Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Zacarias Moussaoui wants to die.

In fact, he's so anxious to go to Allah that he took the stand in the death penalty phase of his trial as the putative '20th hijacker' and talked himself into the shadow of the death chamber.

Even his defense attorneys concede that he basically committed suicide on the stand. I bet he really, really wants to see how many virgins he'll get as a martyr. So the defense is trying to paint him as crazy, and they'll succeed to a point. Moussaoui is a bit of a nut case, and his testimony on the stand was full of holes.

For instance, a news article had testimony from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the September 11th attacks, in which he states that the White House was dropped off the target list because it was too small, and therefore hard to strike with a plane. Moussaoui went to pilot training by himself, while the rest of the hijackers took their training in pairs. Moussaoui and the 'Shoe Bomber' were not exactly the sharpest pencils in the box.

So I think the worst thing we can do to Zacarias Moussaoui is to sentence him to life without parole, and let him live a long life caged like an animal.