If Scary Brown People Didn't Exist

We would surely have had to invent them. And so, we have:

In the case of the Newburgh Four---where four men were convicted for a fake terror attack on Jewish targets in the Bronx---a confidential informant offered $250,000, a free holiday and a car to one suspect for help with the attack.

In the case of the Fort Dix Five, which involved a fake plan to attack a New Jersey military base, one informant's criminal past included attempted murder, while another admitted in court at least two of the suspects later jailed for life had not known of any plot.

Such actions have led Muslim civil rights groups to wonder if their communities are being unfairly targeted in a spying game that is rigged against them. Monteilh says that is exactly what happens. "The way the FBI conducts their operations, It is all about entrapment . . . I know the game, I know the dynamics of it. It's such a joke, a real joke. There is no real hunt. It's fixed," he said.

I'll still never be able to understand why the current administration didn't predicate its counter-terror policies on the assumption that all of the previous administration's counter-terror policies were by nature rotten and corrupted by politics because they were, well, rotten and corrupted by politics. We are all going to regret their short-sightedness one day.

---Vitelius