But at least in the short term, the status quo — more Israeli settlements, more violence, more one-sided U.S. condemnation of Arafat — is likely to prevail. That would be disastrous for Israel, for the Palestinians — and above all for America. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and America’s decades-long failure to act as an honest broker in it, is the root cause of worldwide Muslim rage against the United States. Until that conflict is resolved in a way that provides justice for Palestinians and security for Israelis — and only the United States has the power to make this happen — the vast anger felt by Muslims around the world at America will continue to fester. And that anger will continue to be a breeding ground for terrorism.

With war in Iraq looming, it would seem obvious that Bush urgently needs to move on the Palestinian issue to avoid blowback. Yet he continues to support Sharon — whom, in a description so ludicrous it must have made even hardcore Likudniks laugh, Bush called a “man of peace” — and to embrace the prime minister’s failed policies. In this Bush is actually to the right not just of dovish Peace Now Israelis, but also of many moderates in the Jewish state who are beginning to realize that Sharon has led their nation to disaster. Sharon and his Likud Party are going to easily win reelection in the Israeli elections next week, but only because the Israeli public is too shell-shocked and fractured to change course. In the daily newspaper Ha’aretz on Jan. 17, Israel’s most respected commentator on military affairs, Ze’ev Schiff, no leftist, wrote, “Never, with the exception of the War of Independence, which went on until January 1949, has Israel’s ongoing security situation been so bad. In the past two-and-a-half years, more Israelis have been killed than in any other period, and not necessarily on the front, but on the country’s streets. No other nation is experiencing anything like this … Even when the IDF and the Shin Bet security service achieve a tactical military success, Sharon is incapable of exploiting it for the next step, in the political realm. It is in this context where Sharon’s lack of being a statesman-leader is most pronounced. The struggle with the Palestinians has become a war of revenge and prestige, in which the victories on the battlefield slowly dissolve into nothing. On the ground, the settlers are deepening their grip and adding new outposts with a variety of stratagems. Is there anyone who believes that this situation can be dragged out indefinitely?”

Well, apparently George W. Bush does. Urged on by his cabal of neo-conservative hawks — many with deep ties to the Israeli right and its iron-wall, iron-fist ideology — and by old Cold Warriors eager to throw down the gauntlet to nations that refuse to play by America’s rules, he seems to be gambling that invading Iraq will break the Palestinians, forcing them to sue for peace on Israeli terms. Sharon, of course, shares these views, and his intransigence has probably only been heightened by the imminent prospect of a U.S. invasion that would deal his lifelong enemies a fatal strategic setback. Indeed, all indications are that Sharon sees the Iraq war as a deus ex machina that will reveal his bloody stonewalling to have been — voilà! — a master plan all along.

Sharon is extremely eager for the invasion to take place and, as loudly as diplomatic discretion allows, is urging the Americans to do it quickly. As the prospect of a political delay to the war loomed, his foreign affairs advisor, Zalman Shoval, told Agence France-Presse on Jan. 16 that a delay in the Iraq invasion would threaten Israel, both because Iraq would use the time to develop weapons that could harm Israel and because “as long as Saddam Hussein is not sidelined, it will be difficult to convince the Palestinian leadership that violence doesn’t pay and that it should be replaced by a new administration.”

The Bush administration shares this assessment. Invading Iraq, the White House believes, will weaken the Palestinians’ strategic and tactical position, making it easier to force them to accept a peace deal acceptable to a right-wing Israeli government.

Here’s the rosy U.S. projection: With a U.S.-installed regime replacing Israel’s most dangerous enemy, the balance of power in the region will shift decisively away from the hardline states — even more so if an Iraq invasion also results in regime change in Iran. With Iraq defeated and Iran defanged, Syria would be isolated as the last of the front-line rejectionist states; suddenly cut off from the lifeline of cash provided by its illegal oil trade with Iraq, it would have to fall in line with a new, benevolent Pax Americana in the region. It would lose control of its de facto puppet, Lebanon, fatally weakening the Hezbollah, which threatens Israel from the north. The flow of arms into the occupied territories would slow to a trickle.

