Posted on 09/01/2009 11:00:13 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Attorney General Eric Holder warned his Scottish counterpart in June that the man convicted of blowing US-bound Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky could get a hero’s welcome if allowed to return to Libya, according to the head of a group representing the families of victims.
Holder’s warning to Scotland’s justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, came nearly two months before the bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, was released from a Scottish prison and greeted by a cheering crowd on his arrival in Libya last week.
Notes prepared ahead of Holder’s June 26 conversation with MacAskill were provided to the Associated Press by Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 Inc. Duggan said a Justice Department official read him notes that Holder used during the conversation.
Duggan also provided notes of a July 9 teleconference between MacAskill and some victims’ relatives, an emotional exchange in which family members told stories of their loved ones and implored MacAskill not to return Megrahi to Libya.
(Excerpt) Read more at corner.nationalreview.com ...
It’s not rocket science. Holder’s a liberal with some evil ideas, but he’s not stupid. Anybody with two functioning brain cells could figure out that the bombing bastard was going to be seen in Libya and throughout the Arab world as someone who’d gotten one over on the West if they let him go. McCaskill knew it too, he had to; he’d have to be the most naive idiot on the planet not to. This was a realpolitik decision by the Brits to give Libya what they wanted so BP could get their oil. It is far more accurate to call this “blood for oil” than it ever was for liberals to use that term against George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq.
}:-)4
According to the American Spectator,Obama didn't even express "strong disapproval":
British intelligence and Foreign Office officials were surprised by what they called the "seeming lack of enthusiasm" by the Obama administration in the run-up to the release of convicted Libyan terrorist Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the man responsible for the murder of more than 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988."We know that [Attorney General Eric] Holder and [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton weighed in with the Scottish justice ministry, but we expected more, particularly given the circumstances," said a foreign office staffer. "We would have expected, given that a Department of Justice official was one of the passengers on that flight, that the department would be more aggressive in ensuring al-Megrahi remained imprisoned."
According to the British sources, the Obama White House was advised that due to internal, United Kingdom politics, it was going to be difficult for the British government to provide a full-court press on Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill. As it was, the British embassy in Washington provided the families of Pan Am 103 opportunities to speak to MacAskill and make their case for al-Megrahi not to be released.
In the days leading up to the Scottish decision, Holder and Clinton made calls to MacAskill, but "it isn't clear that much more was done," says the British career diplomat, who has spent time in both Washington and New York. "It seemed to be very much about going through the motions."
...according to Department of Justice sources, Holder never asked for legal options related to al-Megrahi, nor did the State Department present options to DOJ or the White House. More troubling, during the period when the Scottish government was seeking input from the U.S. and Pan 103 victims' families, President Obama was meeting with Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi at the G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy. At the time, according to White House sources, Obama had not been fully briefed on the al-Megrahi situation.
While the British source says that British officials bear much blame for al-Megrahi's release under a Libyan-British prison transfer treaty ratified in April, "those of us who were attempting to block the compassionate release here were hoping for greater support from the United States, and it was lacking."
--keeping and expanding most of Bush's domestic anti-terror programs while not taking a stand against this Lockerbie release.
--denouncing waterboarding while raining bombs down on Afghanistan.
He is very inconsistent in this area.
Didn’t know if you’d seen this thread....
I saw something that mentioned months, Months! Talk about an outrage! Except most Americans will not hear about it or care.
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