The day I agreed with William F. Buckley, Jr.

Since the announcement that Zacharias Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty, news of the case has been making me increasingly queasy. On one hand, there were reports of his self-incriminating statements and nutty behavior. He's either totally crazy, guilty, or both.

So why are the prosecutros subjecting the jury to a horror show? Do they really need to play flight recorders of the screams of the dying when it's obvious that Moussaoui isn't innocent? Isn't there something perverse about dragging all of the gory footage from 9/11 out and forcing a group of people to watch it for no apparent reason?

Of course, there is a reason. It's just a very petty, and sleazy reason-- the prosecution wants to do whatever it takes to get a death sentence.

It pays not to try to understand the thinking behind the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui in Virginia. Thought renders unintelligible what the prosecution is up to in describing the luridities of 9/11 on Flight 93. The only explanation for what they are doing is that they are covert agents for the movie "United 93," which is simultaneously going out from Hollywood.

Look. Nobody doubts that Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, was an agent of al-Qaida. No one questions that he was in the United States for nefarious purposes. It happened -- miraculously -- that the FBI actually picked him up before 9/11, so that on the fated day, he was in jail, removed from mandibular contact with people actually tortured, burned or propelled to suicide. (. . .)

Why is it so important to the prosecution to go to such lengths to prove that Moussaoui deserves to be executed? Damage is done by this undertaking, because if the government fails, then the aroma of the trial will waft toward an ambiguity concerning the entire business. If Moussaoui "prevails" in the Virginia trial -- if execution is not ordered by the jury -- loose-minded analysts will arrive at the conclusion that he was finally not guilty of atrocious deeds, although he has admitted that he'd happily have been a member of the suicide team if he hadn't been detained by the FBI.

And then adding to the confusion, the public is slowly alerted to the generic question of capital punishment. The practice survives in many states, as also in the federal system. But a long, hideously detailed trial designed to do just one thing -- to raise the sentence from a lifetime in prison to capital punishment -- has the effect of elevating the one remedy to a distinctiveness that believers in capital punishment reject.