Confessions of a Terrorist

BBC News, Tuesday March 10, 2009

"At a pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo Bay last December, Mr. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - who is regarded as one of the most senior operatives in Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network - said he wanted to plead guilty to all charges against him.

The Pentagon says he has admitted to being responsible "from A to Z" for the 2001 (9/11) attacks.

He also reportedly said he had personally decapitated kidnapped US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 and played a role in 30 terror plots.

Mr. Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and sent to the US detention centre in Cuba in 2006." "It appears to be merely another attempt by these detainees to garner publicity," Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon told the BBC. Publicity stunt aside, the brutal nature and absolute disregard for innocent human lives exhibited by these terrorists is repulsive. After leaving nearly 3,000 people dead in the hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington D.C., Mohammed and four others have no shame for their alleged participation. "To us they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor," reads a document signed by all. Mohammed is also thought to have had, or has confessed to, a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, and the Millennium Plot. Mohammed was water-boarded once in captivity to simulate drowning and this, of course, constitutes a torturous act by the CIA not condoned by many Americans ; however, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was strapped down to the water-board, he felt humiliated -- not by the treatment but by the fact that a woman, a red-headed CIA supervisor, was allowed to witness the spectacle, a former intelligence officer told ABC News. After the incident, Mohammed started talking and never shut up. Mohammed hopes to die a martyr as he looks forward to his trial and a probable death sentence. The only justice afforded this criminal will not make him a martyr but will end his bloody wake of terror. He will not receive his just reward in Islamic paradise. According to Richard W. Bulliet, professor at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, a Muslim martyr is someone who wants to extend the boundaries of territories ruled by Muslims. He writes in a recent article,"They are trying to affirm that their motivation was pure so that if they are executed, this will hopefully be seen by God as a substitution for the death that might have occurred in the actual attack. They can't claim martyrdom. All they can claim theologically is that they hope the purity of their will might be recognized by God as qualifying them for the title of martyr." As Mohammed attempts to claim his death will assure God that he is dying for his faith, Mohammed affirms a faith that slaughters innocent people without regard, a faith that kills defenseless humans with pride for a ghastly body count tallied by a vengeful master. The devil take his soul.