening.

    Mind you, Hale is a tool, but you have a constitutional right to be a tool.

    Wesson

    > Today it means mud disguised as a real bomb in a van.

    Sorry, you wish we gave him real explosives to play with?

    Aaron Worthing (b8e056)

  16. As an officer of the law, that would seem a real ethical snag, A.W, specially in light of subsequent events, the murder of a certain judge.

    narciso (9d0688)

  17. no one should be denied their right to make a living based on their viewpoint.

    And i utterly deny that lawyers should be treated as anything but free agents. But i admit my view on the subject is pretty radical–i would like to see the bar system almost completely abolished.

    Aaron Worthing (b8e056)

  18. Based on my past experience with the FBI, I’m seldom impressed by their competence. In this plot, I’m not really as thrilled with the FBI as some. I think that allowing this plot to get as far as the deployment of an car bomb, even with the dummy detonator, was not the brightest move.

    If this terrorist wannabe had been smart enough to spot that the bomb was sabotaged by his FBI coconspirators, he might have substituted working components and then the FBI would have looked as dumb as I think they are.

    However, that said, I don’t care about the alleged “entrapment”. I don’t have any sympathy for the punk who obviously wanted to commit a mass murder regardless of the FBI’s putative assistance.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  19. Well gee, we bumpkins here in the backwoods with our snaggle toothed cousins the guys-and bootylicious female cousins all think that yer average Somali is dark, foreign and exotic looking. Even if he a naturalized citizen.

    Are we supposed to believe Glenn Greenwald or our own lying eyes?

    Mike Myers (0e06a9)

  20. I wonder why I would care what Glenn Greenwald says or does.

    Actually I don’t wonder those things at all and I’m a bit puzzled why anyone would.

    It affects my life about like this:

    My wife is a gardener. The day before yesterday, before it got really cold here, she came into the house carrying a tomato cutworm, which really gross her out, and asked what she should do about it. So, I told her as politely as I could and without judgment that she should perhaps kill it.

    Now, if you think my story has no point, you’re right.

    That’s how I feel about Glenn Greenwald. Except, if he’s reading and he has tomato cutworms in Rio, the advice is the same: kill it.

    At least then, he would have some influence in the insect world at about the same measure he has on the real world.

    So, you could say: Well Ag80, you say you don’t care about Greenwald, yet you managed to type some sort of pointless story about how pointless Greenwald is, huh? What’s up with that?

    I would say that I find pseudo-intellectual leftists irritating and bereft of new ideas and tomato cutworms upset my wife.

    Then I would say that the Amazing Race doesn’t start for 20 minutes and sometimes I like to write, just because it’s fun on a Sunday evening.

    Ag80 (e828a4)

  21. Gleenwald is like a thorn in the body politic, which the likes of Feingold saw as a rose, to keep the garden metaphor, there is just so much raw
    idiocy and mendacity in the world, in place of
    valid opinion, like logic bombs,they serve no good purpose

    narciso (9d0688)

  22. All the gleeeeeeeens are cowardly dishonest twatwaffles.

    JD (eb5afc)

  23. The Left is going to keep pretending all these Islamists are simply misguided and harmless until the next time one of them get lucky again. Entrapment as a defense only works if you can show the government was the only or primary impetus toward bringing the crime to completion. But shouting “Alhu AKBar!” and proclaiming Jihad literally and figuratively show this guy like many of the others had intent well before this started.

    Bugg (996c34)

  24. You could turn it on it’s head and say that the “no fly list” was prescient

    And you could also say that Oregon is close enough to Alaska to frickin ride a bus if you really wanted the job

    SteveG (cc5dc9)

  25. Vek – Unlike Glenn Greenwald and yourself, I do not support allowing people who have expressed a desire to participate in violent jihad to fly on airplanes. I may be overcautious that way.

    Also, given the Somali jihadi’s rounded up in Minnesota, rather than being offended at the lad’s speech, I would want to see where it led and who else I could roll up were I the FBI as they would hopefully do in any terrorist, organized crime or drug type investigation. Seems obvious procedure to most observers when you take political posturing out of it.

    daleyrocks (df87cd)

  26. I’m also curious as to how it is “known” that the “no fly list’ has never done anything for us. Maybe it’s batting 1000%… after all, how stupid would it be if a guy on the list gets on a plane and blows it up? I’m sure we’d have heard about a guy on the list getting on a plane and blowing it up, so right now, it must be working…

    SteveG (cc5dc9)

  27. How successful is the “No Fly List”?
    Well, it kept a lot of people from being exposed to the less-than-benign influence of Teddy (if only in First-Class, and just briefly).

