3 August—The news a couple of days ago that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (a Pakistani graduate of a U.S. college), Walid Bin ‘Attash (a Yemeni who grew up in Saudi Arabia), and Mustafa al Hawsawi (a Saudi), terrorists who (allegedly but we know) plotted the 9/11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people and resulted in the injury and premature deaths of countless others, had reached a plea deal with prosecutors to spare their lives was, to say the least, shocking.

The deal was for the trio of terrorists to enter guilty pleas next week and spend the rest of their miserable, unworthy lives in Guantanamo Bay Military Prison or some other maximum-security slammer. They had been captured in 2003 and should have been tried (and convicted) without delay. But Mohammed, for one, wasn’t even charged until 2008, when the rap included conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism, and material support of terrorism.

But getting past the two decades worth of inexcusable pre-trial delays (many if not most of which were to save the U.S. government from having to divulge details of its methods of torture, among other embarrassments), the government’s rationalization was, simply, that this was “the least bad deal.”

So the terrorists were doomed to what we’d hope were life sentences worse than death in facilities a lot less comfortable than mass murderer Anders Breivik’s luxury accommodation in Norway’s plushest slammer.

Until yesterday, that is, when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin nixed the plea deal. This is his memorandum:

(Brigadier General Susan Escallier is the Commander of the United States Army Legal Services Agency and Chief Judge of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals.)

Good for Secretary Austin. But frankly, while executing the terrorists would make most of us feel good, it likely would be the easy way out for them. In addition to assuring their martyrdom for having died waging jihad against enemies of Islam, of course, and allowing them to enjoy Allah’s reward of blissful ecstasy in jannah (heaven/paradise), each with 72 virgins. One wonders whether the virgins would remain virgins.

Anyway, how did Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts put it? “Off with their heads!”