They “went to the video tape” at the London airplane bomb trial today … and it wasn’t pretty.

The prosecution played so-called “martyrdom” tapes made by the terror suspects just before they were arrested, which apparently was just before they were allegedly ready to board planes in London bound for the US and Canada with homemade bombs in their bags.

Here’s one choice excerpt:

“This is revenge for the acts of the USA in Muslim lands…As you bomb you will be bombed … As you kill you will be killed.

And another:

“If you go to Iraq and Afghanistan and kill women and children and don’t think your own women and children will be killed…Think again.”

They all look like they were shot at the same time. The guys are sitting I front of a black banner with Arabic writing. In head dress. Frankly looking a little bit uncomfortable, sometimes noticeably reading from a script. It’s one of those “What were they thinking?” moments.

The prosecution said this proved they were serious. To me, it showed they don’t care a lot for the US of A. And that they do respect another fellow. Another excerpt :

“Sheik Usama (Al Qaeda chieftain Usama bin Laden) has warned you … Now is the time for you to be destroyed.”

It seems Al Qaeda was clearly an inspiration for these fellows. And maybe more.

Most of the suspects traveled back and forth between the UK and Pakistan (homebase to AQ) in the months before the arrests. One of them was said by the prosecution to be the “direct link” between the plotters and “those abroad with interest in the plot.”

Hmmm. You can’t fail to notice that the timing of these attacks if they had happened would have been just around the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

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(AP) Suspects in 2006 terror plot, pictured in top row, (left to right): Tanvir Hussain, Assad Sarwar, Umar Islam, Waheed Zaman. Bottom row (left to right): Mohammed Gulzar, Arafat Waheed Khan, Ibrahim Savant and Abdul Ali.

I stared into the alleged faces of terror today … and they didn’t care.They were the eight British Muslim men charged with plotting to blow up planes heading from London to the States … apparently to kill all on board. “All,” according to the British prosecutor, “in the name of Islam.”

The prosecutor went on to say that the eight were “indifferent” to the possible huge civilian casualties their political statement would make. You could tell that from their body language. As I watched via closed circuit video in a room next to the Woolwich Crown Court House in east London, they sat expressionless, even bored.

The testimony today was anything but boring, though. While there’s been much reported on the plot since it was broken up in August 2006, some of it has been secondhand and some of it hasn’t come out at all.

Like the fact that as many 18 planes were possibly going to be targeted by the alleged terrorists, almost all headed for the U.S. from London, to places like New York, Chicago, Denver and San Francisco. When one of the suspects was asked by authorities why detailed information about flights to the U.S. was loaded onto his zip drive he is reported to have said, “Oh they’re U.S. holiday destinations.” Some holiday.

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We should probably pity poor Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill … for four years now he’s been talking with the North Koreans, trying to convince them to give up their suspect nuclear program. His patient and deliberate style has scored the Bush administration big gains.

The North has actually agreed to renounce their nukes in exchange for much-needed economic and diplomatic goodies. They’re already busy dismantling their Yongbyon nuclear facility which has churned out enough plutonium to fuel a half a dozen atomic bombs

But for Hill and his fellow negotiators in the six-party talks, the devil is in the North Korean details.

When he met with us journalists, bleary-eyed, jet-lagged, and negotiations-weary, at midnight on Thursday at the U.S. Mission in Geneva, Hill had to admit there were still a lot of “details” bedeviling the agreement.

First, there’s the matter of a “complete and concrete” declaration by Pyongyang of all of its nuclear activities, such as its alleged uranium enrichment program, which could be capable of delivering material for bombs and nuclear proliferation to countries like Syria for questionable facilities there.

Hill claimed “substantial progress,” but he still admitted that all sides needed to get negotiations moving. In fact, on the other side of town, North Korean negotiators were flatly saying they have no enrichment program and didn’t engage in any proliferation. Stalemate. Keep Reading …