“Somewhere, someone in Al-Qaeda must be laughing.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350389.ece

I agree with this former US Marine now a defense lawyer.

It's as if the FBI creates these sleeper cells with gullible idiots then does a very public announcement of them breaking up a terrorist cell inside the US.

Is this what is called anti-terrorism operations by the FBI? Why aren't they doing public arrests of skinheads in Idaho or some other right wing anti-government wack job group?

Remember the Miami terrorist cell the FBI was able to "infiltrate"? One of the dudes wanted uniforms. Uniforms!...and ARTILLERY!!....these aren't people that are dangerous in the sense that they are a national security threat that is real.

They are idiots that are gullible and stupid enough to allow themselves to be manipulated into doing something stupid that they otherwise would not do without the goading and help from the FBI....

This isn't fighting terrorism on US soil. This is organizing a bunch of morons into doing something stupid and then arresting them....

Doesn't seem to me that the FBI infiltrated a serious terrorist cell. Seems to me they created this thing and then defeated it...

Sort of like fabricate a problem then turn around with the ready made solution....

that politicians used as justification for destroying civil liberties and the rule of law.

In this case, entrapment, was redefined as a 'reverse sting' operation. That's basically what these are, as well.

Cops go in, create a problem, then solve it and call that 'winning' the 'war on {insert abstract noun here}'

1) It artificially influences public sentiment in a country hypothetically governed thereby
2) It could have backfired. Recruiting people to commit terrorist acts promotes terrorism. It is not a "sting" nor infiltration of a pre-existing terrorist cell - it is CREATION of a terrorist cell, albeit an incompetent one. By recruiting these bozos the FBI could have started something and lost control of it. They could have found an alternative source of weapons/explosives (McVeigh did) and proceeded without the informant. Had that happened, the entire FBI would be documentably a domestic terrorist organization. Come to think of it, by law, they are anyway.

So from there, stop and imagine all of the Americans who believe otherwise...

Exactly