Are you sitting down? You’d better sit down. FoxNews.com:
Authorities say an individual has been arrested in the Baltimore area for plotting to blow up a military recruitment center.
Antonio Martinez, a Muslim convert who called himself Muhammed Hussain, was arrested and will appear in federal court on Wednesday, Fox News confirms.
An official told Fox News that the arrest was part of a sting operation and that there is no threat to the American public. The official said the suspect, who is reportedly a U.S. citizen, was given a phony bomb and was arrested after trying to detonate it.
If only we could discern some sort of motive or pattern to these incidents. It’s a mystery!
As DrewM at Ace of Spades points out:
Some liberals, including members of the Glenn Greenwald collective, object to these operations. Sure, he says, they might be catching real terrorists, or maybe not.
But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI — as they’ve done many times in the past — found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a “Terrorist plot” which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI’s own concoction. Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts — and an uncritical media amplifies — its “success” to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government’s vast surveillance powers — current and future new ones — are necessary.
And the post goes on like that for roughly…ever.
Note to the collective: You know why these operations are important? First, they get potentially dangerous lone wolves out of circulation before they can do real damage. Secondly, it puts doubt in the minds of individuals who might be able to make contact with real terrorists about who they are dealing with. Is the guy giving you a bomb really a ‘brother’ or is he working for the feds and your ass is about to be swept up by dozens of heavily armed federal agents?
If somebody was plotting to blow up Glenn Greenwald’s house, do you think he’d take comfort in the bomb being a fake? Would he think the would-be bomber had done anything wrong? (Note to Greenwald: These are rhetorical questions, so you can spare us the 5,000-word response.)