Would-Be Bomber Arrested In Kansas; Planned Suicide Attack on Ft. Riley 297
The Associated Press (as carried by the Boston Herald) reports that a 20-year old Topeka man has been arrested as he attempted to arm what he believed to be a thousand-pound bomb outside Ft. Riley, Kansas. John T. Booker Jr. is alleged to have planned an attack in conspiracy with others who were actually FBI agents; Booker's postings to Facebook in March 2014 about his desire to die as a martyr brought him to the FBI's attention, and the FBI sting operation which ended in his arrest began after these posts. Booker had been recruited by the U.S. Army in February of last year, but his enlistment was cancelled shortly thereafter.
masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
So once again, the FBI entraps someone by convincing them to carry out an attack so that they can stop it and pretend to be heroes. How about actually stopping attacks that you haven't yourself created? Oh, right. That count is still at zero. And I guess you need to justify all your bullshit somehow.
Re:masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
So once again, the FBI entraps someone by convincing them to carry out an attack so that they can stop it and pretend to be heroes. How about actually stopping attacks that you haven't yourself created? Oh, right. That count is still at zero. And I guess you need to justify all your bullshit somehow.
Actually, stings like this may prevent actual attacks from occurring by providing a deterrent. Would you join such a conspiracy if your co-conspirators might be FBI agents? Operations like these send a message out to would-be terrorists: you're not safe planning attacks in this country.
Re:masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
This does *not* make us safer. Quite the opposite, really. They use people like him to promote their own agenda. That is, they want to "prove" that everyone is a terrorist and they need more money and approval to stomp all over our rights, and you shouldn't complain about it.
What happens when one of their sting operations don't go according to plan? Maybe their guy goes a little nuts and decides to do things his own way, ends up killing or hurting a lot of innocent people. The FBI in this case could have stopped it by behaving appropriately instead of pressuring and reassuring him that doing evil was the way to go. Maybe without the FBI egging him on, he wouldn't have done anything.
Here, they found someone that was exhibiting some obvious mental problems. Instead of getting him the help he clearly needed, they decided to make a show out of it for their own propaganda machine.
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You apparently didn't comprehend the story. That guy was committed to make an attack and die in the process before he came into contact with the FBI. Where is your evidence that the FBI was "pressuring" and "reassuring him"?
Here, they found someone that was exhibiting some obvious mental problems. Instead of getting him the help he clearly needed, they decided to make a show out of it for their own propaganda machine.
What is your evidence that he had mental problems? He certainly had different values, but that isn't the same as being mentally ill. If anything your claim of "obvious mental problems" and that they "decided to make of show out of it for their own propaganda machine" indicates you pr
Re:masdf (Score:5, Informative)
What is your evidence that he had mental problems?
Apparently you didn't comprehend the story either. According the TFA, he was "mentally ill and was acting strangely only days before his arrest, according to a Muslim cleric who said he was counseling him at the request of the FBI.". The cleric went on to say that "the agents told him that Booker suffered from bipolar disorder, characterized by unusual mood swings that can affect functioning."
So he had mental problems according to the FBI and the person that was counselling him.
Re:masdf (Score:5, Informative)
> Apparently you didn't comprehend the story either.
Dude, its Cold Fjord, he has a mental illness where he only sees the most extremist right-wing version of anything he reads. His visual cortex is physical incapable of processing any words that might even hint at a more sane interpretation.
Re: masdf (Score:3, Funny)
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Apparently you didn't comprehend the story either. According the TFA ...
I am amused to inform you that you aren't quoting from TFA. If you follow the link in the story summary [bostonherald.com] it brings you to a story that doesn't contain the paragraph you quote, or even a number of the key words. You are quoting from a different story at the same source. Since you didn't provide a link, allow me:
Man charged with plotting bombing at Kansas military base [bostonherald.com]
So, it turns out that I comprehended the story, and you didn't. What you did do was bring in new facts in a different story from a reputable
Re:masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes him dangerous is filling his head with dangerous thoughts. The vast majority, if not all, of the people whom the FBI have entrapped in the past are some of the more vulnerable members of society: people without a strong social support structure, part of a marginalised community, often poor, often unemployed, and so on.
