In the battle against global terror, ridiculously childish reverse psychology remains one of the most powerful weapons. It is used both by the enemy—al-Qaeda totally doesn't want you to reelect Bush, that would be terrible for them!—and, increasingly, by us. So five Guantanamo detainees have all confessed to plotting 9/11, but we totally aren't accepting their confessions, at all. Because that's just what they want.

See this is how prosecuting alleged terrorists works: we hold and torture them overseas, without bail, for years, hoping for actionable intelligence, maybe, even if many of them are innocent, and even though torture is not a reliable means of securing actionable intelligence, and then we have farcical military tribunals for some of them, but they are not allowed to plead guilty at these tribunals, because then we'd have to execute them, and then they'd become martyrs.

Not even the 9/11 widows will accept their guilty pleas!

Alice Hoagland, the mother of Mark Bingham, who was killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, is among a group of relatives of victoms who for the first time were permitted to view proceedings here on Monday. She said she was pleased that the military judge had not rushed to allow the guilty pleas to be entered.

"I'm really proud," she said, "that the commission is not taking the bait, and proceeding in its slow and thoughtful and deliberate way."

Yes, we can't give them what they want, which is to be punished for the crimes they've admitted to committing......

Meanwhile the detainees we don't have tribunals for are just kinda stuck there, because if we released them, they'd go act like the terrorists we thought they were when we picked them up, because now they are pretty pissed off at America, because of the torturing.

Never forget 9/11.