March 27, 2006
A trial without a shred of sense
He said it today. America’s big scary enemy admitted his guilt anew and the public was once again sent shuddering. Of course admitted al Qaida member Zacarias Moussaoui has admitted his role in the terrorist plots involving airplanes and buildings in the past. He’s also not really the scariest terrorist out there. All that makes me wonder just why our government is so intent on killing him. Come on, he probably believes that’d make him a martyr and send him on his way to the virgin ensconced heaven he’s heard so much about.
If you’re not familiar with Moussaoui, he’s the bumbling terrorist our government picked up the summer before September 11 because he was acting kinda weird in flight class and never seemed to show any dedication to learning about landings. Since his incarceration, Moussaoui has repeatedly admitted his involvement with Osama bin Laden’s terror network and always seemed to be having fun with his interrogators and the U.S. court system. He signed a confession last year and is now on trial to determine his punishment. This isn’t about guilt or innocence, but death versus life in prison.
The feds are making the case that since Moussaoui was an al Qaida member and probably knew about the September 11 attacks before they happened, he could have prevented the whole thing if he’d just spilled his guts right after being arrested. Since he didn’t the feds say he should be found guilty of the attacks themselves and put together. Today the admitted al Qaida member changed his story once again and now claims to have actually been scheduled to fly on 9/11. His previous admissions only covered a followup hijack suicide mission, but this time he said exactly what the feds wanted to hear, that he would have flown a fifth plane if he hadn’t been arrested a few weeks before the attacks. He even named names, dropping dime on fellow confessed Richard Reid who is otherwise known as the reason we have to take off our shoes in the airport.
Now the feds want you to believe we can place the blame the whole thing squarely on Moussaoui’s head. He admitted he was a part of it and stopping it all would have been a snap if he’d just told us all of this back then. No one else is in custody so this bungler will have to do. We just get a jury to say he deserves to die and we can claim a major victory for America. To paraphrase the delightful Stephen Colbert in a context he probably wont appreciate, that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.
Sure Moussaoui was a member of a violent terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of America and he’s guilty of numerous major crimes against our country, but our justification for putting this man to death is going to be his reticence to confess his crimes against his sworn enemy. This line of scapegoat reasoning completely ignores all the clues our law enforcement agencies didn’t notice or talk about and all the warnings Our Fine President ignored. The 9/11 Commission did a terrific job of highlighting these numerous mistakes and provided a number of ways to fix them that have yet to be implemented. After reading their work I have a hard time believing the feds would have done anything useful with Moussaoui’s information if he had been so forthcoming to his enemy at the time.
Of course the public is not sated by a scholarly documentation of past ills. They need the more visceral thrill of retribution against a person who can be in someway linked to a shred of responsibility. So while bin Laden and his top aides remain at large and our impudence in Iraq plays like a worldwide recruitment ad for anti-American sentiments, Our Fine President and his people are looking to take our nation’s revenge against the easiest target around, and his name just happens to be Zacarias Moussaoui. Unfortunately, like everything else the feds are going to bungle this by killing a man who believes in Jihad instead of letting him rot in a jail cell for many years and rob him of the satisfaction of martyrdom.