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So... do we define terrorist acts by their intent or their results?
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Intent. Otherwise Richard Reid would have been tried to attempted arson.
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I like jumping down Dunedan's throat because he reminds me of my junior year Homeland Security: Current Threats and Response prof.
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I will accept this as the greatest sort of compliment. My thanks!
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The IRS generally farms out for security, actually. We're not talking Blackwater, we're talking people with certified guard cards and walkies. In an emergency, they call the local police. My high school had more security than your average IRS building.
It's fun to pretend that the government has Jack Bauers at every government building with more than a dozen offices, but the truth is that kind of security is difficult to budget for. It's much easier for them to hire rent-a-cops
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I was not referring to the building security, I was referring to the IRS Criminal Investigation Division. And if you expect me to believe they're -not- armed to their eyeteeth, when they're the bastards tasked with throwing people out of their homes and taking everything they own, we must have -very- different views of how Fed-level LE agencies "take down" their targets.
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We've just had a domestic terror attack in which a private citizen gets into a plane and flies it into something he doesn't agree with. In what way is that not supposed to scare people?
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Because this sort of "terrorism" frightens only those people too dumb to realize they're more likely to die of snakebite or lighting-strike. It doesn't mean you play golf in thunderstorms, or leave your snakebite kit at home while hiking, it just means it isn't something to overly worry about.
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Translation: it's only terrorism when it comes from an organization. That argument doesn't work, though.
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Ballocks. BS. Strawman. I never said such acts had to come from an organisation. By your reasoning, I would hold Tim McVeigh to be a non-terrorist, an hilarious and insane position to take. If you'd read my post -before- filtering it through your prejudices, you'd have realised that my point dealt with mindset. A terrorist commits his crimes in furtherance of what he regards as feasible political change. The alleged pilot in this attack manifestly did -not- regard the changes he desired as feasible. Ergo, IMO, he is simply a grandiose suicide with severe target-selection issues; more akin to Killdozer or Karl Drega than Tim McVeigh.
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I've never heard a Tea Partier decry private power like the richest Americans or GM or Wall Street. It seems those set this man apart from the conservative movements.
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Then you clearly haven't been paying attention.