Good. Like John I’m generally skeptical about the death penalty as a government policy, but this isn’t one of those cases and I am disgusted with the federal lawyer who screwed up and even put the decision in question. The sooner I stop seeing and hearing about this bit of scum the better.
Reader Interactions
38Comments
Comments are closed.
Mr Furious
Agreed. I have no problem with the death penalty as a practice, but I do have a problem with the distribution and implementation of it in this country.
A few weeks ago, it looked as if the governement was doing its best to make sure I could have some doubts about the case they presented. Bogus testimony, coached witnesses, cut corners, etc. After Moussaui’s own remarks in court, those doubts have been erased.
Hang ’em high.
(The only hesitation might be if at some point in the future is it possible we might wish he were alive? Probably not, his operation is likely unconnected with anything else that he couild possibly be useful foor, but you never know. He was apparently connected to the show bomber…)
srv
I’d rather the “other” 20th hijacker got set free if SCOTUS would have heard the Padilla case. Judge Stevens, you suck.
The Other Steve
Mr. Furious…
Umm. Moussaui is clearly not right in the head.
Anything he has said, can’t be taken at face value. It’s mostly some sort of bizarre grandstanding by someone suffering mental illness.
That being said, if a crazy guy can infiltrate Al Qaeda, why can’t our CIA?
srv – I understand why the SCOTUS punted on the padilla case.
Don
I have similar feelings about the death penalty but don’t concur on this one. I’d rather let this fuck stew in a hole for half a century. Let him be an example to others, not a martyr.
Zifnab
Eh. I always found the death penalty rather counterproductive.
The worst of the worst should never be killed. Killing Moussaui – the last living hijacker – is effectively taking one big sweeping slice into the memory of 9/11. Let him live, rotting in a standard federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for the rest of his days. Let him grow old with his Koran and his sins. And let him continue on as a testamont to the sins he’s committed.
The Romans had an age old custom of putting their worst prisoners on display before the general populace. They were living statues commemorating the triumph of Rome over its enemies and perpetual reminders of history. I want to see Moussaui punished for his hand in the September hijacking, but I don’t want him to be forgotten once the executioner throws the switch.
Let him live for our sake.
srv
Basically because they don’t have the balls to take on Unitary Executive Theory. They’re just marginalizing themselves like Congress. The absurd becomes the norm.
Even when Bush is gone, we’re just setting precedence for another administration to do the same thing. And because SCOTUS won’t rule on Article II, FISA, Habeus Corpus or just about anything else fundamental to the survival of the Republic, we can just assume everything is going to turn out fine.
For the future Fascists.
KC
I’m with you Tim.
DougJ
Me too. That’s why I hope he resigns as vice-president.
Anderson
I’m just not on board with this line of thought, widespread tho it is.
Kennedy’s op left no doubt that the feds can’t play any more games with Padilla’s custody. Right now, Padilla is where his lawyers wanted him: in court, indicted, and receiving his due rights.
It’s not to be expected that the Court would go looking for trouble when it’s got so much on its plate(Hamdi).
Anderson
Oh, but I meant to comment about Moussaoui.
Is this not an obvious case of suicide by jury?
Or are we assuming that his testimony was actually true?
If it was, then that torture we used on KSM didn’t work too well …
Is there any evidence beyond Moussaoui’s own word that he was telling the truth?
Tim F.
Moussaui has to be the only terror-related detainee who we haven’t tortured. If he wants to exercise the right of every accused to offer a self-incriminating confession then I don’t see why we should get in the way.
Anderson
There you go: obviously the *feds* didn’t believe him ….
wilson
I agree it looks like suicide by jury.
I also have a great difficulty concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that the CIA/FBI/FAA would have stopped the plot if M would have confessed. M did not have much “actionable intelligence” as far as I can tell. Recall back then (pre 9/11) the threshold before action by authorities was quite high.
One can speculate or guess or dream that the plot would have been thwarted. Would anyone here bet their house or their job? Not likely.
Hence, we look like law breakers in giving M what he wants, assuming the case survives appellate review and habeas review.
Defense counsel really seem on the ball here.
Accused is what is known as a “volunteer.”
Who are we helping by executing here? No one gets brought back to life. AQ gets a poster boy and martyr.
Let him rot and die in jail. LWOPP is plenty here.
Left turn signal
Color me weird.
I don’t believe that Moussaoui should be killed for his role in 9-11. He was not there. He wanted to be. But he was not there.
