Moussaoui and the French

On Thursday morning, when Zacarias Moussaoui entered the courtroom, he made a victory sign.

He told Americans, "We will come back one day. You will never get him. God curse America. God save Osama bin Laden. You will never get him."

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema had this to say to Moussaoui:

"Mr. Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun ... hear the birds ... and they can associate with whomever they want. You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It's absolutely clear who won.

"Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory, but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper.

"You will never get a chance to speak again and that's an appropriate ending."

Is Brinkema right about that?

Will Moussaoui "die with a whimper" at the Supermax prison facility in Florence, Colorado?

Times Online describes what conditions will be like for the terrorist.

Dubbed by the Guinness World Records as the most secure prison in the world, the 37 acre complex comprises four separate detention facilities, each with a different grade of security. Supermax is equipped with motion detectors, 1,400 steel remote-controlled steel doors, laser beams, barbed wire fences, pressure pads and attack dogs.

The prison opened in 1994 with the aim of incarcerating its inmates in solitary confinement for most of the day and keeping them in extreme conditions. The result is debilitating, say security officials, leading former prisoners to describe it as a living tomb.

Most of the prisoners are held in solitary confinement for 23 hours every day. For one hour each day they are allowed to exercise in a concrete chamber, fettered by leg irons and handcuffs. Prisoners stay in sound-proofed cells measuring seven feet by twelve. Each cell is bolted shut with a steel door.

Stark cells are lit by neon lighting and contain a bed, desk and stool. A shaft of natural light filters through a narrow slit window.

US security experts describe a highly-controlled environment designed to cut the prisoner off from the outside world and one another.

"They are in a security envelope, a security bubble. Their environment is sterile, they are isolated from the outside world and from the prison world," said James Aitken, a former US federal prison official.

"Moussaoui doesn’t know yet, but under such conditions as time goes by, they rot."

I wish I could be sure that Moussaoui would spend the rest of his life in that environment, but I'm not.

The French are concerned about poor Moussaoui.

According to Aljazeera, the French may pressure the U.S. to hand him over to them, so he can serve out his sentence in France.

France and the United States are linked by two conventions on transferring convicts.

"An eventual request for transferring Mr Zacarias Moussaoui would be studied in this framework," the French foreign ministry spokesman said.

But he said no decision on transferring Moussaoui would be made until US authorities define the conditions of his sentence.

The justice minister, Pascal Clement, echoed that. "In France we have conditions that are specific, and we must know if they are compatible" he said on public television.

I should have seen this coming.

...The United States' attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, declined to say whether Moussaoui could be extradited to France.

"I don't think it's appropriate at this time to comment on that," he told a news conference in Vienna on Thursday after talks with European Union and Russian counterparts on security cooperation.

"Obviously there's been no formal request made, and with respect to a request by the French government, we would of course consider it at that time," he said.

Philippe Douste Blazy, France's foreign minister, later said in a statement that he had instructed the French embassy in Washington to "remain very attentive to the situation of Zacarias Moussaoui".

Moussaoui's mother, Aisha el Wafi, said her son would be living like a "rat in a hole" and accused France of siding with the United States during the trial.

...El Wafi's lawyer, Patrick Baudouin, expressed relief that the jury did not decide on the death penalty, and vowed a legal battle to bring Moussaoui home.

I'm sure it won't take long before Leftist human rights organizations, the liberal elite of Hollywood, Academia, and the Media start attacking the U.S. government, claim torture, and band together to save Moussaoui -- the victim, the abused little boy.

I'm expecting a statement about it on Barbra Streisand's website any day now. Well, probably not that soon, but sometime after the 2006 version of her farewell tour.

The question isn't if the "Send Moussaoui Home" campaign will get underway. The question is when.

It's entirely possible that Brinkema is wrong. If the Dems take Congress, if a Dem becomes president, it's conceivable that Moussaoui could be sent back to France.

The appeasers would do what appeasers do best -- Appease. Appease and surrender. Very liberal and very French.

...In Europe, Moussaoui's trial was widely considered less about terrorism than about what Europeans consider the perplexing American attachment to the death penalty.

If this absolutely disgusting editorial in Le Monde is an indication of how Europe viewed the case, there's no question that the emphasis was not on Moussaoui the terrorist, but instead, on America the executioner.

The translated version is a bit rough, but the Leftist drivel is unmistakable.

The BBC has some excerpts that are clearer.

Under the headline, "Moussaoui spared", France's Le Monde praises the US jurors who decided that the French Islamist should be sentenced to life imprisonment rather than the death penalty for his links to the 11 September attacks.

"The jury did not fall into the trap set for it by the prosecution and the defendant," says the paper.

It praises the court's conduct as "exemplary", remarking that "the American judicial system has demonstrated that it is capable of judging honestly even the most hateful of defendants".

These are just snippets. The full editorial is a Bush-bashing tirade that claims the Moussaoui verdict indicates the American public's distaste for the death penalty.

The editorial ends with a reference to Gitmo, "the hundreds of prisoners of the base of Guantanamo, them, are always deprived by the American government of the right to defend oneself in front of a judge."

It's amazing how frequently the French and the American Left are on the same page.

I know that as long as a Republican is in the White House, Moussaoui will remain imprisoned in the U.S. until he dies.

However, if a Dem takes over and the liberal mindset prevails, all bets are off.

Nothing would surprise me.