I think it is a mistake to dismiss the ones we catch as any dumber than the ones we do not. Sometimes we might just get luckier. At this point we have no idea how close these guys were to carrying out an attack. It sounds as though the security services did a good enough job with the internet monitoring and the fertilizer sting. But if they had decided to keep it simple, buy some guns and rush CBC HQ en masse there is precious little the single, rent-a-cop at the desk could have done about it. That fellow would have been lucky to get shot to death rather than have his head hacked off. I doubt he would have taken any comfort from the fact he was being slaughtered by the B-team.

"But if they had decided..." A little unclear in my wording. Here "they" refers to the alleged jihadis and not the security services.

"(S)ingle, rent-a-cop..." is a comma-splice too. Wish I could edit these thoughts. But <i>c'est</i> is <ila vie</i>.

And while I am with the comment spam... I do like where you are headed with the "sooner or later all the good suicide bombers aren't around anymore." I think this applies to what is probably a generational war. Basically, I think it is going to be ten or twenty years before this sort of behaviour stops being trendy with the death cultists.

In the meantime, I think there is another mistake in assuming it is the flower of Islamic youth that is being promoted into suicide attacks. It is less like the Peters Principle than the Dilbert Principle in operation. OBL himself, for example, talks a big line with the finger in the air and the dreamy eyes and the rich dad but somehow his jihad always calls for someone else to take the one-way trip to Paradise while he somehow struggles on in this world.

Outsourcing to teens...and in that sad case in the London bombings the quite mentally deficient one rounded into the scheme. In criminal law you call OBL the Fagan of the operation. Sooner or later there is push back due to the lack of side benefits when enough are rotting in jail or dead - if the positive cultural side of the WoT is also successful. Trashing grannie's house for three generations gets you nothing but five generations of good kicking.

Yes, and that young woman who had suffered from severe burn injuries recruited as a suicide bomber by this or that Palestian gang. I believe her target was the Israeli hospital where she had been receiving treatment. It beggars description. Though "existential evil" springs to mind.

I may have mentioned this before but once I was in court for the sentencing of a white supremacist gang (Grade "E" version) when the judge took the moment to speak to one of the accused to point out they were not...well, white. Turned out the simp had never had the whole thing explained and was the stooge for the rest of them. There is an extra level of evil in using others too weak or maliable to appreciate to do your evil. Hence my approval of the use of the term "boys" for some of the accused in this matter.