He was in jail already. He had no potential to participate. He was incarcerated. He was preparing, yes, but he was thwarted in his attempt well in advance. 3,000 consecutive life terms seems appropriate to me with America’s finest patriotic prisoners.
Let’s go find the rest of the killers who were free and who planned this event. Let’s get al Qaeda senior management away from the military and kill them. They planned it, they should die.
Mark Wilson
I’m opposed to the death penalty, even for Moussaoui and regardless of his guilt or innocence. I’m also opposed to prisoners being raped, assaulted or killed by other prisoners, regardless of their crime. But I support the war in Iraq and would not be opposed to pre-emptive military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
srv
And when Stevens is gone and the next president starts to play his own games, we’ll just have no precedence. Just like we don’t now. Just a quasi-limbo for future executive to run amok (I’m sure the Thomas-clones of the future will rein them in).
Hamdi is over. You mean Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Yes, by all means, the court should not go looking for trouble when it involves us citizens (Padilla, FISA, etc). Instead it should focus on non-citizens rights.
Moussaui might as have been aiming for the SC for all the difference they’re going to make.
Par R
Mark Wilson – It’s rather a shame that you have put up this comment at this late hour when most of the moonbats have either abandoned this site for other loony locations or simply retreated to their caves for the night. Otherwise your closing sentence might have started a real “bloodbath.”
CaseyL
Wasn’t the government’s claim that the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented if Massaoui had told all he knew undermined by testimony that one of his interrogators (?) did try to notify the FBI and the FBI couldn’t be bothered?
Massaoui wasn’t one of the planners; he wasn’t one of the hijackers; he didn’t even see them off at the airport.
I understand the lust for his blood, since he’s the only one connected to the attacks that we can get our hands on.
But, for the love of God, if Michael Fortier isn’t on Death Row – and he’s not; in fact, he’s served his sentence and is getting out of jail – how can we possibly sentence Massaoui to death?
Pb
Like John? John who? Anyone here know a John?
Oh wait…. I remember… yeah, John. Whatever happened to that guy, anyhow?
ppGaz
Sure, the death penalty. If there’s just one thing, just one single thing, that will make people feel better and make the world better right now, it’s more death.
There can never be enough death. Righteous, politically correct, socially acceptable, good old fashioned death.
Maybe the man can be slowly lowered into a meat grinder, alive, while the names of 9-11 vicitims are recited?
That would be a great tv show, and it would show the world that the War on Terror has some real teeth.
don surber
“Basically because they don’t have the balls to take on Unitary Executive Theory. They’re just marginalizing themselves like Congress. The absurd becomes the norm.”
Or maybe the Supreme Court realizes the argument in Padilla is moot and six justices really don’t want to waste time hearing pretend cases
Par R
Meat Head, otherwise known as ppGaz, says:
In one sentence he manages a rather neat little slur on the innocent victims of 9/11.
neil
Surely my dime-store legal analysis is missing something important, but this is my vague understanding of the case:
1) Moussaoui is on trial for failing to incriminate himself to federal investigators before 9/11
2) No person shall…be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself…
Since it’s been held that the Fifth Amendment does apply to police interrogations of suspects, what exactly am I missing? Am I a bad American if I don’t like the idea of someone being put to death for conduct expressly permitted in the constitution?
Krista
Funny, isn’t it, how despite popular myth, not everybody’s opinions fall neatly in one side of the political spectrum? I’m opposed to the war in Iraq, and think that pre-emptive strikes in Iran would be a bad move, due to your military already being over-extended and stretched to the breaking point. I’m definitely with you about being against raping and torturing prisoners – there’s never an excuse for that. The death penalty, though? For me, it depends. I can’t say that I’m 100% against it. I think that there are certain people out there (like Paul Bernardo or Clifford Olsen) who have absolutely no shred of humanity in them, and should be put down like rabid dogs. It’s the proverbial slippery slope, though, because where a death penalty is legal, a possibility for abuse of that penalty exists. You need only look at your president’s record as governor as proof.
Pb
neil,
An interesting point, but my understanding of the Fifth Amendment is that it gives you the option to *not talk* to the investigators on the grounds that it may incriminate you–it doesn’t give you the option to *lie* to the investigators instead. Moussaoui is accused of the latter, not the former.
neil
I’m just trying to come to an understanding here. So let’s go to the news.. AP?
So either this is a very misinformative paragraph, or Moussaoui’s capital crime was not giving up the whole conspiracy as soon as he was arrested. I think that I must be misreading it somehow, since why would he even have to be arrested for this? Apparently he’s eligible for the death penalty merely for not turning his buddies in.
