Eight saboteurs landed in Long Island and Florida from German submarines. The only American citizen among them turned himself and the others in. There was a quickie trial before a kangaroo military tribunal and six of the Germans were immediately hanged, while the American and one of the Germans were given long prison sentences. (After the war, they were both released.) Quirin is an aberration. Roosevelt had already hanged six of the saboteurs when the Supreme Court wrote the opinion, and he had made it clear to the members of the Court that he wouldn't stand for any second-guessing about what he had done. Quirin, in a craven way, avoided a confrontation with Roosevelt (in wartime) over his already-used power to kill saboteurs. The case and its reasoning are a disgrace -- as much of a disgrace as Korematsu, the case in which the Court upheld the forced incarceration of American citizens of Japanese descent for no crime other than being Japanese -- and Roosevelt never used it again as a reason for hanging spies. Using Quirin as precedent is as noxious as doing the same with Korematsu (which, by the way, has never been overturned).

The puzzle is solved by recognizing that "suicide bomber" is simply a false terminology. The purpose of these people is not to kill themselves. They wish to kill the enemies of Islam, and in their view the most effective way to kill as many of their enemies as possible is to do it in this particular way. Their own death is accepted as a necessary sacrifice.

Which means nothing in terms of whether this kid deserved anything.

Personally, I'll chip in for some proper rope so the unlawful combatants, the term is descriptive of their status, can hang themselves.-Jimbo