The suspect in the failed Times Square bombing pleaded guilty Monday, an abrupt and expedited end to a terrorism case that extended to Pakistan and an Islamic militant group there. The defendant, Faisal Shahzad, 30, listened calmly as each of 10 counts was read to him in Federal District Court in Manhattan, and he indicated that he understood the charges and the penalties he faced. Shahzad seemed relaxed as he recounted how and why he conceived the plot, traveling to Pakistan in December to join the Taliban and receive training in constructing a bomb. And despite his admission of guilt and his extended cooperation with the authorities since his arrest, Shahzad was unapologetic, characterizing himself as 'part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim people.' 'I want to plead guilty, and I'm going to plead guilty 100 times over,' he said, 'because until the hour the U.S. pulls it forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S., and I plead guilty to that.' The plea and Shahzad's comments came four days after a federal grand jury returned an indictment that offered new details about the government's accusations that Tehrik-e-Taliban, the umbrella organization for the Pakistani Taliban, had assisted Shahzad in his plot. In court, he admitted receiving the training, saying he had gone to Pakistan to find the Taliban and learned how to build a bomb that he planned to detonate as part of his plan. 'With them, I did the training to wage an attack inside the United States of America,' Shahzad said. 'Any kind of attack?' Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum asked. 'It would have been any kind of attack,' Shahzad said, 'but I was given bombing training, and that's what I learned there.' Wearing a dark blue shirt and a white skullcap, Shahzad stood for nearly an hour answering the judge's questions about his motivations, his background, even his family. 'I had a wife and two beautiful kids,' he said, adding that they had returned to Pakistan to be with family. And it was seemingly with equanimity that Shahzad spoke of his plan to detonate a car bomb in New York City. 'I chose the center of Times Square,' he explained. (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) 'Were there a lot of people in the street?' Cedarbaum asked. 'Yes,' Shahzad replied. 'Obviously the time, it was evening, and obviously it was a Saturday, so that's the time I chose.' 'You wanted to injure a lot of people?' the judge asked. Shahzad said he had, adding that he wanted to damage a building 'and to injure people or kill people.' But, he added, people should 'understand where I'm coming from.' He said that he considered himself 'a Muslim soldier,' and that U.S. forces had attacked Muslim lands. Cedarbaum interjected: 'Not the people who were walking in Times Square that night. Did you look around to see who they were?' Shahzad replied, 'Well, the people selected the government; we consider them all the same.' 'Including the children?' the judge asked. 'When the drone hits in Afghanistan or Iraq,' Shahzad replied, 'they don't see the children. They kill women, children. They kill everybody. It's a war. They kill people. They've been killing a lot of Muslims.' The guilty plea was consistent with Shahzad's behavior since his arrest May 3, when he began cooperating with the federal authorities for more than two weeks without counsel and waived his Miranda rights. The only question would be whether Shahzad would seek some sort of leniency in sentencing in return for his assistance. The answer seemed to come after the hearing, when the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, released a letter that had been sent to Shahzad's lawyers. It made clear that there was no plea deal, and that in choosing to plead guilty to all 10 counts, Shahzad faced the mandatory life term, the maximum sentence for which he is eligible. 'Faisal Shahzad plotted and launched an attack that could have led to serious loss of life,' Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, 'and today the American criminal justice system ensured that he will pay the price for his actions.' Cedarbaum scheduled Shahzad's sentencing for Oct. 5. His lawyer, Philip L. Weinstein, had no comment after the hearing. Shahzad's plea came on a day when he was supposed to be arraigned on the recent indictment. But when the hearing began at midday, the judge announced that the parties had asked for a delay until the late afternoon. Before a packed courtroom, Weinstein and a prosecutor left the room for about 15 minutes for a meeting with Cedarbaum. The judge then returned and announced that the parties had asked that the hearing be delayed until 4 p.m. Shahzad re-entered the courtroom just after 4:30. He sat at the defense table, drumming his fingers as Weinstein conferred with the judge and a prosecutor. Cedarbaum then told Shahzad that the first charge he faced was attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. 'How do you plead to that charge?' the judge asked. 'I do plead guilty to that charge,' Shahzad said. The judge then said to Shahzad, 'I gather you want to plead guilty to all of them.' 'Yes,' Shahzad said. Throughout the session, Shahzad did not raise his voice and answered the judge's questions straightforwardly. There were also no outbursts from the spectators. At one point, Shahzad said he wanted to read 'a small statement,' but Cedarbaum told him to wait. When he tried again later, she said, 'Please, don't read it. I want to know what happened. Tell me what you did.' Shahzad said he became an American citizen last April or May and then left for Pakistan in June. He spent six months with his family in Peshawar, he said, and then left in December with a couple of friends to join the Taliban in Waziristan, in the northwestern part of the country. He was there for 40 days, and he said he spent 5 days receiving bomb training from Tehrik-e-Taliban. It was there that he developed his bomb plot, he said. 'I made a pact with them,' he said. He returned to the United States in February, he said, carrying about $8,000 in cash, half of which the Taliban had given him. Later he needed more money, he said. 'They sent it to me twice, once in March and once in April,' he said. Shahzad described building three explosive devices in his house in Bridgeport, Conn., and placing them inside the Nissan Pathfinder that he later drove to Times Square. He said the main component of the device was a fertilizer-based bomb held in a gun cabinet in the Pathfinder's trunk. If that bomb did not work, his plans were to detonate propane gas cylinders and to start a fire in the car with gasoline. He set a detonator for the device to explode in about five minutes, he said, and then walked away. The bombs did not go off. 'And I don't know the reason why,' Shahzad said. 'I was waiting to hear a sound, but I couldn't hear any sound, so I thought it probably didn't go off. So I just walked to Grand Central and went home.' 