...The photograph taken during interrogation shows an intense, scuffed up middle-aged man with a thin moustache, a beard, and a head bandage..."He called it a 'failed experiment,' I'll never forget that," says Lt. Col. David Haight, whose unit thwarted the attack. "I've never struck an Iraqi, but that really got to me." ...
At the mosque on that June morning, there was local anger at the "humiliation," Iraqis say, of seeing Tahma handcuffed and looking roughed up. Even after the sheik described the role he played in the failed attack — three separate times, as requested by the Americans — there were still disbelieving stares.
"They apprehended our idol … our teacher who tells us what is right and what is wrong," recalls Maktouf Aurabi, the interim caretaker of the mosque, who wears thick eyeglasses, and is missing several teeth. "We can't do anything at the moment for him. It was like he died in front of us." "Just imagine a church, and they take the bishop away," adds Abdul Karim Jawad..
Tahma made the attack "because of Western ideals," says the intelligence officer: "He said: 'You are bringing Western culture and satellite images into our society. You brought nude magazines and distributed them.'"...."But if someone only talks against the coalition and are arrested, that causes a problem for us," ..."These guys, you can't change their minds — you have to kill them, and squash them like an ant," says a senior U.S. officer familiar with Tahma's case. "He's a terrorist."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/WorldNewsTonight/iraq_wahhabis_csm030917.html
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