American Terrorist

From Voice of America:

Eric Rudolph has pleaded guilty to the Atlanta Olympics bombing and a string of other deadly blasts...

He was accused of four bombings in the late 90's -- at two abortion clinics, a gay nightclub, and at the '96 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Up until Wednesday, these were only accusations.

Then Eric Rudolph pleaded guilty to all four crimes in courts in Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta...

Prosecutors say Rudolph, a right wing extremist, chose the Atlanta Olympics to embarrass the U.S. government in the eyes of the world, because of what he called its abominable sanctioning of abortion, which he considers murder.

Rudolph successfully eluded authorities for more than five years, triggering a massive manhunt in the Appalachian wilderness. The search ended when he was finally caught near a grocery store in Murphy, North Carolina.

A plea bargain with prosecutors will spare Rudolph the death penalty -- instead, he will serve four consecutive life terms in prison without parole.
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From AP:

During a two-year series of bombings in the Deep South, Eric Rudolph considered himself a warrior — against abortion, which he calls murder, and a government that permits it.

A sometimes-rambling, sometimes-reflective 11-page manifesto released by Rudolph's attorneys Wednesday soon after he entered his last guilty plea in the bombings gave the most detailed look yet into the mind of the former Army explosives expert who killed two people and injured more than 120 others...

In the statement, Rudolph said stopping abortion — "this holocaust," he called it — was his main motive. Any agent of a government that allows it, he reasoned, is an enemy that deserves death.

He also apologized to his victims who don't work for the government or perform abortions, rejected virtually every theory about his motives laid out over the years, and spelled out the strategies, techniques and, ultimately, failures involved in his attacks.

Among the information: that the Olympic bombing was intended to be part of a weeklong campaign of explosions aimed at shutting down the games and embarrassing the U.S. government.

Rebutting claims that his anti-government views were shaped by racism, his family or involvement in the extreme fundamentalist Christian Identity movement, Rudolph called himself a Roman Catholic at war over abortion.

"Because I believe that abortion is murder, I also believe that force is justified ... in an attempt to stop it," he wrote, "whether these agents of the government are armed or otherwise they are legitimate targets in the war to end this holocaust."

...In a postscript to his statement, Rudolph belittled, in sometimes mocking tones, theories that have swirled for years about his possible motives.

He denied any allegiance to the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-gay Christian Identity movement, saying he attended an Identity church for about six months in the early 1980s only because the father of a woman he was dating went there.

Full Text of Eric Rudolph's Confession
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Eric Rudolph, the man behind four bombings, the killing of two people, and the injuring of more than 120 others, proudly claimed responsibility for his actions. He takes pride in his actions because he thinks of himself as a holy warrior, "a Roman Catholic at war over abortion."

Like Rudolph, I am Roman Catholic and anti-abortion.

Unlike Rudolph, I am not a terrorist.

Will his crimes be used to harass Catholics and pro-lifers?

After the 9/11 attacks, public officials all the way up to President Bush reminded citizens that the radical Islamic fundamentalists had perverted their religion to justify hijacking planes and slamming them into buildings filled with thousands of innocents. They told the public not to blame all Arabs or Muslims for the acts of the nineteen cowardly thugs that carried out the attacks.

Similarly, the terrorist acts of Eric Rudolph should not be used as ammunition to attack all Catholics and pro-life supporters.

Rudolph is no holy warrior. He is a murderer. He, too, is a terrorist.

I find it ironic that he says he was fighting to stop abortion, the killing of innocent lives, by engaging in murder himself. He cannot claim to uphold the sanctity of human life when he goes about destroying it.

Eric Rudolph is a terrorist.

Terrorists are not pro-life.