Assuming everything goes as planned to this point — as we shall see, an assumption akin to signing a mortgage using anticipated lottery winnings as collateral — the U.S. will then face a crucial choice. It could tilt toward Israel, or toward the Palestinians. In the first option, the Palestinians — running out of weapons, without allies, exhausted and demoralized by the relentless Israeli siege — give up and sign a peace deal that gives them even less than what they were offered at Camp David. Sharon doesn’t have to uproot his life’s work by demolishing many settlements, the Palestinians don’t get a capital in Jerusalem or any right to return, and Bush doesn’t have to confront Israel. The Palestinians accept their fragmented, cantonized, security-road-filled, demilitarized, water-poor, fenced-in prison “state”; the rest of the Arab world blusters but gets over it; and everyone lives happily ever after.

In the second scenario, Bush finally heeds his long-suffering State Department and decides that he needs to head off a possible anti-American backlash spurred by the Iraq invasion by turning up the heat on Israel. In this “Saddam, then Sharon” scenario, the U.S. forces Israel to pull out of all of the occupied territories except for a few big settlements, giving up an equivalent amount of Israeli territory for the land occupied by the settlements. Jerusalem becomes a shared capital, and some face-saving plan is worked out on right of return for refugees. Israel’s security is guaranteed by U.S. or U.N. forces. The Israeli right blusters but gets over it, the Palestinian left blusters but gets over it, the United States reaps the rewards of brokering the deal, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Even if Bush chooses that moderate course, Arab rage created by an Iraq invasion could come back to haunt America. And if he continues to back Sharon, the odds of a serious or even catastrophic backlash are far greater. Unfortunately, it seems more likely that Bush will continue his hard pro-Sharon line. (And if there is no Iraq war, it’s likelier still: The desire to avert an Arab backlash against the invasion is by far the strongest reason Bush might reverse course.) Part of the reason is simple politics. Since Bush took office, he has paid no political price at all for — and has received significant benefits from — his egregious pro-Israel tilt. In fact, there’s every reason to think that any initiative that favored Arabs — in Joe Public’s mind the evildoers who attacked America — would be a big political loser for him. The Democrats, who in a remarkable display of bipartisanship are arguably even more pro-Sharon than the Republicans, are not about to put any pressure on him on this issue. Bush presumably remembers that his father challenged Yitzhak Shamir over the loan guarantees and lost his bid for reelection. Besides, his pro-Israel policies are paying big dividends: Almost half the Jews who voted for Gore instead of Bush now say they aren’t sure they’d make the same choice.

Beyond domestic politics, Bush really believes he’s doing what’s right. In the new moral clarity that dropped on him like a rock after 9/11, the Israelis wear white hats and the Palestinians black. In the words of Israeli writer Gideon Samet, “Uncle Sam is writing a script for a horrifying Western of the good guys against the bad guys, to death.”

So here is one dire way that script could end — not a prediction, but a scenario as plausible as it is terrifying. To make things interesting, we’ll assume a fast, relatively U.S. casualty-free invasion of Iraq and a fairly trouble-free aftermath. But this version of the course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could come true whether the Iraq invasion takes place or not.

The Middle East: The Worst-Case Scenario

March 2003. Despite the Sharon scandals, the Israeli public has returned the Likud to power in Israel, although this time without its Labor partner in a fig-leaf unity coalition. It pursues the same grind-them-down policies toward the Palestinians while continuing to expand the illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Arafat, an increasingly pathetic figurehead, still clings to nominal power, giving Sharon an excuse to defer implementing the “road map” to peace proposed by the Quartet (the U.N., the E.U., the U.S., and Russia). Sharon, Netanyahu and their fellow right-wingers become even more open in denouncing the road map and all other serious peace plans that stipulate Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Bush says nothing.

April 2003. The U.S. and Britain invade Iraq, over the bitter objections of the other members of the Security Council. Tony Blair’s domestic political ratings sink to the lowest in postwar British history. Iraq is defeated in a six-week war in which 10,000 Iraqi and 1,600 American troops die, most of the Americans during fierce fighting in the streets of Baghdad. At least 1,000 Iraqi civilians are killed in Baghdad: Some of the horrific carnage is captured on Al-Jazeera TV and broadcast around the Arab world. Iraq attempts to use chemical weapons, but they are mostly ineffective. It also launches a few ineffective Scuds at Israel, which does not retaliate. Arabs in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the occupied territories take to the streets in protest, but no regimes are threatened. No Iraqi leader emerges.

