I wish I had posted that one instead. Greenwald knows the War On Terror is full of shit.

Isn't this the ultimate example of fabricating a terrorist threat out of thin air? This is the FBI's MO... they've done this so many times in the exact same manner. Except, in '93 they 'forgot' to swap the real bomb with a fake one.

Greenwald rightly questions the entrapment aspect, but there is another danger: that covert operatives infiltrate the FBI's sting operation and make sure it succeeds instead of fails. Afterwards, you have all you need to stage a trial: you have a patsy, you have a motive, you probably have a testament video, you have a paper trail, and you can claim incompetence as you cover up the unwanted connections and actions by way of a fake commission, instructed to put an end to conspiratorial speculation for national security reasons.

They've been doing this for decades now. If it's not a false flag operation, it's entrapment, and both provide opportunities for the military industrial complex.

So... I'm wondering: how does Mohamed Osman Mohamud know who he was mailing with in North West Pakistan? How does he know the FBI didn't construct that mail as well? That's exceedingly easy. Any hacker could do it from anywhere, you can just ask the boys at USCYBERCOM who might currently be busy DDOSing Wikileaks.

I loved this excerpt from Greenwald's article:

'As shocking and upsetting as this may be to some, FBI claims are sometimes one-sided, unreliable and even untrue, especially when such claims -- as here -- are uncorroborated and unexamined. That's why we have what we call "trials" before assuming guilt or even before believing that we know what happened: because the government doesn't always tell the complete truth, because they often skew reality, because things often look much different once the accused is permitted to present his own facts and subject the government's claims to scrutiny.'

Unfortunately, though, Greenwald ignores his advice when it comes to the suspect's alleged statement about his motives. He shows the susceptibility typical of antiwar liberals of taking at face value (even while encouraging skepticism toward other points about the case) the alleged statements of these terror suspects that explain their actions in terms of 'retaliation' for US policy. The naive hope is that if Americans could only see that US policy is provoking these attempted attacks, then they would oppose the 'war on terror,' and the US wars and the Muslim 'retaliation' would both stop. This runs counter to nine years of experience where US mass psychology is concerned: If 'they,' 'over there,' are aiming to kill US civilians, then that's enough to convince a critical mass of Americans that there is enough truth in the government's characterization of the threat to go along with supporting the 'war on terror'--some maybe with greater reluctance than enthusiasm, but in the end it still adds up to the public accpetance and support that US policymakers seek. Arguments about the motives of the enemy make little headway when people are put in a state where they think that it's 'us' or 'them.' Nor will they want to hear about US poicies in the region prior to 9/11--if 'they' did 9/11 then that means 'they' attacked 'first,' 'nuff said. Antiwar liberals persist, though, in hoping to weaken support for the 'war on terror' without questioning the official 9/11 narrative--nor even the essential attribution of violent intent to the accused in cases such as this one. What's it going to take for Greenwald even to begin considering these incidents not as responses to the US 'war on terror,' but as essential components of that same policy?

I don't know for sure whether this young man did or did not make the actual statement attributed to him regarding his wish to kill US civilians in retaliation for US actions in the Middle East. I do, however, find that there is an awfully familiar ring to these kinds of statements that emerge from different suspects in different plots (those that are 'foiled' and those that aren't). It would be interesting to be able to compare a number of them side by side. They seem to me to be guided by the same hand, spoken by the same voice (and I don't mean Allah's).

and reaping the whirlwind.

Nine minutes and eleven seconds long--mere coincidence?