    AD-RtR/OS! (e2c6d2)

  28. I don’t know if we’re safer because of the No-Fly list, but we might get some information as this ACLU vs US government lawsuit goes forward.

    DRJ (d43dcd)

  29. The esteemed Mr Greenwald’s position is a simple one: that the United States should not be a larger, wealthier and more powerful nation than any other, and that fact that we are still should not justify us acting like it, does not legitimize our having global interests, and ought not give us any more leverage than, say, Brazil.

    Let’s raise this to the level of moral principles here:
    And why should we have more leverage than Brazil?
    Does being stronger than anyone else give us the right to do whatever we want? Macht macht Recht?[sounds better in German] Why should Brazil care about what we want them to do?

    Answer: we don’t have the right to do anything of the sort. All we can do is treat them as independent actors and offer them various inducements to act the way we want them to. And if they don’t act the way we want them to, then, while we may have grounds to complain they are acting unreasonably, we have no grounds to complain they have no right to ignore our wishes.

    Beyond that there is the relationship that being a strong military and economic power goes hand in hand with a large government. That conservatives were, up until the start of the Cold War, often isolationist comes from that understanding–and in the modern era, it underlies what people like Ron Paul say about American foreign policy. If you want a truly limited government, then you have to accept as part of the consequences that much of what is now accepted American foreign policy, including the basic idea that we are and should remain the strongest nation in the world, would go bye-bye.

    Finally, I don’t read the paragraph you quote the to mean anything close to what you say. Perhaps that’s because they forgot to send me the secret conservative decoder ring or something. But the point of his article is twofold–that our ongoing warfare with Muslims motivates some of them to plot terrorism against us, and that these continuing rollups of would be jihadi plotters who are in large part financed, trained, etc. by FBI informants helps keep up the drumbeat for a security state that abandons much of what we think of as normal liberties. For instance, while I am willing to believe the timing was purely co-incidental, you will notice how this story of apparent government success in the “war on terror” has, at least temporarily, shoved the piece of massive govenmental incompetence known as the TSA follies into the background?

    And to return to that first point–to explain the motivations of other people (motivations which may seem irrational, or at least uncivilized) is not to claim they are justified. Greenwald does not claim they are justified. It’s rather as if Greenwald described the case of a man who murdered his parents for their money, and was then accused of saying this was the man’s justification. Perhaps the secret decoder ring would reveal that to me, and I would agree with Aaron when he says: But where this post really sets itself apart is where Greenwald then decides to argue that this plot—which he believes is a frame up—was our just deserts for eight years of Chimpy McHitler:, but being ringless, I can only read what Greenwald actually wrote–and he didn’t write that.

    kishnevi (437df2)

  30. It does not really require a secret decoder ring, kishnevi. There is at least 8 years of his material which has been read into the congressional record to look at.

    JD (eb5afc)

  31. Gleenwald really doesn’t think this nation is very special, for someone who came from another country,
    he is very much mistaken, The arrest of Effendi Mohamud, makes a more different point, that the hastles at the airport, are just a Potemkin village
    with no real purpose, he was on a no fly list, yet
    ironically was not prevented for gthering th materials for this plot

    narciso (9d0688)

  32. U.S.Foreign Policy…
    What I think a lot of people want is a return to what was exemplified by TR’s motto of “Speak softly and carry a big stick!”
    Or, as Andy Jackson would say if alive today:
    You touch my junk, you die!

    AD-RtR/OS! (e2c6d2)

  33. Entrapment requires that the government do something that a reasonable man would have followed.

    Is that what we have here?

    Okay maybe a liberal would want to blow up a Xmas tree.

    Arizona Bob (e8af2b)

  34. “But the point of his article is twofold–that our ongoing warfare with Muslims motivates some of them to plot terrorism against us, and that these continuing rollups of would be jihadi plotters who are in large part financed, trained, etc. by FBI informants helps keep up the drumbeat for a security state that abandons much of what we think of as normal liberties.”

