What’s Behind The Moussaoui Confession?
Dana Milbank probably has it right:
Zacarias Moussaoui proved to be about as effective a defense witness as he was a hijacker.
The 9/11 conspirator had planned to fly a hijacked airliner into the White House, but he got arrested before the attack and had to sit it out. Yesterday, fighting the death penalty in an Alexandria courtroom, he took the stand — over his lawyers’ strenuous objections — and pretty much destroyed the defense his team had built.
He readily agreed that he was part of the 9/11 plot. “I was supposed to pilot a plane to hit the White House,” he said, and he knew of the World Trade Center attacks but lied to prevent authorities from stopping them.
“You rejoiced in the fact that Americans were killed?” the prosecutor asked.
“That is correct,” Moussaoui said, matter-of-factly.
You called the collapse of the twin towers “gorgeous”?
“Indeed.”
You asserted that “3,000 miscreant disbelievers” burned in a “hellfire”?
“That is correct.”
The terrorist’s lawyers from the public defender’s office knew they were undone. “All our hard work down the tubes,” one of them lamented to reporters.
Moussaoui acted as if he were the villain on a TV detective show who, confronted with his crime, improbably confesses every detail of the plot — even volunteering that in e-mails to his handlers he pretended he was writing to a girlfriend and called the attack a “bottle of champagne.”
The terrorist gave the prosecutors just what they needed: evidence that his lies to investigators in August 2001 prevented them from thwarting the attack. Just as prosecution witnesses wound up aiding the defense earlier in the trial, Moussaoui was a gift to prosecutors. The Justice Department wants the death penalty; Moussaoui spoke like a man who wants martyrdom.
…The relevant fact was that Moussaoui acted as though he would be pleased to die. When the prosecutor tried to get him to say that capital punishment would not constitute martyrdom, the terrorist replied: “It depends on if you fought to the best of your ability.”
“So dying here would not get you to paradise?” Spencer pressed.
“I didn’t say so,” Moussaoui corrected.
“I believe in destiny,” he added, to Zerkin’s questioning. “I just have to speak the truth and God will take care of me.”
This is a man who wants to die…he put up a defense, and in his mind, that means he has nothing left to hide…I can’t really find any other plausible explanation…
There’s some doubt about whether or not he’s actually telling the truth about his part in this thing.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060328/D8GKMV300.html
And that really goes to support your conclusion, that he wants death rather than life in prison.
It is possible, if not likely, that he was supposed to die a firery, horrific, and glorious death for Allah on 9/11 that would also take out many infidels and, Allah willing, the Infidel-in-Chief (POTUS). If that is true, then he failed and his only hope now is to admit what he was supposed to do so that the infidels will kill him (martyr) via the death penalty. Partial redemption and glory achieved.
What’s behind his confessions, you ask?
An obvious delusional psychosis.
A dire need of 900 mg of lithium.
I don’t know if he’s telling the truth or suffering from delusions of grandeur, but in general my thinking goes along with a line I heard a while back. Q: What do you do with people who are determined to die for their cause? A: Accommodate them.