Total Agreement
In the first hour of All Things Considered their coverage of the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing hearing included an interview with Mrs. Mindy Kleinberg. Her husband, Alan, was a securities trader with Cantor Fitzgerald, working on the 104th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
I find myself is the rare position of being in total agreement with the lady: Moussaoui is an evil person who should spend the rest of his life in prison to protect society, but he was not part of the 9/11 plot and is being used as a scapegoat.
She wants to see the people who were responsible captured and tried; the FBI fixed; the CIA fixed; emergency services in NYC have a working communications system.
Consider for a moment what Moussaoui has claimed: he and Richard Reid were going to highjack an airplane and fly it into the White House. Richard Reid is best remembered as the “Shoe Bomber”, a man whose nefarious plot was foiled when he was unable to master the art of lighting a match.
They are probably not bad enough to be declared clinically insane, but I wouldn’t let either one of them outside a prison until we know a great deal more about the human psyche and can determine with certainty that they are not a threat. I think both would love to die in a horrible fashion that involves the death of many others. American street gangs are filled with this personality type, but most outgrow it, or die in the process. I am having a hard time believing either one is capable of masterminding a take-out order.
2 comments
Agreed. I’ve wondered about Moussaoui’s mental state and also wondered if he was deliberately hung out to dry by al Queda. He may have thought he was a big, bad terrorist and intended to act, but he didn’t. He should be shut away, but not put to death.
For what I’ve seen and read, execution is exactly what he wants. He wants to be a martyr. I’m a nasty enough person to deny him his goal, simply because I think he’s “a legend in his own mind.”
He has saved the Department of Justice’s case twice. They didn’t have a case if he had kept his mouth shut. He plead guilty when it was obvious they didn’t have the evidence to convict him.
If he had walked away, we would all be in danger, and the Department of Justice screwed up so badly that he could have walked out a free man.
He’s not right in the head, and shouldn’t have been in court. I would have had him committed to ensure he never got out, rather than trying him.