This explains everything:
Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui suffered a traumatic childhood that transformed him from a child with a sense of humor who made friends easily to a man who spurned his family and embraced radical Islam, a defense witness testified Monday.
Jan Vogelsang, a clinical social worker, said at Moussaoui’s death-penalty trial that the 37-year-old Frenchman was in and out of orphanages the first six years of his life. As a teenager, she said, he was rejected as a “dirty Arab� by the family of his longtime girlfriend, with whom he lived together briefly and won dance contests.
Moussaoui was dismissive of the social worker’s analysis. He shouted “It’s a lot of American B.S.,� as he left the courtroom for the lunch recess.
It seems that Moussaoui and the bulk of the American people might agree on something after all.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.