A self-proclaimed ”Muslim soldier” who bungled a plot to bomb Times Square promised Monday that others will succeed where he failed.

A remorseless Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty to the frightening scheme to blow up the Crossroads of the World on a busy Saturday night, when it was packed with New Yorkers and tourists.

“It’s a war,” Shahzad, 30, said in a hateful screed to Manhattan Federal Judge Miriam Cedarbaum.

“I’m going to plead guilty a hundred times over because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes … we will be attacking the U.S.,” he said. “And I plead guilty to that.”

He never once said he was sorry, even when Cedarbaum pressed him on the human carnage – including the death of many children – he could have caused if his bomb-packed SUV exploded the night of May 1.

“Did you look around to see who they were?” Cedarbaum asked him of his potential victims.

“Well, the people select the government,” Shahzad said. “We consider them all the same. …”

“Including the children?” the judge demanded.

“Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody,” Shahzad fired back.

“They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It’s a war, and in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.”

“One has to understand where I’m coming from,” Shahzad told the judge. “I consider myself … a Muslim soldier.”

“And it’s a war to kill people,” he coldly declared.

Wearing a white knit skullcap and a blue shirt and pants, the former Elizabeth Arden account analyst-turned-Jihad Joe calmly detailed how he learned to make bombs in the militant Waziristan stronghold in Pakistan last year.

He returned to the United States in early February, with $4,000 in Taliban cash. The terror group continued sending him money in two payments – $5,000 on Feb. 25 from a co-conspirator and $7,000 more on April 10.

He used the money to buy a Nissan Pathfinder off craigslist and parts to turn the vehicle into a crude rolling bomb. He parked the SUV near a packed theater in the Marriott Marquis hotel – and tried to ignite the bomb.

He says he still doesn’t know why the bomb didn’t explode – and waited up to five minutes for it to blow.

“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, adding that he carried a concealed 9-mm. rifle he had packed “for my self-defense” should he have to confront cops.

The gun was found in his car when he was caught two days later at Kennedy Airport trying to escape the U.S. aboard a Dubai-bound jetliner. MORE

Shahzad pleaded guilty yesterday to 10 federal crimes, including the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism.

He faces life in prison when he is sentenced Oct. 5. He is likely to end up in a federal penitentiary in either Florence, Colo., or Terre Haute, Ind. The worst of the worst are sent to Colorado’s “administrative maximum” prison – known as Supermax.

Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, renounced Islam there. Other inmates are Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Al Qaeda thug Zacarias Moussaoui.

Attorney General Eric Holder said justice was served by the guilty plea. “Faisal Shahzad plotted and launched an attack that could have led to serious loss of life, and today the American criminal justice system ensured that he will pay the price for his actions,” Holder said.

Mayor Bloomberg warned the city is still in the cross hairs.

“The NYPD, FBI and federal prosecutors deserve enormous credit for cracking – and closing – the Faisal Shahzad case so quickly,” the mayor said, “but we know that our city remains a top target for terrorists, and we will continue doing everything possible to keep our city safe.”

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – International troops opened fire on a bus carrying Afghan civilians Monday, killing four people, officials said, setting off anti-American protests in a key southern city where coalition forces hope to rally the public for a coming offensive against the Taliban.

NATO and Afghan authorities declined to identify the international forces involved by nationality, although numerous Afghans said they were American.

Elsewhere in the city of Kandahar, three suicide bombers attacked an Afghan intelligence services compound, but security forces who opened fire repelled them, said the spokesman for the government of the surrounding province, also called Kandahar. Four intelligence agents and six civilians, including a teacher at a nearby school were wounded in the attack, said the spokesman, Zelmai Ayubi. Read the full story

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHANK, Afghanistan – Veterans of Iraq recall rolling to war along asphalted highways, sweltering in flat scrublands and chatting with city-wise university graduates connected to the wider world.

Now fighting in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers invariably encounter illiterate farmers who may never have talked to an American as they slog into remote villages on dirt tracks through bitterly cold, snow-streaked mountains.

“Before deploying here we were given training on language, culture, everything. I thought that since I was an Iraq combat veteran, I didn’t need any of that stuff. I was wrong. Both countries may be Muslim but this is a totally different place,” says Sgt. Michael McCann, returning from a patrol in the east-central province of Logar. Read the full story

Support for the US mission in Afghanistan has slipped to a new low, with 44 percent of Americans now saying the war there has been worth the cost, according to a recently released poll.

