Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, faces life imprisonment for attempting to detonate a car bomb in Portland, Ore., at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony where thousands had gathered to celebrate.
Mohamud’s story is becoming commonplace. He radicalized himself by drinking in the poison spread on terrorist websites. He contacted an adult terrorist who fed his appetite to murder innocents and then was gulled by FBI agents into cooperating with them in what he thought was to be a spectacular attack that would kill and wound many of those gathered to watch the Christmas lights go on.
He wanted, he said, to create a “grand effect.”
He was arrested as he thought he was dialing a phone number that would set off the bomb. The bomb was imaginary, the arrest was very real.
Mohamud is no longer a threat. The Federal Bureau of Investigation proved again that the anti-terrorist barrier it has erected in our country can be very effective. And Mohamud’s arrest, trial and punishment will surely warn off other terrorist wannabes.
For the rest of the U.S. population, the competence of our intelligence agencies should convince at least some of us that the Obama administration is doing something right.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
