"Aspirational" And "Fully Controlled"

From Government Foils Government Plot by Jesse Walker:

Bill Anderson highlights the most salient fact about the Riverdale Temple bombing plot, quoting a passage from a New York Times report:

A federal law enforcement official described the plot as "aspirational" -- meaning that the suspects wanted to do something but had no weapons or explosives -- and described the operation as a sting with a cooperator within the group.

"It was fully controlled at all times," a law enforcement official said.

Such stings are not unusual. The equally "aspirational" Liberty City 6 scheme of 2006, for example, would not have congealed -- to the extent that it congealed at all -- without the government's helpful informants. In the days before 9/11, agents provocateurs infiltrated militia groups; back in the '60s, they invaded the New Left. I doubt such entrapment makes anyone safer. But it does make people scared.

All of the links make for interesting reading. Episiarch wrote a comment that I really liked:

Let's see: completely incompetent plan, and the government gets in there, helps them along, and busts them. 9/11: insanely simple plan, achieves more than expected, and the government has no fucking clue.

Yeah, the government does an excellent job. Really.