Amid mounting divisiveness over what was once one of President Barack Obama’s top foreign policy issues, the poll by The Washington Post and ABC News also showed ratings for how he has handled the mission there eroding, to 45 percent approving of how he is dealing with Afghanistan and 47 disapproving, compared to 63 percent approval last year. Read the full story

No easy options as Obama agonises over Afghan war

By Chris Otton (AFP)

KABUL — With Hamid Karzai confirmed as Afghan president for another five years, the pressure is on Barack Obama to declare his plans for winning a war which commanders say is in danger of being lost. Read the full story

Iran’s military suffered a heavy blow today when a suicide bomber killed at least 29 people in the country’s volatile south-east, including several Revolutionary Guard commanders.

The victims included the guards’ commander, General Noor Ali Shooshtari, thought to be the most senior member killed in recent years.

Local media said at least 28 had been wounded in the bombing at a conference hall in Sarbaz in Sistan-Baluchistan, Iran’s poorest province, as Revolutionary Guard commanders met local tribal elders.

Conflicting reports said an undetermined number of commanders had died. Initial accounts put the number at six, but Hosein Ali Shahriari, MP for Zahedan, the provincial capital, told the semi-official news agency ILNA, that at least 20 commanders had died.

Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh, chief commander of Sistan-Baluchistan province, was also killed.It was Iran’s highest military death toll since the end of the 1980-1988 Iraq war, the conservative website Tabnak said.

Officials immediately blamed Britain and the US as rescue workers sifted through wreckage searching for survivors. “Surely foreign elements, particularly those linked to the global arrogance [regime code for America and Britain], were involved in this attack,” a guards statement read out on state TV said.

Suspicion also centred on Jundullah, a militant Sunni group that has claimed responsibility for previous bombings.

Official reports were confused. The official news agency, IRNA, reported that an attacker with explosives blew himself up. The English-language state satellite channel, Press TV, said there were two simultaneous explosions: one at the meeting and another targeting an additional convoy of guards en route to the gathering.

The blast appeared to be a direct challenge to the Revolutionary Guards.

The elite force – seen as the guardian of Iran’s Islamic revolution – took over direct responsibility for Sistan-Baluchistan’s security this year after a spate of attacks.

The province has been a centre of recent unrest after Jundallah took up arms on behalf of the local Baluchi Sunni population, which it claims suffers discrimination at the hands of Iran’s Shia rulers.

In May, the group, led by Abdulmalek Rigi, claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in Zahedan, the provincial capital, that killed 25. Iran later executed 13 members that it claimed were involved in the bombing. Iran has previously linked Jundallah to al-Qaida and claimed it was receiving American backing, something the US denies. Other sources have linked the organisation to the Taliban in Pakistan.

The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, condemned today’s attack, claiming it was aimed at disrupting security in south-east Iran.

“The intention of the terrorists was definitely to disrupt security in Sistan-Baluchistan province,” Larijani told an open session of parliament broadcast live on state radio.

Jundullah has carried out bombings, kidnappings and other attacks against Iranian soldiers and other forces in recent years, including a car bombing in February 2007 that killed 11 members of the Revolutionary Guard near Zahedan.

Jundullah also claimed responsibility for the December 2006 kidnapping of seven Iranian soldiers in the Zahedan area. It threatened to kill them unless members of the group in Iranian prisons were released. The soldiers were released a month later, apparently after talks through tribal mediators.

In March 2006, 22 provincial officials were shot in cold blood on an isolated road between Zabol and Zahedan after being ambushed by alleged Jundullah gunmen.

Sistan-Baluchistan, which is Iran’s most notoriously lawless province, lies on a major drug transit run from Afghanistan. Nearly 4,000 Iranian security officers are believed to have been killed in clashes with smugglers since 1979.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

It is unfortunate that Afghanistan has seen all the trouble it has from both domestic and foreign problems. The growing claims of election fraud aren’t helping the country’s current situation any more. Here are some clips of articles discussing the election situation…

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/817df932-910e-11de-bc99-00144feabdc0.html

Afghan poll fraud claims grow

Allegations of ballot-stuffing, intimidation and cheating by officials in Afghanistan’s presidential election multiplied yesterday, threatening to sap credibility from a vote crucial to US President Barack Obama’s strategy for fighting the Taliban. Read the full story