It's a fundamental axiom of modern policing that the best way to stop crime is to stop people from becoming criminals in the first place. If someone is at risk of becoming a criminal, the best thing you can do is divert them away from that as early as possible. For the FBI to turn a non-criminal into a criminal is not just a failure, it's sociopathic.
Re:masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're that malleable, then they should be able to be steered into being a productive member of society instead of being a criminal. The FBI had a choice about which they could do. They chose the one which would give them a headline and a story on Slashdot.
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I see. So a Muslim cleric is now a trained psychiatrist who can spot an Islamic nutjob from a regular Muslim...by what, precisely? Wanting to do something the cleric wouldn't entertain himself?
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Clergy of all kinds often have qualifications in psychology or counselling, because that's part of the job description. This is just a guess, but I'd say that while "nutjob" isn't a diagnosis, the mechanism by which said nutjobs are spotted is "science".
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Re:masdf (Score:4, Insightful)
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Christianity forbids warfare outright (Aquinas notwithstanding), and yet look at all the wars that have been fought in the name of Jesus, and all the "christian nations" that have fought wars for supposedly just causes. If you're going to lay terrorism at the feet of Islam, at least get the rest of the story straight.
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Did you realize what he did when you cited him?
Of course I realise what he's doing. He's trying to teach all the blithering idiots that are spouting facile astroturfed memes that the world is not as black-and-white as they are suggesting, that Muslims are not the moustache-twirling villains of Hollywood movies that some people like them to be, and that said idiots should not believe all the lies and propaganda that is produced on an industrial scale.
In other words, he is attempting the hardest task every teacher ever has, he is trying to make people thi
Re:masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
You apparently didn't comprehend the story. That guy was committed to make an attack and die in the process before he came into contact with the FBI. Where is your evidence that the FBI was "pressuring" and "reassuring him"?
Quick google, the FBI has charged over 150 suspected 'terrorists' since 9-11 based on evidence from sting operations. Did they really prevent 150 people from committing terrorist acts? The FBI is either very good at catching terrorists before they even plan their attacks, or they are going out and setting people up. The Tsarnaev brothers kind of disprove the first possibility.
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The FBI is either very good at catching terrorists before they even plan their attacks, or they are going out and setting people up. The Tsarnaev brothers kind of disprove the first possibility.
More likely, it's a combination of both. Some of the people they caught would probably have succeeded without the FBI, others needed FBI help, and some needed FBI encouragement. Of course, the FBI can't reliably see what kind of person they're dealing with when they start the sting, and how this person may develop later.
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That's actually not likely at all, since the ONLY ones they stopped were the sting operations, which, again, are things that almost certainly never would have happened without their encouragement.
People really need to understand just how evil the people in our government are. They want to think of them as good people, but they aren't. They have been corrupted by an evil system. For case studies of how this works, read "The Lucifer Effect" or the wiki on the Stanford Prison Experiment. There good men pla
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If the FBI arrests 0 people, they are doing a bad job.
If the FBI arrests 150 people, they are doing a bad job.
How many people should the FBI have arrested to be doing a good job?
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By the powers vested in me by my Atlanta GED I proclaim ... 75!
Re:masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
17.3.
Dumb question. The job of the FBI is to arrest people who commit crimes. They should arrest exactly those people, and no other people. Of course it's an imperfect science, and they will miss some criminals and arrest some innocent people. But a key demographic they should avoid is arresting people who wouldn't have committed crimes without their help, because it is explicitly not their job to instigate criminal activity.
Re:masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
They've been doing this same stuff for decades. Before the Islamic nutcases it was other groups like the so called home grown "militia" groups. They infiltrated one local group of idiots here that just got together to shoot guns, drink beer and bitch about the government. Impatient with the fact that the pussies weren't ever going to do shit they got their inside guy to show them how to make a bomb, then he helped them get the stuff to make one and then after that he helped them make it. Since they were too big a bunch of pussies (or just not really that crazy) to use the thing they only got to prosecute for "conspiracy." I didn't feel much pity for them as they were a sad group of morons but what a waste of money.
