Houblog

So Moussaoui didn’t get the death penalty. I’m probably going to surprise a few folks, especially those who know I favor the death penalty, and those who think that conservative = bloodthirsty baby-killer.

This was the sentence I wanted to see.

I’m a little old-school when it comes to cruel and unusual; I define it the way it was defined back when it was first enacted. It is not necessary to ensure a painless death, just a quick and realtively bloodless one. Hanging isn’t cruel, if done right. Firing squads are a bit bloodier than I care for; they’re borderline. Lethal injection is for liberal wussies. But impaling, drawing and quartering, beheading, and several other methods used in the past are definately executions that fit the bill of cruel and unusual.

Despite that, I favor Moussaoui getting the life sentence, because in his specific case, it’s the best one possible. Best as in the most cruel and unusual.

Consider this:
Moussaoui wanted to be a martyr for his warped religion. The jury has denied him that.

He wants to see his twisted version of God rein triumphant over the decadent West. Instead, while justice has dragged on for five years, he has seen Al-Queda be shattered, its safe haven destroyed, it’s best operatives be killed or captured. Usama’s still on the loose, but so what? He’s a nutcase, not an operative. His pathetic posturing and strategic miscalculations show that he couldn’t plan an orgy in a whorehouse.

Now Moussaoui will rot in a cell for the next 30-40 years, long enough for us to utterly destroy the sick version of the religion that spawned him.

He wanted to die. That’s where his reward is, dying in glorious battle (”Glorious battle” being defined as killing defenseless civilians.) His antics in court show that he’d probably convinced himself that being executed by his captors would qualify–but we refused to oblige him.

Now, he’s going to die from old age, years in the future, after seeing his holy war fail.

He’ll have to sit there in his pen, watching that failure every day, with the knowledge that he’s a total failure as a martyr eating away at him. He couldn’t even convince the captors who have complete power over him to put him to death.

Oh, he’ll bluster.

He’ll sound defiant.

He’ll even taunt us.

But it will be the sounds of a bitter, incoherant, failure of a man (if indeed, the word man could be applied to such as Moussaoui) ranting against the inevitability and power of a storm that blew away his ramshackle hut on the seashore, when the true fault lies with him for defying the fury of nature with such a pathetic structure.

Rot in hell Moussaoui. I cannot think of a more cruel and unusual punishment than to deny you that which you seek the most, and force you to watch the destruction of that which you hold dearest.

It’s only what you wanted for us, after all.

Has Pres. Bush lost his freaking mind, as Instapundit suggests? If this is some kind of a stunt to sucker the Dems into a political mistake, I will annoint Karl Rove the greatest Machiavelli of all time.

This is the biggest WTF moment he’s given me since Harriet Miers. No, on second thought, at least I understood that one. Threatening to veto any attempt to even delay an arab country taking control of our ports is just out there.

But the more I think about it, the more I think I dismissed one possible theory too quickly. He’s got to be playing to the Arab street on this one. I mean, yeah there’s some dumbasses in his administration but no one is stupid enough to believe the public isn’t going to go bonkers over this. In one stroke, he’s just about guaranteed the entire deal will get scuttled, not just delayed. He’ll alienate tons of supporters, but then he’s not running for re-election.

Which is what makes me think he might just know what he’s doing, after all. But damn, we’re talking serious misunderestimation if that’s true, because my lead theory is still early senility.

…that I consider this a good thing?

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that violent protests in the Muslim world over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad could “spin out of control” if governments refuse to act responsibly.

Exactly what does she mean by “act responsibly,” anyway? European governments should censor their own press, the way CNN and most American networks self-censor? How many of you have seen the cartoons–except, perhaps, on the web. You sure as hell didn’t see them in the Houston Chronicle, that bastion and defender of press freedom.

Well, no, she doesn’t mean that. She means that Iran and Syria need to start acting responsibly, and stop using the foriegn devils (thats us) to keep their people riled at an outside threat, and ignoring their own, ah (lets be generous), “shortcomings.” But I disagree. I think these countries need to go right on doing the same thing.

I mean, having it ’spiraling out of control’ might just rip a few people out of their feelings of complacency that were barely disturbed by the French riots, and get them to realize that we are in a war for the survival of our civilization. Continued indifference or self-censorship because “we have to understand their feelings” is the road to losing this war. It’s high time some people realized that, and letting them see it… well, it might not do any good for the worst offenders against reality, but the ones on the fence or merely indifferent could use the swift kick.

To turn a famous saying on its head, “First they came for the Jews…”

(edited for clarity)

… but I have remained under the weather for over a week now. I’m working a bit on two articles for posting sometime soon, but I’m at the “ideas on paper” stage rather than the actual writing point, and I feel too poorly to make everything gel just yet. It may be the weekend before you see much here.

Although if you want some food for thought, I’ll point to an international matter. Should we really be laughing at Chirac for saying France would use nukes if provoked by nuclear terror? I mean, this is the nation that sunk the Rainbow Warrior to protect their aboveground nuclear tests in the Pacific. Their actions in the Ivory Coast can’t be considered the epitomè of transnational progressivism either — unless you define TP as “everyone but the U.S. gets to act like a colonial power.”

If I had control of the nuclear clock, it would be worth kicking it a few seconds towards midnight, but don’t expect that bunch of leftist fellow travelers to say anything, despite Chirac’s pronouncement being the most open nuclear threat to be delivered since, oh, ‘73 or so.

Winds of Change has the news–several high ranking Iranian army officers, including the leader of the Revolutionary Guard (just appointed 3 months ago), have died in an odd crash. Odd in that the plane had to make an emergency landing — and then the landing gear wouldn’t work.

Tigerhawk and his commenters have some interesting points, especially the Debka report.

Hat tip to PajamasMedia.

Too. Damn. Funny. Niven was wrong, there is justice in the world.

After having their daughter give her life in a misguided attempt to assist Palestinians in keeping their weapon-transit tunnels open, Rachel Corrie’s parents might have labored under a perception that the Palestinians might have some gratitude for their sacrifice … or at least prove themselves worthy of her death on their behalf. Instead, to show just how civilized they can act when they have their own territory, members of the ruling Fatah faction tried to kidnap the Corries as they also blew up part of the Gaza-Sinai border, killing two guards:

I dunno, Steven… what do you do when someone you hate screws over someone you hate just as much?