Questions Remain over Lockerbie Bomber's Release

A senator says that he's uncovered conflicting accounts of the treatment of the Lockerbie bomber prior to his release by Scotland last year on compassionate grounds.

Sen. Robert Menendez said at a hearing Wednesday that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi stated last year that he had not received chemotherapy - and that medical records released by Scotland didn't say he received that treatment.

But the senator said that information from a Scottish official closely involved with the case now says al-Megrahi did start chemotherapy in July 2009.

Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said the conflicting accounts raise the question of who changed government documents - and why.

The senator's announcement comes the same day as a State Department official said that a review of government records found no evidence that oil company BP sought to secure al-Megrahi's early release.

The release of al-Megrahi last year outraged families of U.S. victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is investigating whether the British-based oil company had sought his freedom to help get a $900 million exploration agreement with Libya off the ground.

In prepared testimony, Nancy McEldowney, a principal deputy assistant secretary, told lawmakers that the State Department has "not identified any materials, beyond publicly available statements and correspondence, concerning attempts by BP or other companies to influence matters" related to al-Megrahi's release.

BP has acknowledged that it had urged the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, but stressed it didn't specify al-Megrahi's case.

He served eight years of a life sentence for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed all 259 people on board, most of them Americans, and 11 people on the ground. Scotland's government released the cancer-stricken man on compassionate grounds in August 2009 and he returned to Libya, outraging people on both sides of the Atlantic. Doctors advising the Scottish government gave him three months to live, but he is still alive.

McEldowney noted that in 1998, the U.S. and U.K. wrote a letter to the United Nations secretary general, outlining an agreement for al-Megrahi and another suspect, Amin Khalifa Fhimah, to be tried before a Scottish court established in the Netherlands. Al-Megrahi was convicted but Fhimah was acquitted. The letter stated, "If found guilty, the two accused will serve their sentence in the United Kingdom."

She said that back then, the U.S. sought binding assurances that would happen, but the British countered that they couldn't legally bind the hands of future governments.

"They nonetheless assured us of their political commitment that, if convicted, al-Megrahi would remain in Scotland until the completion of his sentence," McEldowney said.

Bruce Swartz, deputy assistant attorney general, said that both the Justice and State departments stressed that al-Megrahi serve his full sentence in Scotland from the very beginning.

"This was one of the earliest issues raised by the United States in connection with the negotiations for a trial before a Scottish court in the Netherlands, and the United States continued to raise it following Megrahi's conviction and incarceration," he said in prepared testimony.

Wednesday's hearing was originally scheduled for July, but senators postponed it when they couldn't get the man they wanted to testify - outgoing BP CEO Tony Hayward. The company instead offered up a regional vice president for Europe.

In a letter to Menendez this week, Hayward reiterated that BP had no involvement in al-Megrahi's release, and that "no BP witness nor document" could shed any light on the issue.

[ouchitatom]

post this shortly.kma predjudice people.

[factsearcher]

We are at war. We re at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis were but one wouldnt know it from our behavior.

During WW11 we didnt refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didnt call the gestapo militants. We didnt see the attacks on our merchant marine as acts by rogue sailors. We didnt justify the nazis rise to power as our fault. We didnt grovel before the german nazis thumping our hearts and cofessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the german people. Evil- ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened the world and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral CLARITY and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not a region, but the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how Hitler became frighteningly close to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.

Not all germans were nazis-most were decent, most were revolted by the third reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night.
BUT, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense-"I didnt know". Too many were silent. Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well.
In WW11 we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe.
We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win... to rid the world of malevolence.

We a re at war...yet too many stubbornly and foolishly dont put the pieces together and refuse to indentify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.

Let me mince no words in saying that from Ft. Hood to Bali, From Times Square to London, from Madrid to Dubai, from 9/11 to Gaza , the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.

To camouflage their identity is sedation. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask thein intentions is unconscionable.

We think we are safe where we live and how we live. But make no mistake; we are under attack- our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.

You may roll your eyes thinking Im a pessimist or prone to panic attacks. No. Im a lover of humanity, all humanity.
But what I have developed is hatred for those who hate, intolereance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.

Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said and sadlly relunctantly that there are unwitting, conspitators who strengthen the hands of evil doers.

Let me state that the overwhelming number of muslims are good muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep in their driveway, a flat screen TV and a good education for their children...like many of us... but these good muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part have they have avoided. They must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square , in the UN Plaza, in Mecca- condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good muslims must place ads in NY Times, they mus buy time ont TV network, on cable, radio in Le Monde, Al Watan, Al Jazeera- condemning terrorism and setting themselves apart from it.
Thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.

Remember, - who is a wise person-he who sees in to the future. We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naiive sense of security. We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders.

Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the west; from the Oval office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to Msnbc, from New York Times to Le Monde...
There is not half way on what is right or wrong.
With clarity, courage, vision, determination and yes, sacrifice-we can be victorious. Remember that democracies dont always win. Tyrannies dont always lose.
My friends, the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber.

[ouchitatom]

You can't fight a war or be victorious with your hands tied by moral standards so mixed and aborted at the same time. I agree with you. No mercy for the enemy and take no prisoners. I DOBT CBS WILL POST THIS.IT MAY BE TO RADICLA FOR THIER BIASED SLANT ON THE THIER IDEA OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.