Bush, the newly laureled Conqueror of Baghdad, heeds the advice of former Iran-Contra rogue Elliott Abrams, the National Security Council’s new point man for the Middle East, along with that of fellow neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who urge him to “hang tough” on the Palestinians. An upsurge of patriotism at home during the war, accompanied by denunciations of “ragheads” and “camel jockeys,” encourages him. Bush backs away from the Quartet’s road map, which asks Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians in the absence of a cease-fire, and returns to the harder-line position of his June 2002 speech, in which — displaying a sudden and unprecedented concern for democracy in the region — he demanded that Arafat step down. He continues to castigate Arafat and puts no pressure on Israel to take political steps toward peace. His rhetoric increasingly casts the Palestinians as indistinguishable from al-Qaida. Echoing Donald Rumsfeld, Bush begins to refer to the “so-called” occupied territories and declaims, “In Texas, I was always taught that when you lose a war, you don’t whine about it. That’s something our Palestinian friends need to understand.”

American troops have not left Iraqi soil, but a crisis breaks out in southern Turkey, where Kurd separatists clash with the Turkish army. The U.S. tries to mediate and fails; it ends up not taking sides. The Kurds begin to carve out an autonomous region. Popular anger against the U.S., already smouldering after Ankara agreed to allow in U.S. forces, grows in Turkey.

The defeat of Iraq speeds up the ferment in Iran; hundreds of thousands of students mass to protest the rule of the mullahs. Weeks later the hard-liners are kicked out in a bloodless takeover. But the new secular government rejects offers by the U.S., the World Bank and multinational corporations to improve business ties to Iran in exchange for abandoning its nuclear program and support for Hezbollah. Iran vows to “stand even more firmly beside our suffering brothers and sisters in Palestine,” despite threats and cajolery from the United States. Syria, despite increasing economic hardship, also refuses to change its foreign policy stance, insisting that Israel return the Golan Heights before it will make peace. The Arab League, the E.U. and the U.N. demand that the United States move to alleviate Palestinian suffering.

In the occupied territories, arms continue to flow in despite Iraq’s defeat. Palestinian terror attacks inside and outside the Green Line (Israel’s internationally recognized 1967 border) continue, as do Israeli-targeted assassinations and missile and tank attacks, as well as unpunished vandalism and murder committed by devout Israeli settlers. In July, Palestinian gunmen from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade kill one of the 450 far-right Israelis who live under heavy military protection in the center of Hebron, a biblical Palestinian city of 130,000. In retaliation, a U.S.-built Israeli fighter bombs an apartment complex in Ramallah, killing the top leaders of the Brigade and 36 innocent people. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman expresses regret, saying the pilot was given incorrect intelligence, and announces that the army will investigate, which it does without apparent result. Bush says he supports Israel’s right to defend itself against the scourge of terrorism, but cautions that it must be aware of the consequences of its actions. The next week he signs a bill sent to his desk with a 440-12 vote from Congress approving $14 billion in military and economic aid to Israel.

Five weeks after the Hebron bombing, Palestinian terrorists detonate the largest bomb ever used inside Israel, at a mall in Tel Aviv. Seventy-eight Israelis die, the most ever killed by a Palestinian attack. In response, hundreds of enraged, heavily armed settlers go on a rampage in the West Bank village where the terrorists came from, killing eight people, and then forcibly expel all 300 members of the village to Jordan as the IDF stands by and does nothing. Israel’s government says it “regrets” the settlers’ actions but makes no attempt to repatriate the refugees. The Bush administration expresses its “deep concern” for Israel’s “troubling” actions, but vetoes a U.N. resolution condemning Israel for engaging in “transfer,” aka ethnic cleansing.

Violent riots break out across the Arab world and in Indonesia. Protests threaten General Musharraf rule in Pakistan, with hard-line clerics openly threatening to use the “Islamic bomb” against America. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, under extreme pressure from their angry populations, demand that the U.S. immediately cease aid to Israel. An oil embargo is discussed.

