Some Points Regarding Moussaoui

I didn't have time to post this earlier, but I think that these points are very salient regarding the verdict handed down in the Moussaoui case. I also think that Judge Leonie Brinkema (above, sort of) should get an award for her reaction and smack-down of the would-be jihadi during the sentencing. Her comments in reaction to Zacarias Moussaoui's continued rantings were more eloquent than I can imagine anyone else under the circumstances could have managed.
From MSNBC,

Brinkema firmly refused to be interrupted by the 37-year-old defendant as she disputed his claim that his life sentence meant America had lost and he had won.

“Mr. Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun ... hear the birds ... and they can associate with whomever they want,” she said.

‘Absolutely clear who won’
She went on: “You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It’s absolutely clear who won.”

And she said it was proper he will be kept away from outsiders, unable to speak publicly again.

“Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory,” she said, “but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper.”

“You will never get a chance to speak again and that’s an appropriate ending.”

Brinkema sentenced Moussaoui to six life terms without the chance of parole.

She informed him of his right to appeal the sentence and said she would ask his court-appointed lawyers to file the required notice as a precaution before relieving them from the case. “I believe it would be an act of futility,” she said of an appeal, “but you do have a right.”

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I'm all for what Judge Brinkema said, personally. I'm glad that this idiot didn't get to become a martyr, and I'm glad that he escaped the denial of no "cruel and unusual punishment". Had he been sentenced to death, would any of us really have been happy with a simple lethal injection death? I wouldn't have, just as I thought it too kind for Tim McVeigh. He's going to be in 23-hour-a-day ISOLATION. He won't be able to prosyletize or do little. The only worry I have, though I don't see it going anywhere, is the upcoming French actions and legal maneuverings now set into motion by Moussaoui's mother, Aicha El Wafi:

Aicha El Wafi, speaking on French radio, said Moussaoui's conviction by a U.S. jury over the Sept. 11 attacks was "the worst thing that could happen to a mother."

"I feel nothing. I am dead, because my son was wrongly convicted," El Wafi said in brief comments to France-Info radio after the ruling came down.
El Wafi's lawyer, Patrick Baudouin, said she planned a news conference on Thursday in Paris, where she had returned recently from a trip to the United States.

Baudouin expressed delight that the jury did not hand down a death penalty for Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent and the only person charged in the United States over the Sept. 11 attacks.

Baudouin vowed a legal battle to bring Moussaoui home.

"We will pursue unrelentingly a request to French authorities that they demand a return of Zacarias Moussaoui to France," he told The Associated Press. "So the fight isn't over — far from it — it is only beginning."

And....

While a death penalty "would have only added barbarity upon barbarity," Baudouin said that the life sentence was also "extremely severe and disproportionate."

"That said, I can't be happy with the sentence handed down — life in prison is extremely severe and disproportionate to the acts that can really be attributed to Zacarias Moussaoui," he said.

This is a typical view of "punishment" in modern Europe, unfortunately

Meanwhile, the French Embassy in Washington said France is offering Moussaoui the consular protection he deserves as a French national, but so far he has not asked for it.

In a press communique, the embassy said it had dispatched the consul general from Washington and an embassy official to every session of the trial.

"We repeat our complete willingness to meet once again with Mr. Moussaoui, as part of the exercise of his consular protection, should he express the wish for such a meeting, which he has not done thus far," the communique said.

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OK, so the French want him extradited and subject to their justice system, though they are respecting our justice system's decision as one of a "sovereign state". At least someone has officially commented that we are a sovereign nation, to me THAT'S big news. We should send that statement to the folks at MECHA, aka the fans of the mythical land of "Aztlan".

The extradition, as we all know, will never happen. But with Ahmadinejad running around and alliances neeeded, I don't relish any fight over someone like Moussaoui. He IS technically a French citizen, but he left France to travel far and wide in his quest to become a jihadi. Had he been foreign born and returned to France, they probably would have deported him, as they actually do to many of the jihadis who land in their countries. But as for this bad pilot who didn't even want to LEARN how to land, we know he's staying right here. But why add more fuel to the fire, especially with the NPR crowd here in the US who can't stop kissing up to any nation across the pond to save their lives? I don't want to start seeing Liberal columnists and pundits arguing on the side of the French or Moussaoui's mother on this one, and we know how fast perception of news stories in the mainstream press here and abroad.

Let's hope that ALL of this "dies with a whimper". And on that note, I'm going to make my plans to go and see "Flight 93" tonight at last.