A lot of talk is going around about this story.
I HATE stories like this because they garner a lot of sympathy from me for people who I really have no sympathy for. First up I take every line from this and any other story with a grain of salt, as it was a set-up from the word “Go”, so who knows what guilt rides where, and who’s telling the truth. But using occam’s razor I suspect little Johnny Jihad does actually hate Americans and probably would want to blow up a few if given a chance. Ok, if that’s true I don’t like him, but there are lots of people walking around who probably feel like that, who I also don’t like, and like this rube don’t actually DO anything harmful be it from incompetence, or fear of procicution, or just lack of motivation. He gets contacted by the FBI posing as big-daddy terrorist.org and asked him to blow up a van full of “Explosives”. The kid agrees and triggers a detonator on a van filled with dummy bombs. Feebs swoop in and claim victory.
But what do they have? I see this as no different than people buying chunks of washing powder from cops, or bags of oregano thinking they’re drugs. Or the creep who is chatting with a “13 year old girl” who is in fact a 40 year old Policeman. Or the guy chatting to a “Hooker” who DOES intend to handcuff him….but then will show him her badge and backup.
Now I’ll say that Jihadis (or Anarchist Militias, or White Supremacists, or whatever groups want to commit mass murder) and pedophiles creep me out, and I am happy when they get fair-and-square arrested. (I could care less about an adult hiring an adult prostitute, and frankly people should be able to buy recreational drugs in the same place they buy their booze and smokes, rather than seeking out some shady dude who might be a cop selling washing powder…) But does this little dance of reality vs. fiction make you uneasy?
I mean I sell you a bag of dried sage from the garden and tell you its killer weed, the only crime I see there is ME for selling dud goods. The other guy just walks away with less money in his pocket and a bag of seasoning. Just because he WANTS to commit a crime doesn’t seem to justify an arrest to me. Same with the creepy pedo talking sweet to the “Little Girl” online. All one needs to do is look up a “Barely 18” porn site. What will you find? Nine-times-out-of-ten you’ll find a bunch of women in their 30s (who have had some hard-living so they look to be in their 40s) wearing their hair in pigtails and dressed as cheerleaders and schoolgirls. Does ANYBODY think for a second when they list their age as “18” they’re telling the truth? And hell how does it work for those people in the 70s who watched Tracy Lord’s debut?
She presented false ID showing she was 18 and started in porn when she was 15! Now if everybody was honestly duped, is that a crime? Certainly the average “hitchhiker” at the local porn theater probably wasn’t paying to see “Child Porn”.
Again this all sucks because I’m sympathizing with the creeps. I don’t WANT the guy who is chatting with the cop who is claiming to be 13 to be out and about, but what crime was committed? He talked dirty to a grown adult pretending to be a child. Creepy, yes, but by this account is my wife guilty for impersonating a government official?
Bottom like the Feds should be watching kids like this to see if the REAL terrorists seek them out, then you catch a dorky kid wanting to commit jihad, as well as REAL terrorists who have the intent AND THE MEANS to commit harm.