    Kishnevi – Are you and Greenwald suggesting that without these FBI activities we would have no homegrown jihadi or U.S. terrorist problem? Seriously?

    He thinks if we leave the Middle East everything will be hunky dorry or something. He is a charter member of the blame America first club.

    I know Greenwald believes the Palestinians should be allowed to build an airport in Gaza and nutty stuff like that, because Israel is the real problem. He also believed Sy Hersh that we invaded Iran a dozen or so times.

    daleyrocks (df87cd)

  35. Kishnevi – Are you and Greenwald suggesting that without these FBI activities we would have no homegrown jihadi or U.S. terrorist problem? Seriously?

    1)It’s in the FBI’s interest, and in the interest of those who want to increase the security state, to make as much of these cases as possible.

    2)Almost all the terrorism cases here in the US involve an FBI informant or informants who does not merely observe and report but actively facilitates the plot–so it is fair to say these cases would not have occurred without the FBI. The only exceptions I can think of–that is, the only cases where the FBI did not actively promote the plot–are Omar Padilla and the Times Square Bomber. Which suggests that the “homegrown terror” meme would end up describing only a very small percentage of Muslims.
    3)Take away the FBI promoted plots, and you are left with a series of cases in which badly constructed fuses and the vigilance of passers by, border crossing guards, and/or airplane passengers were the only remaining obstacle to success. Which suggests to me that this category of FBI efforts is not really protecting us, and the homegrown terror meme is vastly overrated.

    kishnevi (437df2)

  36. Except for Majid Khan in Baltimore, Iyman Faris in Ohio, Shukrijumah in our neck of the woods, the other Oregon cell from 2002, the plots out of Newburgh, the PATH train plot by Al Andalusi, all of these events ridiculous until they happen, and
    then they say why didn’t we connect the dots

    narciso (9d0688)

  37. “Which suggests to me that this category of FBI efforts is not really protecting us, and the homegrown terror meme is vastly overrated.”

    kishnevi – It’s great if it suggests that to you. To me, the FBI intervening suggests that it deterred the jihadi wannabe from contacting and pursuing a terror plot on his own of which the authorities would not be aware. We never would have known what might have happened if the FBI had not chosen to get involved. It’s sort of like when somebody wants to hire someone to kill somebody and finds out they are talking to the police or FBI. Is that actively promoting the plot? I don’t think so. It’s the same concept, but here the left is merely using it as a political tool.

    daleyrocks (df87cd)

  38. The author cannot disagree with that, but opts out instead to suggest that preventing him going to Alaska was necessary to protect the safety of that domestic flight when nobody has suggested any plot existed at that point and this is contradicted by the sources cited.

    — For Vek, hindsight is 20/20 . . . in his case it is due to the location of his eyes.

    Icy Texan (a8367b)

  39. “I do guess you find it convenient to attribute positions to people in order to call them stupid, but fortunately for me, I recognize your idiocy and mendoucheity for what it is.”
    Comment by JD — 11/28/2010 @ 2:49 pm

    And I recognize that when challenged to disagree with what you call liberal nonsense, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it.

    Vek (b11060)

  40. “– For Vek, hindsight is 20/20 . . . in his case it is due to the location of his eyes.”
    Comment by Icy Texan — 11/29/2010 @ 1:31 am

    Well no, not hindsight. The FBI knew what they knew when they stopped him. That plus a brief chat was what they based their decision on to let him go, free to leave the airport to get on the subway, go to a 100,000 seat sports arena, city reservoir, gas refinement plant, etc.

    You could argue they were wrong to do so, but not that it turned out to be non-life-threatening in hindsight. That’s simply not related to reality.

    Vek (b11060)

  41. Comment by Aaron Worthing — 11/28/2010 @ 4:07 pm
    > Seriously, what are you talking about?”

    You’ve separated two sentences, questioned what the first could possibly relate to before disagreeing with the second. Fantastic.

    >I don’t know, it seems to have worked here. Did your toaster work here, too?

    Yes. Stopped that plane blowing up just as well as the no-fly-list did. Up to speed yet are we?
    Maybe try a bit of background reading to see if my toaster doesn’t have an identical success record in all cases that aren’t this one.