Re:masdf (Score:4, Funny)
"Dude, I got this bomb I ordered from in the mail just like you told me to, but then I noticed it was just a fake. Your contact was trying to cheat us. I decided to take the initiative and get a real bomb instead. Hope you guys with the fake beards don't mind. Now where are those drugs you promised me?"
could never wrong. fast and furious, feds killed (Score:2, Flamebait)
> What happens when one of their sting operations don't go according to plan? Maybe their guy goes a little nuts and decides to do things his own way,
A federal sting could NEVER go wrong. It's not like the federal government (illegally) provides weapons to murderous drug cartels, who then use exactly those weapons to kill border patrol officers and others. Well okay, that could happen, but if it did, they'd immediately put a stop to the program. They wouldn't KEEP selling weapons to organized crime ev
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Anarchy beats the crap out of misarchy. Personally I prefer democracy.
This (Score:3)
Spend some time looking into the OKC bombing. That this was a sting gone wrong is incredibly possible. It doesn't have to be the way it happened, but certainly toward the top of the list of what really happened. There were government agents involved all over the place, and this has been proven in court. They either knew it was going to happen (possibly with their own involvement?) and thought they would stop him at the last minutes, or they knew about it but didn't have enough information as to when it was
Re:masdf (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:masdf (Score:4, Insightful)
Terrorists are interested in instigating terror. If they were as big a danger as they are said to be, they would already have let off a bomb in an airport security line and killed a hundred people waiting to be screened. The fact that this hasn't happened either means that the government has a machine that watches our every move and knows who is going to set off bombs, in which case they don't need these stings, or else it means that there really aren't that many people who are interested in committing mass murder who are able to get into the United States and act on that wish.
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Or we could go back to the pre-TSA scenario, which was by no stretch of the imagination "no security", but nice attempt at trying to re-frame the conversation to make it sound like anyone who is anti-TSA is a zealot who wants to allow submachine guns in the Airport lobby.
Re:masdf (Score:5, Insightful)
let's remove all security with respect to airplanes. Care to fly now?
Yes. Since it's reduced my airfare, and massively reduced inconvenience, personal indignity, and time wasted at airports, and only marginally compromised air travel security.
Re:masdf (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, stings like this may prevent actual attacks from occurring by providing a deterrent.
Alternatively, they may make actual terrorist cells more difficult to penetrate, since they will be less trusting of outsiders. This guy just arrested appears to be another crazy homeless person, who would never have been able to organize any sort of attack without FBI help. It is nice that he will have a warm place to sleep and three meals a day, but is this really a smart way to use FBI resources? If they really have nothing better to do, then perhaps we have too many FBI agents.
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These agents are like the twenty year old narcs at high school who pretend to be students.
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Do you have a source for that? Certainly there are narcs, but I've never heard of any of them enrolling in high schools undercover. Cops threatening high school kids who got caught anyway to cough up some names, sure. But when they invest an undercover agent (= lots of money), it's going to be for a big investigation, not to find out which high school kid sold a dimebag to which other high school kid.
http://www.chron.com/neighborh... [chron.com]
There you go. The story quotes one of the sheriffs stating that they have done this in other cities throughout the county as well.
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Secretive terrorist cells are just one threat vector. What about the guys who openly want to join ISIS? Or the people who may listen to the openly broadcast messages of ISIS/al Qaeda/al Shabaab/etc saying things like "Rise up and attack shopping malls." There's nothing to penetrate there, it's just a matter of finding people likely to do it.
Somebody who was so radicalized and at the tipping point that they went along with a plot like this is a serious public threat, and not because they might have ended up
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Entrapment is unlawful. Just because an agent slaps the label "terrorist" on someone does not nullify the laws that must be followed by law enforcement officers.
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entrapment is perfectly lawful.
or maybe it's not lawful, but it still goes on through the courts and the entrapped person gets jailtime and the feds walk free.
kinda like many other things aren't lawful, but still go through. unlawful surveillance and what have you.
and the people who do go to court rarely get sentenced for whatever crime they get slapped with first, thank's to the fucked up plea-bargain system you have that quite often modifies the crimes to be totally other crimes than what the action taken
Re:islamist radical? (Score:3)
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I doubt there would have been any attack unless he was "radicalized" by the FBI.
The first of many holes in your theory is that the accused indicated his interest in dying in attacks before any contact with the FBI.
