Posted on 05/03/2006 10:43:36 PM PDT by parousia
"America, you lost. I won," Moussaoui said, clapping his hands as he was led out of the courtroom after the verdict was read.
The Verdict [John Podhoretz] extract http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTQwYmRmZDg2MGIyNDE2OTRkNjgwMDdhZmJiNzQ1M2M
Zacarias Moussaoui is the only person to be charged with crimes related to September 11. He pled guilty to involvement in the plot. We have been told that if the FBI had authorized a search of Moussaoui's computer, seized a month before the attacks, we would have been able to prevent the attacks.
Having judged that he was a participant in the September 11 planning, jurors nonetheless ruled that Moussaoui was not responsible for the deaths on September 11 — though they apparently acknowledge his involvement in the planning of the attacks. To imagine that there can be any mitigating circumstance regarding Moussaoui's actual guilt is moral idiocy of the highest order.
Alas, that moral idiocy was clearly at work in the jury deliberations. I would guess we will hear from some jurors who sought a different outcome over the next week that will cast some uncomfortable light on the goings-on inside the jury room.
Crazy? Yes. He wanted to commit suicide by being a participant in the hijacking and destruction of an airborne plane. No one but a crazy person could desire such a death.
The problem is that the world has seen at least two thousand such madmen and madwomen make a choice to kill themselves in order to kill others in the past 15 years. Is their hunger for death to be "understood" and explained away in this fashionable fashion — by invoking a cruel mother and a father with mental illness?
This is a deeply disheartening day.
(Excerpt) Read more at corner.nationalreview.com ...
"...and a failure as a martyr."
Nothing says his virgins have to be pretty.
It's possible that the jurors feared for their lives!
A sentence of death would have meant years of legal battles for as much as 20 years, during which time this thing would have become the pretty boy of International Amnesty, Ed Asner and the usual crowd.
A life sentence is bad because this thing will be given hero status, be given interviews, write letters and books, convert inmates to the cause.
Obviously the problem is the legal system which treats criminals as victims.
It's too bad that the USA has lost its ability to deal with criminals the way that it should.
I can't help but wonder how long it will be until a terrorist hostage taking or similar event will be used to try and blackmail the USA into releasing him.
I'm hoping someone will kill him in prison.
Perhaps he will end up in a prison with someone who lost a loved one on 9-11.
Now that's a thought...
But I think it's better he spend 40 or more years thinking about it, and eventually coming to the realization that he was wrong, that his envy of all that America stands for was twisted and exploited by vicious men like bin laden; maybe when he gets older and mellows he'll understand that he was just being used.
...You're kidding right?
He will not be in fear of the general population of prisoners harrassing him, making life hard for him...or worry about a shiv in the shower.
He can rest....have his food brought to him....and no doubt have access to books...who knows, maybe a TV...
..and with his mindset, rest on his laurels thinking himself a bigshot, a big name, a legend in his own mind.
Real hell on earth would be..... death and waiting for it...
...or general population where he had to scratch and fight for basic food and shelter and fend off rapists and killers.
I'm afraid you're right.
I simply don't believe that he wanted to be a martyr. He wanted to be important. Now, in his own mind, he is important, and he relax in his cell waiting for some kind of hostage exchange deal. Pray it never comes.
Throw in pork, three times a day, and I am with you!
Did you look at the conditions under which people live in Florence?
If you consider that nice, you must have had a pretty tough life.
Solitary confinement is torture and that is what he is facing until he dies a very slow death.
Do you mean to tell me that you would prefer slow, lonely death of alone with almost zero human contact in a 12 by 8 concrete room to something that was realitve fast and painless?
To me this sentence was essentially death by slow torture. Worse than a needle by a long shot.
Ha! Something a little more practical and less philosophical, huh?
How would you know what it's like?
IMO, no one....no one would choose death over life....
Even martyrs of old wanted to live...
..they simply would not surrender their faith to do so....God bless them.
I'm positive.....this terrorist is quite happy those jurors had bleeding hearts and pc conscience.
People committ suicide everyday, so your assumption:
no one would choose death over life
is ludicrous.
If you alter your assumption say that no sane person would chose death over life than you have made the case that he isn't fit to answer for his crimes.
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