Red Herring

So we've heard the last of Zacarias Moussaoui for our lifetime, as he goes off to rot in Supermax. (that's a really interesting story, by the way).

Whether or not Moussaoui should have gotten the death penalty is immaterial to me. I'm with Will Bunch and, perversely, Michael Isikoff in thinking that this whole thing was a show trial and a red herring:

What this trial ought to do at this point provoke a debate and discussion and concentration on why we haven`t tried the people who were responsible for 9/11 [...]

...there was a feeling, that for altogether understandable reasons, that the country needed a trial, the cathartic effect of a trial to deal with the most horrific crime in American history.

But the point is that after the time that they indicted Moussaoui, we came to get into custody the people who were directly responsible for that crime, the architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (pictured here at top), Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was Mohammed Atta`s collaborator at every step of the way -- twice in 2001, Atta leaves the country to consult with Ramzi bin al-Shibh about the for the attack -- the financier who was also in custody, Qualli bin Atassh (phonetic) who helped planned it at the Malaysia meeting.

But the government has been completely stymied about what do to with these people. Why -- and this is the one where it is really worth connecting the dots. It goes straight into the White House, the Oval Office and the vice president`s office because key decisions were made about aggressive interrogation techniques that were going to be used on these people.

And it should disgust any American with a sense of patriotism that we will never see justice done to the real perpetrators of that horrible day. And we can't see justice done because the government is afraid of the injustices that would be uncovered by putting them on trial.

Maybe that excites the eye-for-an-eye Hammurabic Code-worshipping warbloggers (the 82nd Chairborne, I picked up from TBogg), but it's a black mark on our own souls. We don't want to judge the likes of Ramzi bin al-Shibh lest we be judged. In that sense, we've become what we despise.