(06-23-2016 04:18 PM)QuestionSocratic Wrote: (06-23-2016 02:21 PM)I45owl Wrote: (06-23-2016 10:18 AM)QuestionSocratic Wrote: (06-23-2016 10:12 AM)I45owl Wrote: This could be a matter of finding what you're looking for, no matter what...
Manufacturing Terrorists - Reason.com
So the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies, should stop looking for potential terrorists. OK.
No, but don't stack up plots that are hatched in a sting operation against the number of actual plots that have any realistic chance of being carried out. It's very possible that there is no correlation at all in the number of thwarted attacks ginned up in a sting operation and the number of incidents that ever would have seen the light of day.
Then you are suggesting that most (all?) caught in a sting operation would not have been involved in any terror plot at any later time. I disagree. My suspicion is that if one is predisposed to any terror, it is only a matter of time before they will act out in some way. If not the sting, then it will be either internet or neighborhood perpetuated until culmination.
Furthermore, I doubt that these sting targets are selected at random. Rather I'd suspect that they are identified (possibly by informants) as individuals who are predisposed to terror.
It would shock me if the list of those who are "predisposed to terror" numbered in 3 digits, much less 4. I think that number is substantially larger.
I'd say there are two basic varieties of lone wolf. One is someone that is really ideologically aligned with the Islamists. The other is someone that's generally anti-social and is in the same class of nutter as the school/theater shooters who grab onto ISIS as a flag of convenience. I think the Pulse nightclub shooter (like the Fort Hood shooter) is a hybrid, but more in the latter category than the former (though it's quite possible if not likely that he never would've done this if it weren't for the influence of Islam).
I don't think that these hundreds of plots that the FBI is touting are the kind of plots like the Paris shootings that are genuinely orchestrated by ISIS and that have real political purpose... I think that all or nearly all instances are seizing on someone that doesn't really belong in a community, makes some alarming statements, and is brought to the attention of the FBI by members of a mosque, if not the Imam. There is the underwear bomber and probably a few more like him that were genuinely products of al Qaeda.
On the other side of it, both
Nidal Hasan and
Omar Mateen were investigated by the FBI, who then did nothing to stop the attacks.
I don't know if the FBI's sting operations have genuinely prevented anything from occurring, but they certainly failed to do so in at least the cases of Pulse and Fort Hood. My suspicion is that nothing ever would've been done by most of the sting targets. If that is the case, then it would stand to reason that the "refugee connection" is also suspect because the dataset is self-selecting (i.e. if the FBI mainly targets refugees in their sting operations, gets a conviction out of most of those - even if the targets were benign but naive, then there's really no value in citing the results of sting operations to say that they are the ones concocting terror attacks...it is in fact the FBI that plans many of those fake attacks).
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Anatomy of the terror threat: Files show hundreds of US plots, refugee connection
