Payback Time

It's one thing to expect someone to die; it's another to look forward to that day, not secretly, guiltily, but openly, eagerly, a morbid jubilee. Osama bin Laden's casually pitiless confession, released by the Pentagon just as U.S. forces seemed to have him cornered, meant that at the moment that his death appeared more certain it also seemed all the more just. People who reject the death penalty, who teach their children not to use the word hate, who believe in balancing justice with mercy, who prize due process--people, in other words, unaccustomed to bloodlust--now watch the daisy cutters shave the...

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