Attorney General Eric Holder was asked by a congressional panel this week how the government planned to handle Osama bin Laden, should the al-Qaida leader ever be captured. Would Holder foresee a federal court trial? A military commission, perhaps? Holder's answer: a body bag.

Bin Laden "will never appear in an American courtroom," Holder said. "Let's deal with the reality here. The reality is we will be reading Miranda rights to a corpse." Holder said he was being "flippant" but added that bin Laden "will be killed by us or by his own people."

Holder has been under fire by the right for being soft on terrorists, in part for arguing - reasonably, might I add - that some terrorism suspects would be best prosecuted in federal court. I can't explain this misplaced and frankly gross bravado as anything but overcompensation for the political beatings of late.

It also could suggest that Holder has no plan for how bin Laden should be handled. Or maybe he's never thought about the possibility.

That's apparently not the case with two other high-ranking Obama officials. When asked on Wednesday if his troops had given up on capturing bin Laden alive, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said, "Wow. No." CIA Director Leon Panetta said on Wednesday that bin Laden would be taken to a military base and interrogated by U.S. agents.

The writer is a member of the Washington Post editorial page staff.