    Sure, it did fail to prevent the last 3 terrorists getting on planes but, as I said, identical success record.

    >> This guy had no plot to bomb anything
    > “That we know of.” You forgot those words.

    No, you forget that he and his plot do not exist except for the FBI’s account. That account says he had no plot.

    >So your objection is we are not doing enough in regards to other forms of mass transit?

    No, just that the no-fly-list is a pointless and ridiculous misuse of resources.

    >> It’s the security equivalent of canceling your library card and the names of completely innocent people on it dwarfs any actual suspects

    >How could you possibly know that? No one knows the full contents of the list.

    I know this the same way YOU know this about the list with over 1,000,000 people on it. There have been a few published stories on it during the past decade.

    >> The author cannot disagree with that
    > I can’t? Well, I guess I have accomplished the impossible, because I do disagree with that.

    Clearly I was referring to your post. If you believe I missed something in it which refutes Greenwald’s assertion, feel free to quote it. As I said, you passed up this opportunity to instead suggest he had to be stopped for the safety of the plane.

    > its wrong to think that the guy was like, “well, gee, I can’t go to Alaska because I have been plotting to kill Americans. So… I will kill Americans.” Believe it or not, a lot of terrorists have gotten day jobs.

    Which of course almost approaches the claim required of you. That preventing him going to work in Alaska, then becoming his terrorist enabling sugar daddy, *didn’t* manufacture this plot where none previously existed, contrary to the FBI’s own account.

    Yeah, “some terrorists have day jobs” ain’t gonna cut it. Pony up.

    Vek (b11060)

  42. Comment by SPQR
    “Based on my past experience with the FBI, I’m seldom impressed by their competence.”

    Well it ain’t like you’ve got a bunch of more competent choices to pick from. I can’t even name candidate #2.

    “…deployment of an car bomb, even with the dummy detonator, was not the brightest move.”

    It was inert material. The gas in the van’s tank was the most dangerous thing there.

    “However, that said, I don’t care about the alleged “entrapment”.”

    That’s a legal commentator making a legal argument. Entrapment simply doesn’t apply to terrorism cases.

    Vek (b11060)

  43. Comment by daleyrocks — 11/28/2010 @ 11:07 pm
    “To me, the FBI intervening suggests that it deterred the jihadi wannabe from contacting and pursuing a terror plot on his own of which the authorities would not be aware.”

    It didn’t deter him, it enabled him.
    I completely agree with identifying potential jihadists and getting them the fk behind bars. However, this entire plot, the bomb, it’s entire existence was the FBIs creation.

    So all those people were saved by the FBI’s intervention. They also would have been if the FBI didn’t enable that plot where it didn’t exist beforehand. Hence my problem with this PR.

    “It’s sort of like when somebody wants to hire someone to kill somebody and finds out they are talking to the police or FBI. Is that actively promoting the plot?”

    No it’s not. Except the FBI’s record isn’t that they intercept these plots. Theirs is that they will pay an agent $100k to offer unemployed people $250k to carry out said plot.

    You and I both know how many assassins are at your local mall before and after I offer you that gig and just how safer everyone is afterwards.

    Vek (b11060)

  44. If someone’s too dangerous to be allowed to fly, why is that someone not too dangerous to be arrested?

    Len (143e4c)

  45. What would drive a 19-year-old American citizen — living in the U.S. since the age of 3 — to that level of sociopathic indifference?

    In a different language, I believe it’s called “submission”…

    Now — that may not be correct, but that’s
    damned sure the way to bet.

    IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86)

  46. Vek is a 1st rate apologist for the leftist nonsense.

    Come now, don’t inflate the man’s value to society.

    He’s second rate and damned proud of it.

    IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86)

  47. If he was on the no-fly list, couldn’t he have just taken a bus to Alaska?

    There are plenty of unemployed people who deal with their situations without plotting mass murder.

    Gregory of Yardale (07425b)

  48. That was an awful lot of words to say the same things, over and over and over and over, vek. And to remain a douchebag the entire time takes talent. Bravo.

    JD (0d2ffc)

  49. It’s a unique skill set, it seems the parents tried to tip the authorities off, in this case, and they
    mostly listened for once

    narciso (9d0688)

  50. Vek

    that is right. he is a sweet and innocent boy that but for the meanie weenie FBI, would have never thought about hurting an infidel fly.