.... came to the attention of federal investigators after posting a Facebook message on March 19, 2014, that read: "Getting ready to be killed in jihad is a HUGE adrenaline rush! I am so nervous. NOT because I'm scared to die but I am eager to meet my lord,"
-----
He could have not had his enlistment in the US military canceled because of a Facebook post, and could have been taken in and counseled and put through boot camp instead of being manipulated like a foreign asset for months until he committed the crime that was orchestrated for him.
Basic training provides instruction on basic military skills, including weapons. To provide that training he would be given weapons and ammunition. I can't believe you think that is a good idea. You know about the Fort Hood attack, don't you? There have been other attacks as well.
The purpose of the military means it is best to keep people like him out.
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unless you know the idea for the attack came from you and not from the feds....
this is predatory, looking for vulnerable people and then exploiting them. they should have sent him to the doctors long before they gave him what he thought was a 1000 pound bomb. like, they could have saved a hell of a lot of money and effort just nailing him for planning a terrorist attack(of course, I guess he could have then argued it was the feds who did all the planning, as they did).
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Oh well if it MAY do something desirable through a mechanism you can imagine in the simple fantasies of your head, then by all means lets toss millions of dollars at it, surely its not only easier than finding people with the actual interest and means and a plan, lets continue just making our own and arresting them for show.
This totally justifies the invasion of our privacy so wide scale that they will drop criminal charges against people rather than admit their capabilities in court.
Look its totally workin
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Actually, stings like this may prevent actual attacks from occurring
Or, they show terrorists how easy it is to tie up counter-terrorism resources while the serious terrorists go unnoticed. Kind of a reverse SWATting.
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You won't believe how many attacks the NSA has stopped, just this week. Of course, it's all classified beyond ultra-super-mega-top-secret, so they can't even talk about it amongst themselves.
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Yeah, just like the harem of gorgeous women that wait on me hand and foot. I'd love to show you, but you know how shy they can be, so you'll just have to take my word for it...
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Trust us. It's real, but we can't show you.
Yeah, just like the harem of gorgeous women that wait on me hand and foot. I'd love to show you, but you know how shy they can be, so you'll just have to take my word for it...
You have 72 virgins???
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you don't know what entrapment means
entrapment is getting you to do something you would not have otherwise done
if the guy expresses his desire to bomb, and proceeds to go through with it, all of his own choice, he's not entrapped
the involvement of the fbi is manipulating all of his material to be harmless, and allowing him to proceed. they are not telling him what to do, he's choosing to do it
they let him go forward so they can see if he is an isolated wackjob or if there are conspirators. it also means the
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On the other hand, without the FBI keeping him on track, next week he would talk of his desire to be a lion tamer. The week after, an F1 driver...
The FBI did likely get him to do something he wouldn't have done otherwise. That is, get up off the couch and actually take steps to reach his stated goal.
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Lion tamer? Sounds like a realistic next goal for someone like this ticking bomb guy. Once someone clearly identifies with the goal of killing hundreds of people, it's more economical to test his intentions (which they did) and carve the rotten flesh out of society's body, versus resorting to asking him "enjoy the World, how do you feel about your mother, and hey here are some pills, if all fails, they'll change your mind - because you want this, right? - , pretty please never ever skip them" or following h
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I'm saying the guy probably lacks executive ability. I'm saying he'd probably still be sitting on his butt dreaming of one day being a suicide bomber if not for the FBI providing the logistics, the plan, and most of the execution.
If the FBI really wants to stop people with the desire AND fortitude to actually be harmful, they shouldn't get involved until they actually take some concrete step. Alas, that's not what they do in these cases. They look for morons who post stupid stuff online and then do 100% of
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mcveigh would have been stinged like this kansas douchebag, and all those people in oklahoma city would not have died
and morons like yourself who don't understand what entrapement is would be complaining about mcveighs weak executive function and that mcveigh was entrapped
as if being a criminal mastermind is a prerequisite to mass murder
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Note how McVeigh was NOT stopped at all.
Since you were apparently raised by wolves:
*PLONK*
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this.
With, as the GP calls them, 'spectators' like these, we don't need enemies.
