Well, the current administration had made enough of a mockery of it anyways, so we're not losing any ground. Regardless, when Bin Laden says:
"The truth is that he has no connection whatsoever with the events of September 11. I am certain of what I say because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers ... with the raids,"
I can't help but believe the guy. I mean...wouldn't that suit Al-Queda just right anyways?
Sure, sure, wingers would say "Well of course he'll say that! He wants to throw the whole system in doubt. He wants those traitors in arms, you know - the leftists here in Amurrika, to think they took advantage of the justice system. But we know he's lying! We know!"
But think about it. Bin Laden and Al-Queda attack the US. We retaliate, and then divert attention from him and instead, to make it look like we're actually doing something against those responsible for attacking us, we invaded Iraq, toppled Saddam, and are now in the process of trying to do some nation building, Democracy promoting, etc to show that...um...yeah, I don't really know what we're doing there either. It doesn't matter anyway.
Since we couldn't catch Bin Laden, and the 19 hijackers are all dead, we had no one to prosecute, no one to appease the thirst for blood that Americans have had instilled in them since 9/11. So we get Moussaoui, make him eligible for a Federal Death Penalty case (from which I've read, you really need to be directly responsible in a death for - like, actually pulling the trigger, swinging the ax, a drug kingpin, Oklahoma City type activites, etc), go through the motions, and ultimately put him in jail for the rest of his life. And this is supposed to be justice.
I guess by the fact that the jurors spared his life, it's supposed to show that the system works. Yet, and let me appease the scenario for a moment, how does sparing the life of someone responsible (in part, I suppose) for the deaths of @ 3000 Americans, all at the cost of the American taxpayer, both prove the system works and appease our thirst for revenge?
Roughly consider:
According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), which maintians a national database on such costs, 'The death penalty cost North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisionment for life.' The DPIC also says that an average execution in Florida costs $3.2 million to carry out, and that 'Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million- about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years."
We've already spent billions and billions and billions of dollars chasing Bin Laden, chasing Saddam, chasing insurgents, chasing jihadists, chasing terrorists, and on and on we go. I guess in a pool of billions and billions of dollars, that
you and I are paying for (and our children, and probably their children as well), what's a few more million to keep the only person a US court could find to charge with the crime of 9/11?
And we call that justice because if we put Moussaoui to death, then he'd be a martyr and he would win.
Do I get everything right?