The Bomber's Message

In US District Court in Manhattan on Monday, June 21, 2010 Faisal Shazad, a Pakistan-born US citizen pleaded guilty to a failed car bomb attack on Times Square. Below is an excerpt of his testimony before Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum as taken from an Associated Press article, "Failed NY Car Bomber: I'm Guilty," by Tom Hays and Larry Neumeister as published in the Lexington Herald-Leader of Tuesday, June 22, 2010. The bomber has a message for us. Think about it.

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The judge repeatedly interrupted Shazad, including when he said his plot was to retailiate against the United States and the forces of up to 50 other countries, that had "attacked Muslim lands."

Cederbaum said, "But not the people who were walking in Times Square that night. Did you look around to see who they were?"

"Well the people select the government," Shazad said. "We consider them all the same. The drones, when they hit ... "

Cederbaum interrupted again: "Including the children?"

Shazad answered: "Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It's a war and in war, they kill people. They're killing all Muslims."

Later he added, "I am part of the answer to the U.S. terorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. and, on behalf of that, I'm avenging the attack. Living in the United States, Americans only care about their own people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."