In January 2002, I wrote this about the decision to try Zacarias Moussaoui in a criminal court:

A criminal trial is too good for the likes of Zacarias Moussaoui, who by any definition of the words has to be considered a spy and a saboteur. But he will now be afforded all the rights and privileges of a US citizen, in a trial that has a good possibility of becoming a fiasco. This is a very misguided decision, and I hereby predict that it’s going to come back and bite someone on the ass.

Ouch!

UPDATE at 5/3/06 4:36:44 pm:

My point is not so much that Moussaoui should have received the death penalty (although I don’t know if anyone in our country’s history has ever deserved it more), but that he never should have been allowed to exploit the criminal justice system, as he has done—and as he will now continue to do, for the rest of his life. He should have been tried as an enemy combatant.

But having gone through our courts, a death sentence would have been a more just outcome. Moussaoui is much more valuable to the global jihad (and its Western enablers) as a living symbol of Western “oppression” than he would be as a failed attacker, ignobly executed by infidels.

As several LGF readers have commented, it won’t be long before we see “Free Moussaoui” signs at moonbat rallies.

UPDATE at 5/3/06 5:35:10 pm:

Count on the Kos Kidz to be ahead of the kurve: Daily Kos: moussouai [sic] is innocent! (Hat tip: Killgore.)

UPDATE at 5/3/06 5:38:42 pm:

Rudy gets it right: New York politicians disappointed by Moussaoui verdict.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said he was disappointed that Zacarias Moussaoui was not sentenced to death for the September 11 attacks, but other US politicians hailed the verdict as fair.

“I believe the death penalty was appropriate in this case,” said Giuliani, who was mayor of New York in 2001 when two planes flown by Al-Qaeda hijackers smashed into the World Trade Center twin towers.

Had Moussaoui told the FBI about the plot, Giuliani told MSNBC television, “all those wonderful people would be alive and children that I know don’t have fathers would have fathers.”