JIHAD IN LITTLE ROCK SHOOTING

As plain as day. But still our military intelligence corps stumbles all over itself trying to downplay the obvious. Such immense self-loathing in the broad and toothy face of an army of jihadists so cocksure of its own righteous endeavors, that every makeshift soldier we capture in vain usually sings chapter and verse like a canary before, during, and after an attack, precisely the reason why they are attacking.

Or they invent one on the spot from the latest headlines, knowing how much we the enemy will grieve over our own successes, knowing gleefully by heart the Qu'ran gives them carte blanche to kill the infidels just as a matter of manifest destiny as the West remains deaf, dumb, and moronic in dealing with its adversaries, like a drunken but broken empire already on its knees...

This fellow apparently was a slow learner.

MEMPHIS — A Tennessee man accused of killing a soldier outside a Little Rock, Ark., military recruiting station last year has asked a judge to change his plea to guilty, claiming for the first time that he is affiliated with a Yemen-based affiliate of Al Qaeda.

In a letter to the judge presiding over his case, the accused killer, Abdulhakim Muhammad, calls himself a soldier in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and calls the shooting “a Jihadi Attack” in retribution for the killing of Muslims by American troops.

“I wasn’t insane or post traumatic nor was I forced to do this Act,” Mr. Muhammad said in a two-page, hand-printed note in pencil. The attack, which he said did not go as planned, was “justified according to Islamic Laws and the Islamic Religion. Jihad — to fight those who wage war on Islam and Muslims.”

It remains unclear whether Mr. Muhammad really has ties to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which President Obama has said is behind the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American plane by a Nigerian man.

But if evidence emerges that his claim is true, it will give the June 1, 2009, shooting in Little Rock new significance at a time when Yemen is being more closely scrutinized as a source of terrorist plots against the United States.

Mr. Muhammad, 24, a Muslim convert from Memphis, spent about 16 months in Yemen starting in the fall of 2007, ostensibly teaching English and learning Arabic. During that time, he married a woman from south Yemen. But he was also imprisoned for several months because he overstayed his visa and was holding a fraudulent Somali passport, the Yemen government said.

Under pressure from the United States government, Yemen deported Mr. Muhammad in late January 2009. But just four months after his return, Mr. Muhammad used a semiautomatic rifle to gun down two soldiers — Pvt. William A. Long and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula — while they were standing outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock, killing Private Long and wounding Private Ezeagwula.

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