Convicted terrorist Mohanad Shareef Hammadi boasted to an FBI agent during an undercover sting operation in 2011 that while serving with the insurgency in Iraq he “had Americans for breakfast and dinner.”

Now, the same terrorist who spoke those words and tried to provide firearms, explosives, money and other resources to al-Qaida is once again asking for mercy.

Hammadi, who has already had his sentence upheld by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, is asking once again – on the taxpayers’ dime – for a federal court to give him a lesser sentence due to his court-appointed lawyer being ineffective.

Hammadi, who once complained like a little baby about being held in isolation, is arguing that he had very little knowledge of the legal process or the English language, affecting his ability to understand the evidence gathered against him and that he believed if he was cooperative enough with law enforcement he could get a reduced sentence. Federal prosecutors ultimately deemed that Hammadi’s cooperation wasn’t significant enough to warrant a motion for a reduction in his sentence.

The federal prosecutors got it right in this case.

His then-court-appointed attorney, James Earhart, told a federal judge Tuesday in Louisville that he didn’t recall having many difficulties communicating with Hammadi.

We think we will take the word of a respected attorney like Earhart over a convicted terrorist who proudly boasted about killing American soldiers. 

All this waste-of-life is doing is feeling sorry for himself because he got caught and knows he will be sitting in a prison cell the rest of his life.

That is exactly where he belongs. He deserves no mercy, no pity. This is a terrorist who sought to take the lives of soldiers on the battlefield in Iraq, came to this country through a flawed vetting process and came to our city and planned to do more harm to U.S. and coalition forces in the field.

Now he thinks he deserves pity or leniency.

We think not.

What he deserves is to rot away in his little prison cell and think every day for the rest of his life about the innocent lives he took, the fact that he had choices and he chose the wrong path when arriving in our country and our city. Let him grieve over the fact that he will never see the light of day again. 

This is what he deserves, nothing less.