'A Wonderful Boy, My Sweetheart'

A wonderful boy, of course, who's another incarnation of Johnny Walker Lindh.

He was the terrorist next door.

A former Boy Scout from Long Island turned his back on his All-American life and converted to Islam, joining al Qaeda in Pakistan and firing rockets at a US military base in Afghanistan, authorities said yesterday.

Bryant Neal Vinas, a 26-year-old son of South American immigrants who came to the United States to give their son a better life, instead became a jihadist hell-bent on destroying America.

"He broke my heart. This is not my son," his Argentinian-born mother, Maria Vinas, of Medford, LI, told The Post, choking back tears. "I hope I never see him again."

The one-time devout Catholic's zeal to shed American blood was not contained to conflicts abroad, authorities said.

According to court papers filed in Brooklyn federal court, he also handed over to his al Qaeda handlers "expert advice and assistance" about how to blow up the subway here in New York and the Long Island Rail Road.

When he was finally arrested on the battlefield in Afghanistan and US officials caught wind of the plot, it prompted a massive security alert at Penn Station and other transit hubs last Thanksgiving.

Vinas' bizarre journey from an average suburban life in Suffolk County to that of a bearded mullah in the terrorist no-man's land of Waziristan in Pakistan has emerged as a cautionary tale of militant Islam's reach.

"A wonderful boy, my sweetheart," his mother said. "I called him my teddy bear."

Maria lost track of her son not long after giving up custody when she and her husband divorced nine years ago. When he moved out, Bryant, a one-time Scout, was active in the Catholic church.

"My husband was very religious," she said. "He destroyed my son, obviously."

The father, Juan Vinas, originally from Peru, told the Los Angeles Times that his son was living with him as late as September 2007 and became immersed in Islam after he began attending a mosque in Selden, LI. He said Bryant grew increasingly reclusive and headstrong.

Bryant began wearing Islamic robes and a skullcap, said, Juan Vinas, who was extensively interviewed by the feds.

"He became very excited" about Islam, converted from Catholicism and even tried to get his father to convert.

Yeah, I'm just positive nothing was said at that mosque that led this maggot to a life of terrorism.

Meanwhile, it looks like the spawn of Osama bin Laden is now worm food. May Vinas soon join him.