What am I missing?
Jim Allen
A number of local “9/11 families” watched the proceedings on TV at the Federal Courthouse in Boston, and were interviewed afterwards. Only one of the people who agreed to be interviewed thought he should be executed — the rest of the families agreed that he shouldn’t be allowed to be seen as a martyr, and should rot in jail for the rest of his life.
Sounds about right to me.
Jim Allen
Par R:
Krista:
Come now, Krista, that’s not much of a bloodbath. You really must put more effort into your frothing, or Par R is going to look like a stupid mushmind again.
Pb
neil,
See above.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law–he had the right to be silent, not the right to lie.
But yeah as far as I’m concerned, Moussaoui is frickin’ looney tunes, and if the government has a case at all, it’s pretty darned weak. They managed to snare the one guy who was so nuttily incompetent that even the terrorists didn’t want to have anything to do with him, and even the feds couldn’t talk themselves into believing him. “Twentieth hijacker”? Please.
neil
Yes, I understand that he lied. But I don’t think that lying to investigators is a capital crime, particularly when not lying would have incriminated himself — he lied by saying he was not a terrorist and was not a member of a conspiracy. His lie had the same result that not speaking would have, so I can’t see any ethical difference there.
Moving on, it seems pretty gruesome that everybody except for Moussaoui and the government says Moussaoui was aggrandizing himself and he really wasn’t supposed to be on a plane on 9/11. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed revealed under interrogation that Moussaoui and Reid, since they were European-born, would carry out the next stage of the attack since Arab-born Muslims would arouse too much suspicion.
A few years ago, I don’t think that I would have believed that government lawyers would be working together with al-Qaida operatives to mislead the American public about 9/11. But it’s all happening right in the open.
Bob In Pacifica
I’m against the death penalty generally. Specifically, in this case, the guy obviously wants to be a martyr and seems to have lied and exaggerated his role. Becoming a martyr will further inflame a segment of Islam, further hurting the U.S.’s image in the world.
During the trial the government illegally coached witnesses, which in a more law-abiding time would have had the death penalty charges thrown out.
Plus, the government’s theory, that prior knowledge to a crime equals guilt, should put half of the FBI and anyone who saw the daily Presidential briefings in the dock.
So, from a moral perspective and from a political perspective, I can’t see any good reason for this guy to be murdered by the U.S. government. If you’re tired of reading about him, don’t read about him. After all, how many stories are we inundated with about Charlie Manson?
Krista
Not much of a frother…sorry. And if I WERE to work myself into a froth, it wouldn’t be for the sole purpose of fitting into a false stereotype. So, if Par R. wants the lefties to froth about Mark’s comment, he’ll just have to hold his breath or start trolling as a leftie so that he can argue with himself.
neil
By the way, Pb, here’s this from Dahlia Lithwick at Slate:
I believe this is what raised my question in the first place. So, if Moussaoui’s only crime is withholding information, and if that information would have incriminated him, Moussaoui should be a free man. Hey, I don’t make the rules, I just stick to ’em.
Pb
neil,
The lying is a technicality, and such technicalities are always pushed so that there is a ‘crime’ when there’s nothing else left to reasonably prosecute. See Bill Clinton and Martha Stewart for more examples.
As for his ‘capital crime’, as far as I can tell that’s *entirely* wishful thinking. Could I charge–for example–Secretary Rice with a capital crime for her dereliction of duty when she might have been able to ‘save at least one life’ on 9/11 otherwise? I mean, if not sharing–or distorting–intelligence information (when not sharing or distorting such information may have resulted in one or more deaths) is a capital crime now, then I’ve got a list here of capital criminals that the government should really start investigating…
neil
More on Moussaoui’s self-aggrandizing lies here, from TalkLeft.
Pb
neil,
Maybe so. If they did manage to pull off that particular bait-and-switch, then that judge (and jury) should be ashamed of themselves for swallowing it.
radioleft
I find this case odd. First, I always question a trial that takes years. Present the evidence. Close your case. If there was a real case, the evidence could be rpesented in a matter of weeks. Second, giving the death penalty for crimes not actually committed is quite disturbing. Lock Moussaoui up for life. But death penalty for his ranting during the penalty phase? That bothers me.
http://blog.radioleft.com/blog/DavidTaffet/_archives/2006/4/3/1858405.html
StupidityRules
radioleft said:
Presenting the evidence would give aid and comfort to the enemy.