American backpackers are brutally murdered in England, Tunisia, Bali and Colombia. Their assailants are unknown.

Two weeks later, an American family of five visiting the Eiffel Tower is gunned down by French Arabs. The U.S. airline industry is on the verge of collapse.

Six weeks later, an Indonesian Muslim living in Chicago, a quiet, industrious father of five enraged by the Palestinian expulsion and by images of Iraqi children killed by U.S. bombs in Baghdad shown again and again on Al-Jazeera TV, drives a rented truck filled with 2,000 pounds of fertilizer into the busiest downtown intersection at lunch hour and detonates it. At least 534 people are killed when a seven-story building collapses on top of an audience attending an outdoor concert.

Bush blames the attack on Iraqi sleeper agents. Declaring “This scourge of terror will not stand,” he says the attacks make it clear why the invasion of Iraq was necessary and vows to “track down the evil perpetrators who hate our freedom.”

The newspaper account of the debate in The Hill just reinforced the Republican spin, highlighting the Democrats’ decision to make people spend more money on the hated TSA and downplaying the actual existing Republican alternative to the proposal, which was not “spend less on the hated TSA” but rather “raise money for the hated TSA by slashing needed aid to states.” The Democrats won, or “won,” and now they will earn the fruits of that victory: well-deserved scorn from everyone. And Ben Nelson (D-Troll Town) voted with the Republicans. (Though surely having users pay the fees for supposedly necessary security measures is perfectly conservative, isn’t it? Am I missing something here? I mean besides the fact that the two sides in this debate weren’t actually “liberal” and “conservative” but rather “people who want to come up with a way of paying for the oppressive and useless national security state” versus “people who want there to be an oppressive national security state but hate government spending on feeding and sheltering impoverished people.”)

I don’t know of anyone not employed by the TSA or some other arm of Homeland Security that believes the TSA does a good job and deserves its massive budget, but everyone in Washington apparently feels differently (and is terrified of being blamed for “voting to cut TSA funding” if there is another terrifying and deadly underwear bomber, of course). This is why everyone hates politics and Congress and Washington. This and Iraq. And the drug war.

The area was evacuated for two hours until a bomb squad determined that the device was not dangerous.

At about 2 a.m. Saturday, a police officer discovered Miyakawa on a ladder not far from where the first contraption was found. Police said he was tying a similar “I Love New York” bag to a public lamp post.

Miyakawa was charged with two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment, two counts of placing a false bomb or hazardous substance in the first degree, two counts of placing a false bomb or hazardous substance in the second degree, two counts of second-degree reckless endangerment and two counts of second-degree criminal nuisance.

A judge ordered him held pending a psychiatric evaluation. His lawyer, Deborah J. Blum, said Monday that she is filing for emergency relief to have Miyakawa released. A court date was set for June 21 to review the results of the evaluation.

“He’s still being held,” Blum said Monday. “I believe that it was a gross misunderstanding and other than that I don’t have any other comment.”

Miyakawa, who was born in Tokyo and is about 50 years old, has worked for a New York-based architect Rafael Vinoly for the last 20 years and also has an independent design practice.

Vinoly’s firm released a statement Monday praising Miyakawa for his “extraordinary brand of professionalism” and said he has been a mentor to generations of young architects.

“Takeshi is a fabulous human being and a person of extraordinary talent,” Vinoly said. “We hope this misunderstanding is cleared up as quickly as possible.”

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement that the charges sounded “like a wild overreaction.”

“It’s hard to understand why a light-up bag in a tree would be treated as an attempted terrorist act unless there’s more to the story than has been reported in the press thus far,” she said.

In 2007, an artist touched off a terror scare in Boston by placing electronic devices around the city as part of a marketing stunt for Cartoon Network. The city closed bridges, roads and public transit before authorities realized the signs were not bombs.

On an average day, the NYPD receives nearly 100 reports of a suspicious package. Last year, there were more than 4,000 such reports. The number generally rises following any word of terror threats in New York and around the world.

