Another Fabricated Terror Threat

The latest accused prospective terrorist apprehended by the Feds, Farooque Ahmed, was allegedly casing metro stations and the Pentagon, with plans to attack military personnel, having been egged on by people he assumed were al Qaeda. How does the FBI know this to be true? Because FBI agents were the ones, posing as al Qaeda, to egg him on.

This is hardly the only one in the last nine years to fit this profile: A sap, encouraged by the government to do foolish and potentially very criminal and murderous things, caught just in the nick of time—qqqjust before the supposed plan, promoted if not completely concocted by government agents, comes to fruition.

Some questions:

(1) How are we made safer by government agents entrapping people into planning violent crimes?

(2) What if the agents one day actually get someone to commit violent acts and don’t stop him in time?

(3) If the feds are so certain that they have a handle on the situation—qqqif they are confident that they are not putting Americans at risk by egging on this kind of potentially violent behavior—qqqhow can we say that the arrested would-be “terrorists” posed any risk in the first place?

(4) How can anyone both breathe a sigh of relief that Ahmed and others in this situation were not able to pull off their nefarious deeds, and yet also defend the federal government coming up with these deeds in the first place?

The FBI: Preventing the crimes they themselves conceive of since 9/11. Or actually, years before.

See also my post reflecting on the “Hutaree militia” scare from March, when the FBI goaded these Michigan survivalist types into talking about committing crimes against police. They were so dangerous a judge released them on bond—but they might still be convicted for conspiring, with government officials, to commit violence.