The FBI, the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies arrested four Muslim men Wednesday night charged with plotting to use at least three bombs made with 37 pounds each of what the terrorists believed was functional C-4 explosive. The four had planted the bombs in cars parked outside of a Jewish Temple and Jewish Community Center a short distance from each other in NYC. The inert bombs and an inoperative Stinger ground-to-air missile had been obtained by the four conspirators, three U.S. citizens and a Haitian, from an undercover FBI informant the terrorists allegedly met in a NYC mosque. Over the past year the informant arranged to meet the plotters in a house especially set up by the FBI and other agencies that was wired for video and sound, therefore the rantings of the suspects, along with detains of their plan, were captured on tape, something that will be needed to prove the suspected terrorists actually had the will and desire to carry out the alleged plot.

Motive: The leader of the group of four, 53-year-old James Cromitie, told the informant that he was angry with America for killing people in Afghanistan (where his parents originated from) and that he wanted to conduct jihad in America and then go to paradise. Cromitie wanted to attack the World Trade Center, but that had already been hit. He asked the informant to obtain explosives and Stinger missiles, which were ultimately provided to the informant, and then to the terrorist suspects by the FBI. The alleged terrorists had conducted their own surveillance of planes at a nearby Air National Guard base, noting they were going to target these aircraft with their newly obtained ground-to-air missile in a simultaneous attack on the Jewish centers and the aircraft.

After the initial flurry of positive media coverage of this story, some will Inevidebly suggest the suspects must have been "set up" by an elaborate sting operation, and would have been unable to carry out any such plan had it not been for the support of the FBI and other investigative agencies, i.e., they were otherwise innocent men (all previously convicted criminals) who were entrapped by overzealous federal and local law enforcement agencies. To find other similar foiled plots you need only need turn the pages of history back to June 2007 to another four potential terrorists, men who were plotting to blow up the jet fuel lines leading into JFK airport; or May 2007 to find the six men who planned to pose as pizza deliverymen to attack soldiers at Ft. Dix, NJ; or August 2005 when yet another four men plotted to destroy synagogues and military facilities in the LA, California area; or August 2004 when two men were arrested after planning to bomb the NYC subway system, or back to December 2001 when Richard Reid was arrested after attempting to detonate a shoe bomb on a U.S. airliner.

And the above list goes on and on, both in the U.S. and overseas, to include incidents like the June 2007 attack by a group of men, including medical doctors, that tried to bomb the airport in Glasgow, Scotland, and the August 2006 plot that involved 24 men across Great Britain and Pakistan who planned to destroy 10 airliners enroute to America from England. That group allegedly planned to use liquid explosive devices to blow up the planes over the Atlantic Ocean, devices made from a sports drink mixed with a peroxide-based paste to form a potentially explosive cocktail that the terrorists planned to carry onboard the flights. It was this plot that caused the limiting of liquids that passengers can hand carry with them on airlines today. That plan appeared very similar to a 1995 plot by 9/11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed when he sought to blow up 11 airliners traveling across the Pacific Ocean.

While some will be quick to call the latest four arrestees in NYC inept simple men, pawns of a government plot to get Muslims, or men who would never have gone forward were it not for the assistance, support and prodding of the FBI, others will also point out that had law enforcement had a similar informant in contact with Timothy McVeigh or any of the 9/11 conspirators we would never have seen the tragedy in Oklahoma City or the mass murders we witnesses that fateful September day that now seems so long ago.

We cannot forget there is a fine line between a conspiracy and the carrying out of such a plot, a line, if crossed, can result in the death of thousands of innocents by emotionally challenged men with twisted political and religious beliefs, beliefs that somehow justify the mass murder of men, women and children who never did a thing to their killers. We need realize that plots like the one stopped in NYC are being hatched across the U.S. and around the world on a daily basis, and, as has been said in the past, "law enforcement must be right 100% of the time while the terrorists need be lucky only once." The world, unfortunately, has seen far too many "lucky" terrorists. What we need to do is stop such groups from committing murder and mayhem while at the same time making other similar plotters think twice before they put together similar plans. What we know, though, is that the U.S., and NYC remain at the center of terroristic crosshairs and the plot we stopped today could have been the one that killed us tomorrow.