We're on our way to putting Moussaoui to death for not saying something. While in fact it's been
documented in the course of the trial that he really didn't know much
to say. All the while, Bush, Rice and the CIA
did know something to say (AUG 6 P.D.B.) and didn't tell the FAA or the FBI -- groups who may have been able to adjust their actions accordingly and potentially save lives.
Are they "responsible for one death" by this insane standard being set by this penalty phase of the Moussaoui trial?
I don't think so myself, but you can't have it both ways as we all know...
You see, I also don't think that Moussaoui deserves to be killed for being a nut case who hates America and fashions himself to be Al Qaeda. Putting aside debates about the death penalty itself, he has simply not been proved to be guilty of murder. He has rather played a large part himself in creating a fiction -- a hypothetical narrative -- that he
could have been an actor in the plot. Because much of his testimony is self-contradicting and evidently made up of lies, it should be quite clear to anyone that he is just crazy and that he should be locked away for life on charges of conspiracy against the US. Sure. Fine.
But listening to Lorie Van Auken this evening on To the Point, I was beside myself, and myself and I were both looking at a world distorted by the glass of our post-9/11 criminal justice system. She explained so clearly the duplicity of the prosecution's position and it made me wonder how they could ever be acting in good faith with this three ring circus. It is clear that it is nothing more than a smoke and mirror distraction. We all suspected it, but she has the hard evidence. Lorie is a leader of the September 11 Advocate group. Her husband, Kenneth, was killed in the north tower of the World Trade Center. She and her organization demand accountability at higher offices of our government with a logic of parity to the claims of passivity aginst Moussaoui.
It is through this distorted looking glass that the question arises: is not forwarding the 8/6 P.D.B. responsible for one death? The administration, by pressing this penalty against Moussaoui has, in not so many words, given voice to this question themselves. At least it is apparent to those of us who still believe that the rule of law casts a level strike and that we are all equal under its judgement.
If we are forced by this trial to hold people responsible for potentialities, then we must do so equally for crazy-lazy terrorists and crazy-lazy presidents whose inability to disseminate information to those who could have used it to stop the plot are equally to blame.
Again, I must stress that I don't agree that this is a good road to go down necessarily. It just happens to be the one we are traveling on right now, and unless Moussaoui's life is spared, it delivers an absolutely horrible precedent to American case law. Carried to its end, it basically states that anyone who doesn't turn someone in who is conspiring to maybe do something, hasn't yet done it, and might still change their minds against doibng it, is culpable of the crime if and when it goes down.
I don't know about you, but I've heard my coworkers conspiring to kill my boss a couple times. And then of course my friend has said that he might be tempted to try coke if it were at a party. I gotta get started writing those letters now!