Life in the Slammer

Zacarias Moussaoui gets life in prison, and as this cbsnews.com coulumnist, I wholeheartedly agree that it is the most fitting conclusion to the three ring circus that the trial has been. Andrew Cohen says exactly what I have been thinking:

It ends with prosecutors losing the trial of their lifetimes, defense attorneys losing a client they probably wish they never had, the government losing a case it desperately wanted to win, and the judge losing from her courtroom and her docket a cast of characters and issues that caused her one headache after another for nearly four-and-a-half years.

I think perhaps most importanty, the government lost this case. The trial of Zacarias Moussaoui was a sham. He was an al Qaida wannabe who shouted inflamatory slogans and took credit for a crime he did not committ in an attempt at self-aggrandizement. Moussaoui is a fraud and a liar, and did not deserve to have his wish of martyrdom fulfilled. This government was using Moussaoui as their crown jewel. Some kind of lame attempt at showing the public they were doing something. Moussaoui is the only person tried and convicted in relation to the September 11 attacks. If life in prison is a defeat for the U.S. government, I will accept that as a slap in the face for this administration. I will let Cohen conclude this segment because he said it so well:

Prosecutors, too, deserved to lose because they fought so shamelessly and recklessly to win. It wasn't just that they got caught cheating with their aviation witnesses. It wasn't just the paucity of independent evidence linking Moussaoui to the crime. It was the hypocrisy of trying to substitute Moussaoui for Osama bin Laden, Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and the 19 lunatics who actually flew into the buildings and the ground. This sham reached its nadir during closing arguments, when prosecutor David Novak told jurors that Moussaoui "murdered 2,972 innocent people on 9/11 and he will kill again in prison."

And high-ranking government officials, who crassly tried to make political points by blaming Moussaoui for the crimes of the dead hijackers, deserved to lose so they cannot continue to spin this case, this trial, as a huge victory in the war on terror.

This battle in the war on terror was lost years ago, when it became clear even to U.S. officials that Moussaoui was not the 20th hijacker slated to doom Flight 93 and when the defendant himself began to take advantage of his constitutional rights to manipulate the judicial system. It is a stain on the record of this administration that it attempted to make a show trial out of the Moussaoui case when it could have simply put him on ice in Guantanamo Bay or charged him with lesser crimes.

It is a fitting end to a trial that never should have taken place over a man who was never worth the trouble he caused. Don't go away mad, these jurors finally told Moussaoui after a week of deliberations, just go away.