The concourse checkpoint needs to be there.  Just the same, chances are good that once an adversary has made it to the airport, he or she has engineered a way to outwit the system.  And spend as we might, there will always be a way to outwit the system.  ”Even if our technology is good enough to spot it,” said California Rep. Adam Schiff, commenting on the news of the latest underwear plot, “technology is still in human hands and we are inherently fallible.”

That’s one of the smartest things I’ve heard a politician utter in some time.

Getting a handle on this takes us all the way back to Sept. 11, 2001, the day that everything, and yet really nothing, changed.  I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: Conventional wisdom holds that the 19 hijackers exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling box cutters onto four Boeing jetliners. But conventional wisdom is wrong. What the men actually exploited was a weakness in our mind-set — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings and how they were expected to unfold. (In prior years, a hijacking meant a diversion, perhaps to Havana or Beirut, with hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were accordingly trained in the concept of “passive resistance.”) The presence of box cutters on 9/11 was merely incidental. The men could have used almost anything — a deadly sharp can be fashioned from a broken first-class dinner plate or a ballpoint pen — particularly when coupled with the bluff of having a bomb. The success of their plan relied not on hardware but on the element of surprise. It wasn’t a failure of airport security that allowed those men to hatch their takeover scheme. It was a failure of national security — a breakdown of communication and oversight at the FBI and CIA level.

To put it succinctly: The success of the 9/11 attacks had almost nothing to do with airport security at all — a great and painful irony, of course, to any passenger forced to endure the checkpoint rigmarole in 2012.

Not that frontline guards don’t play a deterrent role.  And, in the opinions of some, the plot uncovered in Yemen underscores the value of full-body scanners — those controversial walk-through machines that allow guards to look beneath a passenger’s clothing. It’s a compelling argument, but the way in which these scanners have — and have not — been deployed is apt to make some of us cynical. For instance, the vast majority of body scanners are found at U.S. domestic airports. Overseas, where a bomb is far likelier to originate, they are rare. Is this really about safety, we wonder, or is it about billions of dollars going into the coffers of the companies contracted to build these machines?

And although the scanners are effective, where does the arms race end?  Not long ago, the idea that passengers would be marched through body scanners and photographed naked before being allowed to board an airplane, would have seemed outrageous. Yet here we are. What might be next?  The stubborn truth is, we can turn airports into fortresses if we want (in some respects we’re well along that path), yet we’ll never be entirely safe. Airport screening alone, no matter how thorough, how expensive, and how technologically advanced, will never defeat a relentless enough, resourceful enough adversary intent on downing a plane.

That isn’t capitulation, it’s reality.  And acknowledging this reality would go a long way toward warding off panic and overreaction when the next successful attack occurs.

Regrettably, too, we often forget that commercial air travel has long been a target of terrorist extremists.  The 1970s and 1980s in particular were, as I like to describe them, a Golden Age of Air Crimes, comparatively rife with bombings, hijackings and other deadly assaults against airplanes and airports. Over one five-year span between 1985 and 1989 we can count at least six high-profile terrorist attacks, including the horrific bombings of Pan Am 103 and UTA 772; the bombing of an Air India 747 over the North Atlantic that killed 329 people; and the incredible saga of TWA Flight 847.  And let’s not forget what might have been, such as the so-called “Project Bojinka,” the 1994 scheme masterminded by Ramzi Yousef (nephew of Kalid Sheikh Mohammad), in which impossible-to-detect (at the time) liquid explosives were to be used to simultaneously destroy a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately the plot unraveled and Yousef was arrested.

