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I've written about Hosam Smadi quite a bit: He's a dumb kid that the FBI found in a chat room, led him along and cultivated his desire to do an act of terrorism (which he could never do on his own), provided him with a fake car bomb, and then arrested him when he tried to detonate it with a cell phone (and then the FBI then immediately and conveniently notified the media).The news late tonight is that he will enter a guilty plea tomorrow. No surprise there -- he's in federal court.
But when the local Fox 4 News reported the guilty plea plan tonight, this is what they said in a pre-packaged videotaped report to provide some background : "Agents say he left the SUV, packed with C4 and ammonium nitrate below the 60 story Fountain Place tower. Got a safe distance away and tried to trigger it with a cell phone." There was not a WORD that there was no possible way the bomb would go off, that FBI agents were with him at the time, or that no one was in danger.
Whether it be the Bush Administration or the Obama Administration, this case is nothing more that federal grandstanding. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
You disagree? How many White Supremacists could the FBI find right now in a chat room who would be willing to push the detonation button of a bomb that would go off on a black church on a Sunday? How many rednecks could they find that would be willing to push a similar button that would blow up a Dallas mosque? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
It's grandstanding. It's politics. And it's a local news outlet that doesn't understand that it facilitates the paranoia by not getting the facts straight.
