I haven't been paying much attention to the Moussaoui trial, except to note that as an enemy combatant, he should have been tried in a short, publicity-free military trial. Or, if we were fighting terrorism the way we fought their predecessors, Moussaoui would be hanging up with John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla, Sami Al-Arian and the rest of their ilk in Times Square.

Terrorism is an act of war. Treating terrorists as civil criminals has already been proven to be completely ineffective.

However, we're not treating all terrorists as civil criminals. Dean points out that the U.S. Government prefers to classify only the bigger fish in terrorism cases as "enemy combatants", so we can interrogate rather than charge them.

I agree that it makes sense, and the fact that a few of these captured al Qaeda members are being called 'enemy combatants' is one of the few signs that a someone, somewhere, is fighting a war against terrorism.

For the most part, we're not fighting Islamism or terrorism and we're certainly not using methods that have been proven to work in the past. The current Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al Faisal, is more culpable in the 9/11 attacks than Moussaoui will ever be. We let him into the country, we treat him with respect. Every day that we do that is proof that the war on terrorism a complete joke.

But the government wants us to know they're fighting some bad guys - so they had a show trial and threw Moussaoui out to the MSM sharks as chum. Which is about all he's good for.

The Bush administration got some good publicity and the MSM got some fresh bleeds-it-leads garbage to feed on. The government, the MSM - everyone wins.

Well, except for the American people, who got nothing from this show at all.