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You did not read the story properly. The FBI told him exactly what to do. They provided detailed instructions and "training". The FBI built the "bomb" for him and showed him how to "arm" it.
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because no one knows how to buy fertilizer and gasoline?
did the guy back out, back down?
if i sell you a gun, am i responsible for what you do with the gun?
we WANT the fbi providing harmless alternatives for people who intend mass murder
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if i sell you a gun, am i responsible for what you do with the gun?
If I tell you what to do with said gun first, then yes, I would also be liable. If you tell me you plan to use a gun to commit a crime, I would also be liable if I then sold you a gun. This logic has been applied to all sorts of criminal activity (for example, building secret compartments into cars).
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This is, by far, the weirdest thread on Slashdot, ever.
Face it, any thread which has both Cold Fjord and Circletimessquare making insightful points is weird. Are pigs about to fly?
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This kind of trolling is pretty disgusting, but comes with freedom of speech, I guess.
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what other comments? if you actually wrote something in another thread on this topic: thank you!
but i don't even fucking look at the username: I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PERSONALITY. i respond to the topic, and in this thread you seem to be desperate for a date. i'm not gay, so fuck off, and i will gladly see you in another thread that actually fucking matters, asshole
but don't expect me to fucking notice or even care about who i am responding to. so don't keep tabs. i don't care about you. really. sorry!
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Bogus assertion. All it does is reflect your rather shallow idea of how to deal with radicals who don't give a whit about offing themselves along with others.
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You're making an unsupported claim: "My posts propose that the FBI gets help for these people instead of propping them up and egging them on."
Where is the proof of that? Propping them up? Egging them on? This guy made his intent clear before the FBI ever came into contact with him. Why do you believe that wasn't his actual intent? Why do you believe that he didn't intent to kill people? What is your evidence that he is mentally ill instead of willing to engage in attacks that are consistent with his v
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Damnit Cold, you need to stop making reasonable points. It's almost like you're losing your edge. For a minute there, I almost mistook you for anyone else.
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I'm doing no such thing. Typical cold fjord. Read here: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org] and the OP.
They knew the guy was dangerous. He already committed a crime by making threats like that. Instead of stopping it then and there, they set up a sting operation where his handlers would convince him to carry through with a (fake) attack. The FBI provided proof of this themselves. Colluding with a dangerous nutjob would be "egging him on," and I don't care how much a shill like you wants to cry otherwise.
Never once have I ever said he wasn't dangerous. That was entirely your own assertion, and I don't much appreciate you putting words in my mouth and then hounding me for things I never even alluded to.
What is your evidence that he is mentally ill instead of willing to engage in attacks that are consistent with his values and like those that occur around the world on a daily basis?
This just goes to show how much you like to distort reality. If someone openly stated they want to become a martyr and hurt or kill a lot of people, they are mentally ill, whether they intend to carry it out or not. That's not open to debate.
But hey, lets recap: you're saying you are totally fine with ignoring crazy people and supporting their fake terror attacks (which only benefit the government). It would be too hard to simply put these people in a mental hospital instead of leaving them out on the street and encouraging them to plot against innocent civilians, right?
The worst thing is, when (not if) one of these sing operations go wrong, the FBI is going to pretend they had no involvement in it, and since they are with the government, you'll never be able to prove otherwise.
If anyone who would kill themselves to take out what they perceive to be an enemy is mentally insane, does that extend to soldiers in war? I agree with Cold here; whether or not what the FBI did was justified, at least they did their job for once. The best way to get him help might very well be through the prison system, if his lawyer can get him to plead insanity.
However, even if he gets stuck in prison, I can't say I'm against that decision. It's unfortunate, but he is clearly willing to kill innocent
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He's not a soldier in war.
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>If someone openly stated they want to become a martyr and hurt or kill a lot of people, they are mentally ill, whether they intend to carry it out or not. That's not open to debate.
No, you're only proving that you're incapable of properly reasoning in the real World. You hold some values and convictions and your spotty thought processes lead you to assume that all other people do, even those that grew up in radically different environments, maybe in a setting resembling the medieval ages, or maybe born
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Your intellectual slip is showing. If someone disagrees with your values, that does not ipso facto make them "mentally ill". Rage and hate and evil actions resulting therefrom exist in the world separately from psychiatric disorders. Deal with it. Not every murderer is due a get out of jail free card just because you can't imagine evil without an accompany
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Could they have done it when he attempted to buy the goods to make the bomb? Possibly. But I still think those are pretty shaky grounds.