While we can argue, quite persuasively, that many of the current-day security measures have done little if anything to make us safer, we’ve nevertheless introduced measures that have been useful and effective, from explosives screening of checked luggage to the sorts of trans-border partnerships that broke up the most recent plot from Yemen. Whether in spite of, or because of, the attention we’ve lavished on All Things Terrorism, the past decade has seen fewer attacks against commercial air travel than any since the 1950s.What we need to remember, though, is that our success has had more to do with the security measures we don’t see than those taking place in plain view. And if our luck is to hold, we need to better rationalize and streamline our entire approach to airport security. For instance, if we’re going to have those body scanners, let’s put them where they’re needed. If this requires negotiating with foreign authorities whose airports are beyond TSA’s jurisdiction, so be it. Meanwhile, here at home, TSA’s one-size-fits-all approach, in which every single person who flies is seen as a potential threat, is simply unsustainable in a country where close to 2 million people fly daily. Things like taking snow globes from children, haggling over tiny container sizes, or confiscating a dessert fork from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot (it happened to me) serve no useful purpose whatsoever. On the contrary, they divert valuable time and resources away from the things that could make us safer.  Let’s scale back that concourse Kabuki and retrain guards in the finer points of a more sensible, risk-based assessment of passengers and their belongings.

And lastly, if only as an aside, let’s behold for a moment the term “underwear bomb.”  That was the operative phrase in literally hundreds of articles and broadcasts over the past several days, and nowhere did it raise a snicker.  What does it say about our country, I wonder, that such a preposterous expression is instantly understood and effectively taken for granted?

Strange times indeed.

This should be our Nuremburg, the defining trial of the 9/11 era and a fitting coda to it.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government appears to be on the verge of squandering this opportunity, and with it, the best, and perhaps only, chance for the public to understand not only how the attacks came to be, but why Mohammed waged a relentless war against America and how we might stop the next would-be terrorist mastermind.

The problems lie within the reformed military-tribunal system that the Obama administration put in place after losing its fight for a civilian trial in New York. Political compromises have resulted in a flawed military commissions process that from outward appearances is not only rigged against the defense, but hyper-choreographed, censored and hermetically sealed.

“The process is designed to achieve a conviction, and to do it with as little revelation as humanly possible, but with the veneer of due process and justice,’’ said one participant who said restrictive gag orders prohibited him from talking publicly. “You’re talking about the most heinous crime ever, and we’re going to afford them less due process, less discovery, less of everything than we would the guy who shoplifted a pack of gum from CVS.’’

Obama administration officials say their reformed military commissions system is a vast improvement over the Bush administration’s version, which Obama moved to shut down on his first day in office in 2009.

Defense lawyers disagree, and insist they have been hamstrung in their efforts to mount the kind of aggressive defense needed to do their jobs including full and unfettered access to evidence, witnesses and even the accused themselves.

Four of the five legal teams had so few of their key players in place in recent months that they did not file the “mitigation submissions’’ that the government said it needed to decide which of the five men should face the death penalty and other key issues, such as whether to try them together or individually. They recently filed motions asking that the charges be thrown out because of fatal flaws in the system, which they say make it impossible for them to defend their clients.

“It’s window dressing,’’ Mohammed’s defense lawyer, David Nevin, said of the government’s improvements. “I am not all satisfied that it is a fair process. In fact, it is not a fair process.’’

Many of the defense lawyers have quit out of frustration or for other personal reasons stemming from the many delays in the process. Only a few have been there long enough to even begin to understand their clients’ case, not to mention the convoluted military commission process.

And they say they will be unable to effectively challenge confessions obtained when their clients were coercively interrogated in the CIA’s black site prisons, if they can broach the subject at all. This is important for the four men accused of helping Mohammed with the logistics of the plot. Several claim they have been wrongly accused, tortured into confessing, or both.

It is also important with regard to Mohammed, who confessed to dozens of plots while being waterboarded 183 times, and has said he may plead guilty even before the trial begins. Few U.S. counterterrorism officials believe all of his often boastful confessions, and it is important for the public to hear what, exactly, evidence the government has with regard to what he did and didn’t do, and whom he might have been protecting.

The team of Defense and Justice Department officials overseeing the military commission process, and the presiding judge, should quickly address the defense lawyers’ complaints, or a proceeding that some call “The Trial of the Century’’ will be delayed further by legal wrangling — and forever tainted by accusations of being unfair.

A full, fair and transparent trial, above all, will benefit the public. There is much the public doesn’t know about Mohammed, including the details of how he devised the plot, convinced bin Laden to let him do it and then orchestrated it “from A to Z,’’ to use his own words. It was Mohammed who masterminded dozens of other plots and attacks, some while staying a step ahead of the largest-ever criminal manhunt.

