Scots Officials Claim Obama Administration Asked Them To Free Lockerbie Bomber

[jordan179]

According to Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent of the Guardian, in an article published just today (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/25/barack-obama-megrahi-release-lockerbie)

the US grudgingly supported freeing the Lockerbie

Comments

[polaris93]

When it comes to Libya and Muamaar Gadafi (or however the hell you spell it), yeah, actually, that would help me sleep better at night. Libya has been run by that terrorist-enabler for years. If he had nukes, he'd be using them to blackmail Israel, us, and anyone else he could get away with threatening. By all means, let's hear it for getting rid of the bastard as thoroughgoingly as possible.

[zerorevenge]

Your icon is silly.

[zerorevenge]

Touche. :P

[jordan179]

I was in a particularly pissed-off mood when I wrote this, but doesn't it bother you at all that Libya destroyed an American airliner, killed American and British civilians, and suffered absolutely no meaningful punishment for this action? And has it ever occurred to you that this may have been one reason why Terrorist States such as Afghanistan and Iraq then began to feel a bit bolder, resulting in the wars we're now fighting?

[jordan179]

He will die, most likely quite soon, ...

Why not accelerate the process with a targeted missile strike? Preferably one with a warhead powerful enough to kill a few hundred Libyans?

... and whether or not he dies in Scotland or Libya, he will probably still be hailed a hero by the Libyan people no matter what would have happened. At the end of the day, ...

If the Libyan people consider someone who murdered 270 innocent Americans and Brits a "hero," isn't this a strong argument in favor of visiting death and destruction upon these people? People who want us to die are a threat to our continued survival, aren't they?

At the end of the day, it makes no difference and the whole thing has been blown way out of proportion.Look ... I'm willing for the Scots to treat it as trivial, and forgive Libya for those killed in Lockerbie. But Scotland has no right to forgive Libya for the American or non-Scottish British dead. Scotland should have released him on humanitarian grounds ... into American custody, for us to then decide what to do with

Mangoflush's Odd Theory of Warfare

[jordan179]

By bombing the shit out of them? So they think "America's bombing the shit out of me, I don't like this, so I will not retaliate"? Get a fucking grip. The first thing they would want is blood, and they won't care whose.

Ah, so in your theory of national motivations, it's impossible to ever win a war? Oddly enough, actual history fails to conform to your theory -- it is crowded with the names of victors and vanquished. Did something change in human nature in the last half-century or so?

You have a few options here: Bomb some men until none of them want to fight any more (unlikely), bomb some women and children in the hope that this will force them into submission (highly unlikely), or bomb everyone so that there's nobody left to fight back (genocidal, but that would definitely work).

Then how do you explain that countries always surrender short of the annihilation of their whole population? Are you caliming that Libya is somehow specially resolved, such that the literal annihilation of the Libyans would be necessary to defeat

[jordan179]

See? I can hold entire nations accountable for the acts of a few people too. It makes a terrible argument, don't you think?

An entire nation is accountable for the acts of its national leadership, at least until they throw the bastards out, or until they are thrown out for them by a conqueror. Likewise, that leadership is accountable for the actions of its nation.

[jordan179]

By bombing the shit out of them? So they think "America's bombing the shit out of me, I don't like this, so I will not retaliate"? Get a fucking grip. The first thing they would want is blood, and they won't care whose.

You don't grasp "deterrence" very well, do you?

[yamamanama]

Because a bullet is just as effective.

[yamamanama]

It's not truly retalation unless 1 million are dead in exchange for 160.

[jordan179]

The point is not to merely "retaliate." The point is to win, by imposing pain at a level that the Libyans can neither match nor endure. Limiting retaliation to merely proportionate actions, against a determined enemy, merely leads to eternal war; not retaliating at all leads to attacks on oneself in the future, because one has demonstrated that one can be attacked without cost to the assailant.