What if they swapped out the potentiality dangerous elements he buys and then waiting until he actually attempts to go through
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Not the brightest bulb in the box (Score:2)
He posted it on Facebook?!
Of course you're not going to get too many rocket scientists wanting to die a martyr's death; but still...
Alternative title (Score:5, Informative)
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it's not entrapment
it really isn't
entrapment is getting you to do something you don't want to do
if the guy expresses his sincere, original desire to do something, no coaxing, no suggestion, that's 100% on him
i don't know why so many people don't understand what entrapment is
Re:Alternative title (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because it doesn't fit the legal definition of entrapment doesn't mean that it isn't morally entrapment.
In this case, yes, the guy had the desire to do something. However, he did not and would never have had the capability to do anything. There was no public safety justificaton for this FBI operation.
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it's not entrapment
it really isn't
entrapment is getting you to do something you don't want to do
if the guy expresses his sincere, original desire to do something, no coaxing, no suggestion, that's 100% on him
i don't know why so many people don't understand what entrapment is
No it isn't. Entrapment is getting you to do something you wouldn't have done otherwise.
In this case the FBI recruited Booker, planned the plot, and then gave him the materials to carry out the plot.
Now this kid obviously has some serious issues, he was basically asking for an ISIS recruiter to come along and find him, if one didn't come along there is a possibility he would have eventually committed a lone attack on his own.
That being said he also might have grown out of it, either way I suspect that both
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And you know this how? Isn't this the concept of "pre-crime" [imdb.com]
So we should prosecute "thought crime" [netcharles.com] should we?
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you do not fucking understand the concept of entrapment. stop talking about a concept you do not understand
sting: cops leave a car with the keys in the ignition where a suspected car thief walks every day. he steals the car. he's arrested, validly, for theft
entrapment: cop walks up to suspected thief: "here's the keys to that car, it's yours to take." he takes the car. he's arrest- invalidly. he should not go to jail and he should sue the police for entrapment
it's about *intent*. if you form the intent to d
Out of curiosity (Score:2)
it's not entrapment
it really isn't
entrapment is getting you to do something you don't want to do
if the guy expresses his sincere, original desire to do something, no coaxing, no suggestion, that's 100% on him
i don't know why so many people don't understand what entrapment is
Huh. You don't say. And here I was reading some excerpts from the original complaint [techdirt.com]:
Out of curiosity, does this look like "no coa
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if you don't understand the concepts involved, do not comment on a topic you don't understand
You stated - quite plainly - that this was "no coaching, no suggestion", obviously some strange legal definition of ""no coaching, no suggestion", of which I am unaware.
And of course, this is only coming from the complaint, which is the FBI's version of events.
If the FBI's version is this sketchy, what do you imagine the real situation was?
Or are you one of those people with "relatives in law enforcement", who have inside information about all officers being honest, forthright persons?
(Except for the ones c
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he wasn't pushed
he clearly articulated an intent over a sustained period of time of his own organic desire
how can you call yourself a moral person and not understand the concept of intent?
in conspiracy with others who were actually FBI (Score:2)
Yet there is still no legal requirment for the oversight of these spying powers.
it's Kansas people, give him a break (Score:2)
Gotta say, if I lived in Kansas when I was 20 years old, I mighta done something ... something strange too. As it is I lived in another midwest state, not quite as boring. I acted out. Nobody should live in such circumstances. Everyone knows your business. Gossip. Rumors. Spiteful neighbors. If you're not a devout Christian, forget being accepted. God help you if you are LGBT etc. A simple lapse of judgement when you sorta borrow a car or release some cash from a liquor store and you're marked like forever.
Amateurs (Score:2)
When they start using cold drops to coordinate, that's when to start worrying. With surveillance as it is, they've got nothing better than a rogue or two using IEDs and assault rifles.
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its not entrapment
the guy expressed his original, organic desire to do this. the fbi created nothing
why do so many people not understand the concept of entrapment?
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I'm not sure, but as an example perhaps you could enlighten us?
