NBC NEWS FLASH: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi will soon be tried in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District in New York. Good.

More important -- these terrorists, and more to come, will surely be found guilty, and the ones who aren't executed will have to be imprisoned somewhere. Of course, the high fever of NIMBY (not in my backyard) is raging. So the administration is looking for cash-hungry rural areas that have been hit the hardest in the recent crash. These folks need the jobs -- and money that will follow. Do you see where I'm going with this?

The Standish maximum security prison in Standish, Mich., is being touted by Michigan Senator Carl Levin, and even the snarky Congressman Bart Stupak, who threw the wrench in the House health bill, is on board. He knows where this is going. Thomson State Prison in Thomson, Ill., has been mentioned, and despite a few naysayers, the townspeople who have been staring at their pile of expensive bricks that was built in 2001, at the cost of $140 million, are smelling dollars. "Sounds good to me," exclaimed one resident on the way to the unemployment office.

Even Montana is considered. So where is Maine? Where are our lobbyists? Isn't it time they started earning their money? It's time to promote central Maine as a big-time, hard-steel, no-nonsense, maximum-security bed-and-breakfast spot for Mohammed, Walid, Ali, and Mustafa and the others still down there in Guantanamo.

I'm as serious as a stroke on this issue. Maine's time is at hand. Montana? Give me a break. Can you see Andrea Mitchell spending the winter in Butte? Thomson, Illinois? It's too close to Chicago, which has a large ethnic population for escaped terrorists to melt into. Now Waterville and other central Maine towns, for example, aren't close to anything. Let's say one or two escape; where would they go? They'd stand out like Lexus salesmen at the Common Ground Fair.

The Maine State Prison in Warren comes to mind, but it's too obvious. It's the first place terrorist-rescuers would look. We need to think outside the box here. MaineGeneral hospital will be available as soon as they pull up stakes for Augusta. A couple of million stimulus bucks could bring that place up to code by the time the jury came back with the verdicts. Think California's Sutter's Mill in 1848. Thank you, Obama.

Don't laugh now, but let's not overlook the old Waterville High School building on Gilman Street in Waterville. It looks like a cracker box now, but all it needs is some TLC and perking up. Forget low-income housing and think large. A high-security campus would be a boon to the cyclone-fence and razor-wire industry. Money and jobs would start pouring in here. Everyone would work -- carpenters, cement people, guards, janitors and tourist guides. They'd need cooks and laundry facilities. Terrorists are like anybody else. They eat and get their clothes dirty.

And that's only the tip of the cash wagon. These dirtbags will be the focus of media attention for years.

All the major networks and cable shows will descend on us. New hotels will have to be built. These media guys from Hollywood and New York live large. Our restaurants will have to expand just to cover Katie Couric's staff. The Fox Network alone will encamp for decades, waiting for something to go wrong that they can pin on President Obama.

Call me crazy, call me a wingnut, but this is big. Can you see the postcards now? I've e-mailed this idea in a 50-page document to Senators Snowe and Collins, but my letters just came back with an "out of office" reply. They'll be sorry.

J.P. Devine is a freelance writer living in Waterville.