Zorst, I can't for one millisecond believe that you are for real... your comment to Glueball (and I fully support your sentiment regarding his/her level of intelligence) is not dissimilar to my reflection on your own level of understanding/ignorance regarding Airbus' philosophy and Airbus' pilots procedural competence.
Having flown FBW Airbus aircraft for over 10 years now, I'm at a complete loss to understand what this concept of '...defacto disconnected from the power controls...' is that you (and rogerg) have mentioned.
Airbus power levers have to move at all critical phases to achieve the critical power application. By critical phases, I refer to Take-off and Landing. And just to keep our interest level up, we even have to move them to taxy about the airport! Quite conventional really.
There would probably be some other physiological reason why two experienced pilots (as evidenced by the fact that they were both Captains) failed to notice that one power lever was still in the climb detent. Never having been into the airport concerned, I can only go by all the correspondence that has been published in the media and on this forum.
On the basis of that reading, my humble opinion is that these two guys were already at a heightened stress/awareness level because of the physical vagaries of the runway they were using, the weather and subsequent surface conditions, and the nagging awareness of the MEL that they were operating under that would just make their arrival all the more difficult than the runway would normally make it (even on a lovely day).
We (all of us) only have so much excess RAM to use on a day-to-day basis; when it begins to be used up by stressors that don't normally occur, our ability to process begins to break down, and we then revert to our individual ability to 'priority-shed'. By that I mean that we unconsciously begin to prioritise what we need to do, and shed what we believe we don't have to worry about.
I'd guess that the two pilots were so ensconced in collectively doing their level-best to tick all the 'unusual/abnormal (in the common sense of the word, not the industry sense) boxes that this arrival presented, that a perfectly routine (though critical) action was overlooked. They then had to deal with the completely confounding situation of the aircraft failing to slow down as it 'normally' would be expected to, and had previously always done.
It is a nightmare scenario that any one of us could find ourselves in, given the same circumstances (Z, G and R - have you ever heard of the 'Swiss Cheese' model of accident-producing circumstance development?).
Unless there is clear-cut evidence of culpubility in an aviation accident, police add no practical worth to the investigation, the outcome of, or, more importantly, to the enhancement of future aviation safety.
And as writers, readers, participants and observers of this once-enviable (and I'd like to think it still is enviable) profession and industry, I think we should all be a little more circumspect in our criticism-based comments following tragedies; after all, it is only because of the accidents that have befallen the few, that we many have enjoyed the benefits of ever-safer flight.
Honor them, those whom circumstance has conspired to take, and let us respect the memory of them forever.