I'm thinking he was about as likely as a typical internet tough guy to actually go anything untim the FBI did all the heavy lifting for him.
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Hard to imagine the leap from "internet tough guy" to "Here's a bomb, just arm it and press this button" in real life without plenty of fodder.
I mean there are a million times the guy could have backed out when he realized it was getting serious.
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Doesn't matter. I'm not claiming the seriousness was the issue, it was the level of motivation, the actual ability to create a plan, manage logistics, and execute the plan. I suspect that minus the FBI doing 99% of the work, dude would still have his butt planted on the couch talking about how he'd like to be a suicide bomber (one day, eventually, yeah, that'd be cool).
If stoners actually managed to do all the things they planned to do 'one day', we would live in a really strange place!
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intent, not iq, is the criminal notion here
being a criminal mastermind is not a requirement for mass murder. it does not take genius to buy gasoline and fertilizer in a van
only malicious *intent* matters, which was clearly formed and sustained by this douchebag in kansas
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You might want to read up on the Milgram, and Stanford experiments.
If he had ACTUALLY pushed the button on the dummy bomb, you would have a point about intent.
Otherwise, go ahead and credit me and my childhood friend with digging a hole all the way to China, because we certainly had the 'intent' to do so and that's what counts.
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yes, he is mentally weak
and?
are you saying you have to be an iron willed genius to mass murder?
*intent*, clearly formed and sustained, is all that is needed, and this kansas douchebag clearly qualifies
you really think it takes intellect and force of will to buy fertilizer and gasoline in a van?
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*intent*, clearly formed and sustained, is all that is needed,
Actually, you need means, motive, and opportunity. There must be a guilty act, and the responsible party must show ability to commit the crime (not demonstrated, since the FBI did everything for him), the motive to commit the crime (clearly demonstrated), and opportunity to commit the crime (it is not clear he would have had opportunity without the FBI giving it to him).
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Sure the more powerful ones are either unstable, or more difficult to make, but often you can make up for a weaker explosive with a greater quantity.
This ain't rocket science, though it did lead to it eventually.
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Anyone who passed high school science (or grade school if you're a bit older), or is literate and has access to the internet can figure out how to make bombs.
The hardest part in bomb making is not blowing yourself up in the process. Chemical reactions do not always scale well, especially ones that deal with explosive compounds.
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The hardest part in bomb making is not blowing yourself up in the process. Chemical reactions do not always scale well, especially ones that deal with explosive compounds.
Continue...
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So do you have some kind of knowledge about how this radical resisted the FBI's advances?
Did he at some point call the police and say "Hey this guy is obviously a terrorist, you should arrest him?" and turn in the FBI agent? No? Then he's already past redemption.
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So he's past redemption, so clearly the law enforcement can do whatever they hell the want, disregarding the law themselves? Remember the FBI already had him on the radar because others called in about this homeless guy, the FBI interviewed him, then the left him alone.
Maybe they should have gotten a warrant and put him under surveillance. Maybe that guy could have found some real terrorists (who'd probably shun him as being too mental).
They probably only put the sting on him because it looked like an eas
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.... I'd feel better about them if they actually caught real terrorists instead of creating them.....
But that would require doing real, hard police work. Professional operational terrorists are familiar with the concept of OPSEC and do not post their plans on FaceBook or Twitter. They probably do not even use email or cell phones. It's far easier to conduct mass surveillance and then try to set up the young, gullible, and easily impressionable when they make a rant on FaceBook about Jihad. It's a bit like the DoHS claiming that every confiscated water bottle, nail clipper, or pair of safety scissors is a f
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Indeed, you missed the first two paragraphs of the FA.
TOPEKA, Kan. — A 20-year-old man was arrested Friday while trying to arm what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb near a Kansas military base as part of a plot to support the Islamic State group, federal prosecutors said.
John T. Booker Jr. is accused of planning a suicide attack at Fort Riley, about 70 miles west of Topeka. Prosecutors allege he told an FBI informant he wanted to kill Americans and engage in violent jihad on behalf of the terrorist group, and said he believed such an attack was justified because the Quran "says to kill your enemies wherever they are," according to a criminal complaint.
/yes, I know, nobody reads TFA