    We should have not only let him fly, but with an AK 47 to boot.

    /sarcasm

    its amazing how your analysis is immune to facts.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  51. The actual facts, and reality, simply will not get in the way of Teh Narrative, AW.

    JD (6e25b4)

  52. And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse: that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism — rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism.

    I already have this mental picture of Glenn Greenwald standing, blackened and bloody, in the ruins of his home, just been leveled by a car bomb, screeching, “This is all Booooooooosh’s fault!”

    MarkJ (42fe5b)

  53. Whoops. Wrong thread.

    The Departed (46e187)

  54. Departed

    that’s okay, i miss leslie neilson, too. 🙂

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  55. Que pendejo, what an ass, I can not understand the mindset of people like greenewald. It makes no sense to me what he has written, it absolutely makes no sense.

    Mad Cholo (f4b35d)

  56. Yes, RIP good old Mr, Nielsen, now here’s a vato who made freakin sense.

    Mad Cholo (f4b35d)

  57. From Oregon Live:

    “Mohamud allegedly told the FBI operative that he had written articles that were published in Jihad Recollections, an online magazine that advocated holy war. Mohamud also indicated he intended to become “operational,” meaning he wanted to put an explosion together but needed help. Mohamud explained how he had been thinking of committing some form of violent jihad since the age of 15, the affidavit says. “Mohamud then told (the FBI operatives) that he had identified a potential target for a bomb: the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square on Nov. 26, 2010.”

    Clearly a completely FBI-fabricated scenario, right?

    SPC Jack Klompus (ea29bb)

  58. And notice how Greenwald infantilizes these terrorists. According to Greenwald, we are intentionally murdering civilians in Afghanistan and that is a horrible crime that justifies the murder of innocent civilians here at home—even in cities that decided to sit out on the war on terror. But on the other hand, the murder of American civilians on 9-11 doesn’t justify the murder of Afghan civilians, does it? And you get the feeling that it is because the perpetrator is dark skinned or belonging to a certain religion that he does not believe this young man is as responsible for his actions.

    Exactly, Aaron. This can not be said often enough.

    MayBee (138edc)

  59. Aaron Worthing – got to disagree on the “right to be a lawyer” thing. The law is a profession, and the bar has standards, traditional standards, that bar persons of low moral character or ill repute from joining the bar.

    It’s quite right for a state bar to deny an avowed racist access to practice law, if they feel his conduct or opinions make him unfit, a person who is unlikely to be ethical or uphold responsiblities of the profession.

    I would argue that Hale’s very reprehensible and very out-an-proud in-your-face racism would be sufficient to keep him out of the practice of law nearly anywhere…and the reasons are not beyond the pale nor beyond tradition.

    No one has a right to be a lawyer.
    You have to measure up – and individual cases are reviewed individually. THere is no broad bar for holding unusual or even ugly opinons, but anyone likely to cast the profession into ill repute.

    Hale was well over whatever imaginary and fuzzy boundary of decency exists.

    SarahW (af7312)

  60. Greenwald cannot see his refflexive protection of the hapless would-be bomber for what it is – his own patronization of “easily excited weak-minded brown people”.

    Supposedly putting him on a no-fly list because of his express desire to murder Jihadi-style made him desperate. No fishing job equals blowing up kids. Now that I think about it some more, Greenwald has to be right. I remember not catching a fish once and it was really frustrating.

    SarahW (af7312)

  61. SarahW, opinions make a person unfit for a profession? Have you ever heard of freedom of speech?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  62. According to Greenwald, we are intentionally murdering civilians in Afghanistan and that is a horrible crime that justifies the murder of innocent civilians here at home—even in cities that decided to sit out on the war on terror

    This version is we get the terrorists claiming claiming that our soldiers target civilians as justification for terrorism.

    Looked pretty hard at the Greenwald piece. Never used the word “justification” or anything like it.

    And you know it, AW.

    So do your readers.

    Pretty easy to put words in someone else’s mouth and then write a blog post criticizing what they “say”.

    But it is spin and lies.

