This Is How It's Done

A guy in Oregon is arrested in the act of setting off what he thinks is a car bomb. This is the way to fight terrorism. Law enforcement was on to him, they watched him all the way, and then arrested him for what he was actually doing, not for what he was thinking.

There are, however, a couple of aspects of this that I find faintly disturbing, indicated by emphasis I have added in the following quote from today's article in the New York Times,

According to the affidavit, Mr. Mohamud was in e-mail contact with an unnamed associate in Pakistan in August 2009, who referred him to another an associate overseas. In June 2010, undercover agents F.B.I. first got into contact with Mr. Mohamud, guiding him toward the Friday night event, but asking him repeatedly if he was prepared to commit the act, which would include the murder of children. “I want whoever is attending that event to leave, either dead or injured,” Mr. Mohamud said to undercover agents, according to the affidavit.

That may merely be poor choice of wording by the reporter; I hope and rather suspect that such is the case, because "entrapment" is an ugly concept from a legal defense standpoint. I hope that our law enforcement agents are not going around actually encouraging people to engage in plots so that they can arrest them.

I also could do without the self-serving hyperbole from the agent in charge and the Attorney General, but the fact remains that when terror attacks have been caused to fail in this manner it proves again that we are not "at war against terrorism," but that law enforcement is an effective tool against criminal activity.

Update: Unfortunately, the man has been charged with "attempting to employ weapons of mass destruction." The Obama Administration is as much in love with that phrase as was the Bush one, and we are stuck with that fear mongering verbiage forever. From now until and if sanity returns, every stinking pipe bomb found will be verbally turned into a nuclear device.