When told about how crowded the square would be for the Christmas tree lighting ceremony, Mohamud responded: “That would be the perfect time.” Pamela Geller asks the question the mainstream media is too clueless and/or compromised to ask: “Where are the emergency actions by Obama, Cuomo, Bloomberg and other elected officials to address this problem in the way they jumped on Newtown? Where is the concern for lives in Fort Hood or Detroit (Christmas underwear bomber), New York (Times Square bomber), etc.?”
“Harsher View of Bombing Suspect Is Revealed on Tapes,” by Kirk Johnson for the New York Times, January 16 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
PORTLAND, Ore. “” Jurors who may have been studying the defendant in recent days at the federal terrorism trial here of a 21-year-old Somali-American named Mohamed Osman Mohamud have seen a thin, neatly dressed young man at the defense table who sometimes quietly confers with his lawyers. But on Tuesday they got a drastically different view as video and audiotapes secretly recorded by the F.B.I. in 2010 revealed a sometimes bombastic, sometimes swaggering religious militant who said repeatedly he was willing to kill and die as a martyr if need be.
In talking through a plan to explode a huge bomb here in Oregon’s largest city, on one of the busiest and most festive nights of the year “” the lighting of the downtown Christmas tree in a public square packed with tens of thousands of people in late November 2010 “” Mr. Mohamud said simply and coldly as the secret tape rolled: “That would be the perfect time.”
The bomb, of course, was not a bomb at all, but a dummy built by the F.B.I. Mr. Mohamud, who thought he was sending a detonation signal to a real bomb through a cellphone call, is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces up to life in prison if convicted and has pleaded not guilty….
“How do you feel if they kill your women and children?” he asks. Mr. Mohamud’s answer: an eye for an eye. “Same to them,” he said. The tapes also suggest that he had thought out the layout of Pioneer Courthouse Square, the scene of the planned attack “” where a bomb truck could be parked and where holiday shoppers would be found in greatest abundance….
The agent, under questioning by a federal prosecutor, Ethan D. Knight, said the agents challenged Mr. Mohamud’s determination, not to press him to commit a crime, but to give him an opportunity to back away. He said the undercover team enlisted Mr. Mohamud to buy bomb parts, including cellphones and timers, as a further test, and also promised him an overseas escape after the bombing. The agent told the jury the goal was to keep Mr. Mohamud focused on the future, and thus to dissuade him from a suicide attack.