If Moussaoui doesn't deserve the death penalty, then who does? Moussaoui says "America, you lost". I can't disagree with him. As Peggy Noonan writes,

Excuse me, I'm sorry, and I beg your pardon, but the jury's decision on Moussaoui gives me a very bad feeling. What we witnessed here was not the higher compassion but a dizzy failure of nerve.

From the moment the decision was announced yesterday, everyone, all the parties involved--the cable jockeys, the legal analysts, the politicians, the victim representatives--showed an elaborate and jarring politesse. "We thank the jury." "I accept the verdict of course." "We can't question their hard work." "I know they did their best." "We thank the media for their hard work in covering this trial." "I don't want to second-guess the jury."

How removed from our base passions we've become. Or hope to seem.

It is as if we've become sophisticated beyond our intelligence, savvy beyond wisdom. Some might say we are showing a great and careful generosity, as befits a great nation. But maybe we're just, or also, rolling in our high-mindedness like a puppy in the grass. Maybe we are losing some crude old grit. Maybe it's not good we lose it.

I once interviewed David Gelernter, the Yale computer scientist who was one of the Unabomber's victims, about his book "1939, the Lost World of the Fair". One of the images he mentioned and used in his book was a front cover picture in Life magazine that year. It depicted the bodies of a couple of bank robbers lying in the street in New York City. What was fascinating was the caption. As I recall it went something like "good shooting by New York's finest". Can you imagine that sentiment ever being expressed by a mainstream magazine today? Yet, according to Gelernter, it perfectly expressed the attitude of average Americans in 1939. Evil-doers should be met with lethal violence when necessary, and when they got what they deserved it was cause, not for tears or recriminations or guilt, but celebration. Those were tough people back in the America of 1939, and they proved it in spades from 1941-1945. If we have lost that toughness, how can we win this war?

The debate over the war in Iraq continues. Now, ordinary soldiers have weighed in with a new film shot entirely by some local troops from a New Hampshire National Guard unit. Apparently, it is making something of a splash. In Iraq, violence continues as the Iraqi leadership tries to form a new government. Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis write in this piece that all American troops should leave Iraq by the end of 2007. Retired Lieutenant General William Odom, who has opposed the war from the start, says we should withdraw immediately.

Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in 1980. For al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans. Second, the war has paralyzed the United States in the world diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the trans-Atlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the real battle against terror. Getting out of Iraq is the precondition for any improvement.

David Broder writes about Senator Joe Biden's plan for withdrawal from Iraq.

This week, after his sixth trip to the war zone, he said that the threat of sectarian violence -- an incipient civil war between Shiites and Sunnis -- has become so great that the United States must redefine its political goals in Iraq. Instead of betting everything on the creation of a unified government in Baghdad, Biden said, we should encourage the development of separate but linked regional authorities in northern Iraq for the Kurds, in southern Iraq for the Shiites and in central Iraq for the Sunnis.

The current constitution gives the 18 provinces of Iraq the right to form regional groups. Biden would retain control of defense, foreign policy and oil resources for the central government now on the way to formation, but he would let the regional governments largely run their own affairs.

As elite opinion solidifies on the case for withdrawal, and public support of the war and of the President continues to drop, just how long can the President maintain his "stay the course" plan?