Mohammed, not bin Laden, was the one who traveled the world as a kind of “Johnny Appleseed’’ of terrorism, establishing alliances and creating a network of cells and lieutenants that in some cases remains today. And it was Mohammed who personally recruited young jihadist prospects much like a baseball scout, many of them Westerners, tapping into their grievances to turn them to his cause.

The U.S. government has kept the details of what Mohammed did — and how and why he did it — hidden in its most classified files since his capture in Pakistan nine years ago. The government should set the record straight on that, because there is an important lesson to be learned from the largely untold tale of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: It isn’t some monolithic group like al-Qaida that poses a continuing threat, it’s the one intelligent and energetic person who can emerge from nowhere and orchestrate a 9/11 while the world focuses elsewhere.

To that end, the government should declassify as much evidence as possible, and explain how it obtained it. It should call numerous witnesses to testify, especially since the one who has been publicly identified, Majid Khan, claims he was tortured while in CIA custody overseas.

Instead of limiting access to a few closed-circuit TVs, it should consider televising the proceedings. It should ensure that censorship is minimized, and used only to protect intelligence sources and methods, not to save the government from embarrassment. And it should let Mohammed and the others testify at length on their behalf if they so desire.

By doing so, the Obama administration will be able to say it did its best to put on the kind of civilian trial it has wanted all along, and one with a similar outcome to that of the al Qaida members charged with blowing up two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

Those of us who witnessed that trial in Manhattan in 2001 saw the defendants squirm in their chairs as prosecutors introduced mountains of evidence against them. We saw eyewitnesses point the finger at the accused, and surviving victims glare at them from the pews.

We heard from the terrorists themselves, and learned a lot about why they did it, about how terrorist networks operate and about what might be done to stop people like them. And when the jury convicted them, there was no question that justice was done.

Five young men from Cleveland are now in jail, accused of plotting to “blow up a bridge in the Cleveland area,” according to the FBI’s triumphant press release/criminal complaint. As is always the case with FBI terror stings, the “sting” part involved the bureau’s informant/agent provocateur mostly inventing the plot the accused have now been arrested for. In this case, the five planned to detonate smoke bombs as a distraction as they “topple[d] financial institution signs atop high rise buildings in downtown Cleveland.” But the informant (as usual, a sketchy unnamed character with a checkered past) strongly pushed the group to seriously consider different, more extreme plots. At the end, some or all of them were going to plant C-4 on the Route 82 Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

So what was initially a political action aimed at financial institutions somehow morphed into a supposed attempt to destroy or damage a piece of publicly owned infrastructure in a national park. Anarchists sure do hate bridges, and parks, I guess. (No parliament of men has the authority to designate which spaces are “national parks”! The whole world is the worker’s national park!)

The FBI’s affadavit suggests that there was never actually a serious “plot.” The gang tossed around the idea of “taking out” a bridge in order to stop people from getting to work, but they also thought maybe they could use their (pretend) C4 on a Klan rally, or a neo-Nazi organization, or an oil well, or the Federal Reserve Bank. They eventually decided to maybe sink a ship. All of their many plans were super serious and well-thought out. (“To prevent capture, he suggested getting tacks that they could throw out of the back of a car if they get in a chase.”) Eventually they settled on the bridge thing, sort of, and bought fake IEDs from the guy they already suspected was a cop.

In other words, these are a bunch of dumbasses even by the standards of amateur “black bloc” dumbasses. Do you know how I know these morons weren’t serious? They planned to download the Anarchist Cookbook and follow its notoriously awful instructions. Every experienced anarchist knows that the Feds have a mole in your group house, but these guys were mainly concerned with having someone’s “hacker friend” explain to them how bitcoins work. Without the FBI’s intervention the most damage these idiots would’ve ever caused is a broken Starbucks window. So thank god they’re off the streets, and congrats to the FBI for getting this tale of dangerous, bomb-planting anarchists onto the news broadcasts on the day of Occupy’s big May Day action.

(At least the Feds are branching out from only targeting Muslims in these ridiculous “stings.” Some day all Americans, regardless of creed or color, will have their circle of friends secretly infiltrated by a paid informant.)