Get out your box of aloe vera-enriched, three-ply Kleenex tissues. The bleeding-heart defense team for convicted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui wants to tell you a sob story. Like so many apologists for jihad, Moussaoui's lawyers are playing the victim card on behalf of a murder-minded thug who just can't wait to die for Allah.

Last April, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy, conspiracy to destroy aircraft, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to murder government employees and conspiracy to destroy property. Throughout the sentencing phase of his trial, this martyr-in-waiting has laughed at his victims, brandished his Koran and shouted death threats to America -- "God Curse You All!" and "Burn in hell!" and, of course, "Allah Akbar!"

Last week, when prosecutors put 9/11 family members on the stand to tell the world the pain and horror they still feel every day as a result of the mass murders that Moussaoui facilitated, presiding Judge Leonie Brinkema warned them against "prejudicial testimony."

But Judge Brinkema said nary a word as Moussaoui's lawyers ratcheted up the prejudicial emote-a-meter to 11.

A social worker and a psychologist offered pathos-laden testimony about Moussaoui's difficult childhood. His abusive father. The anti-Muslim taunts of schoolmates. The hostility of the parents of his French girlfriend, under whom Moussaoui "suffered a lot of pain about not being accepted." The courtroom soap opera climaxed with video testimony exhibiting his troubled sisters, who called their beloved Zacarias the "little sweetheart of the family." Sniffle.

According to The New York Times, which headlined its story "Moussaoui's Childhood Is Presented as Mitigating Factor," Dr. Xavier Amador told the jury Monday that Little Orphan Moussaoui "suffered from schizophrenia of the paranoid variety."

Let me throw away the medical dictionary and give my diagnosis of the defense team's diagnosis: Bull.

Moussaoui doesn't sound like a psych ward patient when he rants about the "Jewish state of Palestine" and threatens to "exterminate" American Jews in the Koran-ordained quest to spread Islam and supplant America as the world's superpower. This is standard-issue rhetoric for countless so-called "moderate" Muslim imams and madrassa operators and supposedly Westernized, educated emirs and Iranian government officials and Arab government-owned newspapers.

Totally sick, but completely sane.

Moussaoui rightly mocked his own defense team. "It's a lot of American B.S.," he scoffed. I told you he wasn't nuts. Continued...