    Kman (d30fc3)

  63. Would you prefer rationalizes it?

    JD (109425)

  64. The problem with Greenwald is that he is as ideologically biased as the people he criticizes – which, like most ideologically biased people, he never seems to realize. That guy has chosen his side a long time ago, he knows who the bad guys are, and stubbornly refuses to consider that, well, there might even be worse guys around.
    In his opinion, terrorism is a consequence of the many and (to him) incomparably worse vices and crimes of our government, and a tool the latter uses to control us ever more. That’s why he almost always follows a brief condemnation of terrorism with a long lecture on our own poor record on human rights and how we brought it to ourselves. Of course he never applies that reasoning the other way; victims of US or Western “barbarism” are always pure and innocent.

    Optimus Prime (0692b1)

  65. kman

    We have had this tired argument before.

    the greenwalds (and kmen) of the world are the kinds who say, “i am not blaming her for being raped. i am just saying that if she dresses like that, what does she expect.” and some of us refuse to pretend it isn’t exactly what it is: blaming the victim.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  66. the greenwalds (and kmen) of the world are the kinds who say…

    I repeat…. “Pretty easy to put words in someone else’s mouth…”

    Kman (d30fc3)

  67. MarkJ wrote:

    I already have this mental picture of Glenn Greenwald standing, blackened and bloody, in the ruins of his home, just been leveled by a car bomb, screeching, “This is all Booooooooosh’s fault!”

    Curled up in a little ball, or perched on his knees, maybe, but standing? Nope, can’t see it.

    The Dana who doesn't give him credit for being that much of a man (3e4784)

  68. SarahW wrote:

    The law is a profession, and the bar has standards, traditional standards, that bar persons of low moral character or ill repute from joining the bar.

    I’m sorry, but I didn’t realize that I was reading The Onion.

    The Dana laughing out loud (3e4784)

  69. I hate you. Good day, sir!

    Ellison Ellers (bae102)

  70. Spqr I have heard of freedom of speech. I have not heard of freedom from consequences of speech, and certainly not from consequences of moral turpitude, outrageous conduct, when an applicant is considered for admission to the bar.

    Sarahw (af7312)

  71. Dana , at least in Virginia, lawyers are much more quickly and severely dealt with when they breech professional responsibilities, than say, physicians.

    Sarahw (af7312)

  72. Sarah

    A consequence of your speech should not be that you are not allowed to be a lawyer anymore, unless what you do is actually a crime (such as inciting murder, later on). perhaps it should mean you can’t be a government lawyer, but if a private citizen has no problem with the fact that you are a racist, where does the government get off telling you that you cannot represent that person because you believe in the wrong thing?

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  73. Sarahw, if the government is banning someone from a profession based on their speech, that is clearly a violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech. It couldn’t be more brazen in fact.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  74. Yes, RIP good old Mr, Nielsen, now there’s a vato who made freakin sense.

    Shirley, Greenwald can’t actually mean what he says?

    IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86)

  75. From the Salon letters section: “If he got in touch with real terrorists on his own and took steps to perpetrate a plot, then the FBI should stop that.” –Glenn Greenwald

    AGS (33f036)

  76. I wonder how Gleeeeeeeens would allow the FBI to stop that.

    JD (ab60db)

  77. Why couldn’t Mohamed have gotten a nice job in human trafficking like the Somalis in Minnesota? Why does everything have to end with jihad?

    Sorry, stupid question.

    daleyrocks (df87cd)

  78. I don’t know, but I would think it wouldn’t involve giving him financial support and potential bomb material.

    AGS (33f036)

  79. AGS – It just sounds like he was very goal oriented by the time the FBI made contact with him.

    daleyrocks (df87cd)

  80. That is a rather convenient position, AGS, as his history has shown, he has opposed nearly every attempt to actually combat terrorism.

    JD (ab60db)

  81. You would think many people on the left would be embarrassed to go out on the financial stress leads to terrorism limb, after they were humiliated by the Times Square bomber. Remember, he was desperate because his house was in foreclosure.

    Anyway, it’s too bad young Mohamud didn’t find somet injustice in his homeland of Somalia worth getting upset over. He probably could have gone there and waged jihad to his heart’s content.

    MayBee (138edc)

  82. If there’s one thing the left & right can agree on, it’s that the term “personal responsibility” was NOT coined by a liberal.

    Icy Texan (09e713)


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