http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090822/wl_nm/us_lockerbie
I try to be understanding. I really do. Please tell me why we shouldn’t bomb these people back into the stone age.
Seriously. Tell me why these people who cheer this guy are even classified in the same species as me.
Because they are a largely captive news audience who have been fed disinformation for decades. To such an extent that a great many Libyans honestly believe he was an innocent who was railroaded. Latched on to as a symbol of scapegoating by a rich first world power, they, as inhabitants of a relatively miniscule Third World nation, have transformed him into a type of celebrity on the basis of “justice being finally served” in their eyes. It’s pretty natural.
I might add that while I have no particular opinion on his guilt, never have studying the case beyond a cursory level, there are apparently at least some in Scotland who regard him as a possibly railroaded scapegoat as well.
You’d bomb someone back to the Stone Age because of this?
Not because of this. Because it disconfirms what I have been told that I was mistaken about for feeling.
They sound like the same speicies as you. You believe all the bad things you see and read and hear about them and their country and they believe all the bad stuff they hear about you and yours.
Sounds like the same species to me.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Not just in Scotland. Questions have been asked about his conviction for years. There is a school of thought that he was released because of what might be revealed at his appeal.
I’m sure this sounds like tinfoil hat stuff but if enough people who aren’t Libyans believe it, I’m sure the Libyan people themselves have no doubt.
Facts have little to do with it. The Libyans believe as they do because it fits their worldview to believe that way.
They’re hardly the only nationality you could say that about.
You don’t believe the news story that he received a hero’s welcome at the airport?
You’re not very smart, are you?
There was strong circumstantial evidence to tie Syria in but as the Syrian dictatorship was in the US good books at the time along with Saddam, and Libya wasn’t but wanted to be - ask no further.
mhendo, pls. refrain from personal attacks.
Thank you.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
ETA: Yanno, I don’t want to have to ride herd on this – I’m going to move it to the Pit.
I thought he already had an appeal?
There is no correlation necessary between schools of thought and reality.
Someone convince me there wasn’t any quid pro quo with lucrative oil/gas deals between Libya and Scotland.:dubious:
He had a procedural appeal, which was denied in 2002. He then had an actual appeal, which took from 2004 to last week, when it was dropped as a condition of his release.
Um, okay. Scotland is a net exporter of oil in its own right, and produces nearly enough to supply the rest of the UK.
Better question: why the fuck should the people of Scotland have to justify themselves to you?
It was announced in 2007 that he would be granted a new appeal as sufficient evidence had been presented to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to cause them to believe a miscarriage of justice may have taken place. You can read their explanation here.
Objectively the conviction does look pretty dodgy, whatever the motivation might have been behind his release.
To be honest, your attitude has a lot in common with that of the type of person who wants to blow up airliners. They offend you, so you want to kill them all. Someone reading this in Libya might ask why they shouldn’t blow up planeloads of people like you. Lather rinse repeat.
Here’s a funny thought: blowing up people is wrong. It’s wrong when it’s an airplane full of people going home on vacation, it’s wrong when it is done to “bomb them back to the stone age.” The sentiment behind both ideas is the same, you are as much a prisoner of your hate as “they” are.
An interesting parallel with the award of medals to members of crew of the USS Vincennes at the end of the tour on which it shot down flight 655 and killed 270 civilians, just 5 1/2 months before Lockerbie.
Fwiw, I’m with Jim Swire, Paul Foot and very many others who believed it was a political conviction against al-Megrahi by a non-jury in a case held mainly in closed session.