America’s legal settlement with Kaddafi over Lockerbie

Paul K. writes:

In 2003, the United States and Britain reached a settlement with Libya in which the Libyans accepted civil responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid an $8 million settlement to each victim’s family.

Let me quote from the Wikipedia article:

In October 2008 Libya paid $1.5 billion into a fund which will be used to compensate relatives of the

1. Lockerbie bombing victims with the remaining 20 percent of the sum agreed in 2003;

2. American victims of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing;

3. American victims of the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing; and,

4. Libyan victims of the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. As a result, President Bush signed Executive Order 13477 restoring the Libyan government’s immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing all of the pending compensation cases in the U.S., the White House said. U.S. State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, called the move a “laudable milestone … clearing the way for a continued and expanding US-Libyan partnership.

Is Bill O’Reilly, who wants the U.S. to overthrow the Libyan government in revenge for the Lockerbie bombing, aware of this agreement? The deal may not absolve Colonel Khadafi of guilt, but when a civilized nation accepts a settlement of this sort it suggests that the matter is over and there will be no further attempts at revenge. I watched a few minutes of O’Reilly tonight and had to turn it off, he was acting like such a demagogic numbskull—or, to use his favorite word, a “pinhead.”

LA replies:

Personally I think it’s a disgrace that we reached such a settlement with Qadaffi. However, in practical terms, by 2003, what else was possible? Fifteen years had passed since Lockerbie and the U.S. had not sought retribution for it. In 2003 Kaddafi made peace with the U.S., and this agreement was part of the peace deal. So it happened, it’s done. Yet none of the war supporters seem to know it or acknowledge it—though many of them, starting in 2003, were trumpeting how Kaddafi had become our friend or at least had entered into the U.S. sphere of influence. Maybe, because the spelling of his name keeps changing, they didn’t realize that the guy running Libya today is the same guy they were celebrating a few years ago.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 22, 2011 01:29 AM | Send