Pretend for a minute there is a local orphanage nearby, full of nuns and babies nobody wants. Now, the local fire department gets together and convinces little Tommy to take these matches and gasoline and torch the place down, except the gasoline is nothing more than water with a bit of chemicals tossed in to make it smell like gas and the matches don’t contain anything that will ignite.
When Tommy goes to burn the place down, the fire marshal steps in and arrests him and then trumpets how they prevented a horrible case of arson. Now, it’s well known the fire department pretended to be arsonists and that the entire time they were trying to get little Tommy to believe they were bad guys too and that, left on his own, the best Tommy could have managed was to burn ants with a magnifying glass.
Would you think that’s ‘keeping us safe from the arsonists’?
Then why is helping Achmed the ‘terrorist’ plan a bombing with no bomb considered a good thing?
Mohamud was in e-mail contact with an unindicted associate overseas who was believed to be involved in terrorist activities. In December 2009, while the unindicted associate was in a frontier province of Pakistan, Mohamud and the associate discussed the possibility of Mohamud traveling to Pakistan to participate in violent jihad.
The associate allegedly referred Mohamud to a second associate overseas and provided him with a name and e-mail address. In the months that followed, Mohamud made several unsuccessful attempts to contact the second associate.
Mohamud also indicated he intended to become "operational," meaning he wanted to put an explosion together but needed help. The two met again in August 2010 in a Portland hotel. "During this meeting, Mohamud explained how he had been thinking of committing some form of violent jihad since the age of 15," the affidavit says. "Mohamud then told (the FBI operatives) that he had identified a potential target for a bomb: the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square on Nov. 26, 2010."
Mohamud maintained his interest in carrying out the attack and spent months working on logistics. He allegedly identified a location to place the bomb and mailed bomb components to the FBI operatives, who he believed were assembling the device. He also mailed them passport photos so he could sneak out of the country after the attack, according to the affidavit. He provided the FBI operatives with a thumbdrive that contained detailed directions to the bomb location and operational instructions for the attack.
How about "Dad tells FBI about son, FBI pay a visit to son to let him know he's being watched. And then watch his ass, arresting him when he's in the process of actually doing some terrorist stuff"?
Zebadiah the Amish farmer [...] decides to hit the library to read about how to bomb an airplane. The TSA intercept his plans and convinces Zeb to pack a wad of gray playdoh in his crotch and then makes it a big production of how they stopped another 9/11 type event[...]