Bros before Shlomos.
I don’t know… while I certainly don’t want angry young men blowing shit up here or going to Syria/Iraq (or Sudan, Nigeria, Libya, or Sinai) to fight there, I’m not a huge fan of this sort of entrapment either. Honestly, it probably drives radicalization more than Daesh itself does.
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But it’s a fine line, though right? How many people just like to talk all kinds of shit and not actually do anything, versus actually go out and do something fucked up like this? I guess it hinges on how far along his plans were before the FBI stepped in, yeah?
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US criminal law was calling explosive devices like bombs and hand grenades and rocket launchers “weapons of mass destruction” since at least the passage of The Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 (see Sec. 60023). That’s well before the Bush administration latched onto using the ambiguous term to misleadingly sell a war.
You know, it really is one of those things where I can see both sides:
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Maybe he would have just fantasized about it and never done anything about it.
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Maybe he would have just shot some people or lit the place on fire, both bad, but not explosives bad.
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The fact that he was willing to go through with it after being presented with “real” explosives, and even was warned that it would kill children, he was like, “Let’s go bro.” I dunno that seems like someone that we probably shouldn’t have running around.
This reminds me honestly of suicide bombers. People just itching to take out who ever for what ever reason. They probably never would have done it on their own, but find someone willing to give them the explosives, opportunity, and cause, and they are more than willing.
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Someone should edit the wiki page, then.
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While exact dates aren’t mentioned, it’s already discussed in the criminal (civilian) section of the article.
Going by Google Ngram, while “strategic weapons” was fully eclipsed by “weapons of mass destruction” in 1987 and “WMD” in 1995, use of the latter terms really, REALLY took off during the Bush administration.
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And we didn’t, until he met his bro. We had someone talking shit to people unwilling to help. But talk is free, like, Constitutionally Free.
I’m tired of the FBI encouraging violence from people on the margins.
Dude clearly needs a hand. Look at the one we gave him. Maybe he was a lost cause. Maybe not. Did any of my tax dollars go to try to help him NOT do that? Sounds like the mental health provisions of Obamacare might have helped.
Sort of too bad the FBI saw him as an opportunity. Doesn’t sound like he had a record. He wanted to send a message, and we told him how to. Well, we paid for it anyhow. Still think some serious therapy would have been cheaper, but then no careers would get made or budgets inflated.
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The guy referring to ISIS doesn’t rule out mental illness. Anyone can refer to ISIS these days and they’re macho enough to attract the attention of many types of crazy people. Also, be sure that for every so many plots created by FBI so they can stop them, there’s one that gets out of control. That’s Murphy’s law. Here in Germany, “intelligence” service has been doing the same with right wing terrorists and it went completely out of hands. They literally built up and financed an active underground army which is totally out of control.
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Not to drag this serious thread OT I hope, but
I like to consider myself a reasonably au courant amateur philologist, but this little word had somehow passed my by. A web search produces this interesting discussion of the term, which I am now determined to employ this very day. Thanks, Xeni 
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Was it ever proved that the FBI screwed up preventing the 1993 World Trade Center bombing? There was talk from an FBI informer at the time of a plan to supply the plotters with fake bomb making materials and to catch them in the act.
I’m curious what stage his plan had reached before the FBI started assisting him with it.
Angry drunken screed? Deep antisemitism? Had he previously broken any laws?
Call me cynical, but I don’t trust the FBI stinging people. Too often they find an angry halfwit, and create a scheme for him. Expensive jail-filler.
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That’s interesting, I thought it just came from the Land of Ironic Internet Typos.
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Now I’m wondering… Suppose I’m producing a play, or a TV show or a movie, and I need a really good quality—but FAKE—bomb or “WMD” as a prop.
Is it cheaper for me to go to a prop house and have something like that made, or to threaten terrorism and hook up with an FBI supplier?
Purely a hypothetical question, folks…
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Luckily we’ve also got an equally well-funded public mental health system also competing to actually help and heal these confused young men…ugh, can’t even make good sarcasm with this one…
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I have read that many of the people who want to be involved in terrorism are not necessarily from disadvantaged backgrounds while gang members are. I completely agree with you that getting to the reasons people join these groups and do these things is a better approach, Improving the conditions that cause someone to want to join and do terror in the first place. I think the motivations may be different for the two groups you cite.
(edit: spelling!)
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So I looked up section 921 for the definition of a WMD. According to our laws, our military uses weapons of mass destruction on both combatants and civilians every single day - which I suppose makes us the biggest terrorist nation in history.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/04/definition_of_w.html
Desh blowing shit up :
And the FBI didn’t try to connect with him, they did connect with him. They chose to make that connection about fueling his hate up to a level that would result in action so they could arrest him instead of making that connection about something positive.
That may be true in some cases, but I look at cases where the “terrorists” were people with significant developmental disabilities and it looks a lot like the FBI exploited them to pad their arrest numbers. I don’t know much about this case, but I guess my trust in the FBI is pretty low.
Damn straight.
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I don’t see how an action thriller with caricatures of humanity in it is on topic. Unless you’re in the FBI of course!
