Proving bin Laden's Point

This is why Gitmo - and the secret CIA prisons in Europe, if they're real - exist, and must continue.

Want another one? Here's the answer to the future question, "How did we lose Afghanistan?" (h/t James Taranto)

UPDATE: Peggy Noonan and Mark Levin and Jed Babbin agree - and how.

UPDATE II: Ditto NRO:

The trial confirms that we have lost what once seemed to be the epiphany billowing from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. After 9/11, we were resolved that this was a war, not a crime wave. Al Qaeda was not merely guilty of a terrorist conspiracy; it was a hostile foreign power waging war against the United States. Its operatives were not just criminals; they were enemy combatants. They were incorrigible belligerents who could not be prosecuted or reasoned with, but simply annihilated....

Moussaoui’s case presented the perfect opportunity to apply this new approach. Yet, in pre-9/11 fashion, he was indicted in the civilian criminal-justice system [instead]. The trial took over four years; he turned the proceedings into a circus; his case has been up to and down from the appellate court twice; his early attempts to plead guilty were rejected because of due-process concerns; when he finally did plead guilty, the court, extraordinarily, bifurcated the sentencing phase, refusing to permit the government to present evidence about the horror of 9/11 until it first persuaded the jury of his culpability (a matter already settled by his guilty plea). Then the jury, convinced of the guilt of a man who had already conceded it—indeed, a man who wore it like a badge of honor—determined that his act of war did not mean he should die.

This is no way to fight a war—much less win one.

Worlds without end, halelluliah, amen.

UPDATE III: Well looky here - the French want us to extradite Zacarias Moussaoui to serve his life sentence in their tender care! Doubtless to, in Cap'n Ed's words, "wake up a few years later to French pronouncements of miracle cures and rehabilitation, and watch the video of the AQ terrorist gleefully leaving the French prison over the protests of the American government."

And on the very same day that Pepe Le Pew (aka French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin) issues a stark warning - not to Iran to stop its insane drive towards nuclear Armageddon, but to us to not do anything practical (i.e. military action) to try and stop it, too.

Say, wasn't it Pepe's boss, Black Jacques Chirac, who threatened Iran with nuclear retaliation if Tehran followed through on its nuclear boasting just a few months back? Think their stewardship of the Twentieth Hijacker would be any more reliable?