Infinitive Splitter

Big news today is Khalid Sheik Mohammad’s claim of responsibility for 31 acts of terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks, which he claims to have masterminded “from A to Z,” and the decapitation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl; the New York Times has a list:

1. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
2. The 9/11 attacks, from A to Z.
3. The shoe bomber operation to down two American planes.
4. A 2002 shooting in Kuwait that killed an American marine.
5. The Bali nightclub bombing that killed more than 180 in 2002.
6. Planning attacks against several prominent American skyscrapers.
7. Planning to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers.
8. Planning to bomb the Panama Canal.
9. Planning to assassinate several former American presidents, including President Carter.
10. Planning to bomb several New York landmarks, including the stock exchange and suspension bridges.

…and more.

The Times’ front-page story notes that it is “not clear how many of Mr. Mohammed’s expansive claims were legitimate,” and, indeed, the first thing I thought when NPR awoke me with the news this morning was how similar this sounds to the scene at the end of the first season of The Wire where, in order to avoid the death penalty (and help his friends) Wee-Bey falsely confesses to a series of open murders.

Khalid Sheik Mohammad is a preemptively convicted enemy combatant in a military tribunal and obviously not a candidate for a plea bargain to reduce his sentence, but how is major skepticism not everyone’s first reaction?