Times Square Bomb Plotter Pleads Guilty in Terror Case

[bergie321]

Source: The New York Times

The defendant in the failed Times Square bombing pleaded guilty on Monday, an abrupt and expedited end to a terrorism case that extended to Pakistan and an Islamic militant group there.
Related

The defendant, Faisal Shahzad, 30, listened as each count of the 10-count indictment was read to him, and then indicated that he understood the charges and the penalties that he faced.

“I want to plead guilty 100 times over,” said Mr. Shahzad, who faces life in prison.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/nyregion/22terror.html

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Whaddya know? Treating terrorists like criminals works (again).

[Critters2]

1. How 'bout that. Good to hear. nt

[MidwestTransplant]

2. NOOOO we should have waterboarded him.

[Tempest]

3. There are some bright red faces over at the National Review

Times Square Bomber Pleads Guilty, Hours After National Review Slams DoJ’s Inability To Secure Guilty Plea

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/21/shahzad-pleads-guilty/

[Thor_MN]

4. I have issues with one of the charges...

Attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Bush took us to war with another country on trumped up charges of possession of WMD. In Minnesota, I can't legally buy fireworks that explode or go up in the air. But I can legally walk into Wal-Mart and buy a WMD with cash, no ID required, by the defintion used in this case. In my opinion, the term WMD should be reserved for NBC. Nuclear, Chemical, Biological weapons. F'ed up McGyver bombs are NOT WMD. Calling the mess this guy assembled a WMD justifies pre-emptive action against every garage and sotrage shed in the country.

The Bush admin "fear, fear, fear" policies turned anything used by a terraist into a WMD. It's past time to junk the trash enacted by the GOP and return to rational definitions. Attempted use of an explosive device is more than enough, this joker would have made a bigger explosion by holding a match to his ass after eating at Taco Bell.

[The abyss]

5. Well stated!

[Thor_MN]

6. Minus the spelling errors...

anyway... When will I ever make it force of habit to spell check??...

[gorfle]

7. I disagree.

In my opinion, the term WMD should be reserved for NBC. Nuclear, Chemical, Biological weapons. F'ed up McGyver bombs are NOT WMD.

Intent is what matters. The fact that this guy was a completely inept bomb maker is beside the point. Suppose he had pulled off another Timothy McVeigh?

Sorry, but if you set off a conventional explosive powerful enough to blow away half a federal building, you've made a WMD in my book.

And this is what this terrorist fully intended to do. We're lucky that he sucked at it.

[Thor_MN]

8. A couple of propane tanks does not have the potential

The Times Square Bomb was never intended to bring down a building, it was intended to kill people in the street. McVeigh was using a truckload of ANFO, a mixture of Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil, that is commonly used commercially as an explosive. Conventional explosive is a term to distinguish from nuclear devices. If you want to call McVeigh's bomb massive, I'm fine with that. WMD? That's hyperbole.

The Times Square joker (the fact that I have no clue what his name is tells me something) bought some fertilizer mix that can not ever explode. Charging him with WMD is like charging an idiot who bought a bag of oregano with possession of drugs. He intended to buy marijuana, but never actually had any. The Times Square bomber intended to use an explosive device, but never had one. A hand grenade tossed into the street would have been more lethal than what was in Times Square. I have personally bought every single thing that was in that car over my lifetime. I'd prefer that I (and every person on the planet) were not to be able to be charged with possession of a WMD for buying garden supplies and stuff for a 4th of July barbecue.

Making a gun type fission bomb is easy, you could do it with a 4 story building, some pipe and some weapons grade uranium. If one were stupid enough to buy a couple softball sized pieces of lead thinking they were fissile material, does that make them guilty of possessing a real WMD? The intent is there.

I'm not saying let him go, I'm saying charge him with appropriate crimes. He is being charged with the same crime that brought us the Iraq War. A little difference in scale, don't you think? Or are we going to start classifying hand grenades as WMD? That makes every infantry grunt in our forces the same as Saddam. They had WMD at one point, prove that they no longer have them.

I say that enough charges of attempted murder and attempted use of an explosive device are more than enough to lock him up for life, why do we need to charge him with something that we could hang a trillion dollar war on?

[gorfle]

9. I see what you are saying

I see what you are saying, but I still think intent matters.

Aside from the fact that pot should be legal, if someone buys or sells what they think is pot they should be charged as if it was pot.

This guy was an idiot. He obviously did not know how to build a bomb. This does not negate the fact that he was trying to build a massive explosive device in order to kill a lot of people. I don't care if he tried to build it out of playdough - intent matters.