What did Daniel Pearl's colleagues say about KSM's confession?

I can't imagine what the editors at the Wall Street Journal must have felt when they read that KSM, who confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks, also confessed to the murder of their colleague, Daniel Pearl. "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew," he is on record having told a U.S. military tribunal on March 10. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

They don't really go into their personal feelings in today's editorial but they do manage to point out some interesting details.

First, they do the math for us. According to what KSM says in his statement, a statement he swears wasn't coerced, for the record, he claims to have been responsible for the murder of some 3,280 people in 31 actual attacks. These attacks included the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombings in 2002, the Istanbul attacks against Jewish and Western targets, and the murder of two GIs in Kuwait (though it turns out one actually survived to prove KSM wrong as James Taranto reports).

Then, there were the attacks he planned but for one reason or another failed to carry out - perhaps because he was captured? Anyway, these attacks targeted 12 countries across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Given the range and scope of his designs, it does seem impossible, as the Journal editors suggest, not to acknowledge that this was a world war that KSM thought he was waging.

But, "perhaps most ominously," as the editors then go on to point out, "KSM also admitted to being 'directly in charge' of 'managing and following up on the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations on American Soil,'" as the Journal quotes directly from his statement.

"Given such a confession," the editors then ask, "is it too much to ask the FBI to reconsider its dogmatic view that the 2001 anthrax attacks could only have had a domestic source?"

They have more to say, and you should read the whole piece, but let me finish with their conclusion:

"For sure, I'm American enemies," said KSM in his broken English. For sure, too, he is a reminder of the evil that still confronts us in this conflict with radical Islam, and one that we underestimate at our existential peril.