Times Square Bomber Enters Guilty Plea; Calls It War

Faisal Shahzad, the alleged Times Square bomber whose attempt to blow up a car bomb in Times Square failed because the explosives didn't detonate properly, entered a guilty plea in federal court this afternoon.

Calling himself a Muslim soldier, a defiant Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing and left a sinister warning that unless the U.S. leaves Muslim lands alone, "we will be attacking U.S."

Wearing a white skull cap, prison smocks and a dark beard, Faisal Shahzad entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan just days after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 terrorism and weapons counts, some of which carried mandatory life prison sentences. He pleaded guilty to them all.

U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum challenged Shahzad repeatedly with questions such as whether he had worried about killing children in Times Square.

"One has to understand where I'm coming from," Shahzad calmly replied. "I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier."

The 30-year-old described his effort to set off a bomb in an SUV he parked in Times Square on May 1, saying he chose the warm Saturday night because it would be crowded with people he could injure or kill. He said he conspired with the Pakistan Taliban, which provided more than $15,000 to fund his operation.

He explained that he packed his vehicle with three separate bomb components, hoping to set off a fertilizer-fueled bomb packed in a gun cabinet, a set of propane tanks and gas canisters rigged with fireworks to explode into a fireball. He also revealed he was carrying a folding assault rifle for "self-defense."

Shahzad said he lit a fuse and waited 2 1/2 to five minutes for the bomb to erupt.

"I was waiting to hear a sound but I didn't hear a sound. ... So I walked to Grand Central and went home," he said.

Shahzad dismissed the judge's question about the children by saying the U.S. didn't care when children were killed in Muslim countries.

"It's a war. I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people," he said. "On behalf of that, I'm revenging the attack. Living in the United States, Americans only care about their people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."

Cedarbaum also asked Shahzad if he understood that the people in Times Square might not have anything to do with what happened overseas.

"The people select the government. We consider them all the same," Shahzad said during the hour-long hearing.

Shahzad didn't particularly care about how many Muslims murdered each other in sectarian violence in places like Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran, but he's complaining about when the US goes after those who are responsible for carrying out terrorist attacks against the US?

It's an ignorance of the fact that Muslim terrorists carried out attacks against the US for decades before the US responded with force to go after the terror regimes.

But this is the twisted ideology that Shahzad and his coreligionists have adopted. It's a hatred of all things America, despite all the things that the US had done for them.

Shahzad faces life in prison when he is sentenced later this year.