Kamikaze Capital Punishment?

It was two years ago today that Timothy McVeigh was executed by the federal government for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing - the first federal execution since 1963. The United States is the only industrialized nation where capital punishment is still in use - in thirty-eight states (especially Texas!) as well as at the federal level. I'm sorry, but it strikes me as kind of perverse to kill murderers and terrorists to prove that killing is wrong, no matter how heinous the crime. And it's hardly a deterrent to future crimes. Right after McVeigh was executed, our smarmy, pseudo-sanctimonious Attorney General, John Ashcroft (who believes dancing is sinful - gee, what does he think of black people?), declared that McVeigh's execution should serve as a warning to anyone else plotting a terrorist attack on American soil.

Three months to the day after McVeigh was put to death, a bunch of Middle Eastern suicide hijackers flew Boeing passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in suburban Washington, destroying the Twin Towers and taking out a chunk of the Pentagon's outer wall. So what good is capital punishment against terrorists who are willing to annihilate themselves as well as their chosen targets?

P.S. The federal government is now building a capital case against the suspected twentieth hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, in spite of the obvious fact that he received training at a flight school and must have known he was to die had he boarded United flight 93 (the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania). Why are we now likely to execute . . . an attempted suicide terrorist? He's obviously not afraid to die!