Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

"Yes, I am a terrorist, yes,"

Jonathan Finer, Washington Post:

The U.S. soldiers sensed something wasn't quite right when an ambulance carrying two dead bodies arrived Thursday morning at a checkpoint for people evacuating this city under siege.

Hanging off the sides of the vehicle were three young men who said they were escorting the remains of family members killed in the previous night's bombardment to a local hospital. But when an Iraqi policeman looked them over, he pointed to a man who wore white sweatpants and a white shirt and appeared to be in his early twenties. "I know him. He must be detained," the officer said. "He murdered a policeman."

The interrogation by American soldiers initially went nowhere. The man insisted he spoke Turkish, not Arabic, and therefore could not communicate with the Americans' interpreters. Asked his name, he kept alternating between "Habib" and "Faris." At one point, he rolled on the floor making retching noises as if he were going to throw up. But everything changed when exasperated soldiers said they had no choice but to turn him over to the Iraqis, who were anxious to take him into custody.

"Yes, I am a terrorist, yes," the man said in perfect Arabic, his ailment apparently forgotten. "I would rather you shoot me in the head than give me to them."

...

The man who was plucked from the ambulance and interrogated Thursday appeared genuinely frightened of facing the Iraqi police. "Please no," he repeated several times. Once soldiers realized they had a lever to extract information, they called for Iraqi policemen to sit in on the questioning. The officers said the man was involved in a gruesome killing of a local policeman who was beheaded, his corpse placed on the street with a bomb lodged inside of it that exploded when a dog began sniffing at the body.

When the policemen first entered the room, the man turned to face the corner, refusing to look at them. After a series of increasingly pointed questions shouted at him, he became defiant.

"No matter what you say, I am a holy warrior. I am going to paradise," he told the interrogators, referring to the belief cited by many insurgent fighters that those who die for their cause have a special place in the afterlife. "The rest of you are infidels who will go to hell."

Religious tolerance is not one of the charms of the enemy.