U.S. airstrikes in Libya have brought renewed focus on the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Some are making the argument that the U.S. could–and should–be getting revenge for this act a mere 22 years later.
Last night (3/21/11), one cable news host said this:
Given the fact Americans died on that 747 over Lockerbie, I’m all for this mission…. I’m an American. You’re an American. We all have opinions. I have always believed that Qaddafi was a terrorist. Let’s look at the tape again of flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Do you need any more evidence? Has Qaddafi ever proven his innocence?
Another one said this:
President Reagan bombed Libya in 1986 over a terrorist incident in Berlin where two American soldiers were killed. Two years later the Pan Am plane was blown up. So the USA owes Qaddafi payback. And you don’t kill Americans and get away with it, as President Reagan said.
The first quote came from liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz, the second from Fox‘s Bill O’Reilly.
It is a little odd for Schultz to say he supports the Libya airstrikes “as an American” because Qaddafi hasn’t “proven his innocence.” Our justice system tends to see things a little differently.
As for Libya and Lockerbie, the U.S. position has long been that Qaddafi was responsible. And former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi was found guilty in a Scottish trial in 2001. Questions have long lingered over the fairness of the trial and the evidence against Megrahi.
And as Ed Herman noted in Extra! (10/09), initial reporting and speculation centered on Iran as the most likely culprit, acting in response to a U.S. attack on an Iranian airliner:
The Lockerbie case arguably begins on July 3, 1988, with the shooting down over the Persian Gulf of Iranian Air Flight 655 by the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser that was in that neighborhood helping Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran.
Although 290 civilians were killed in that shootdown, the United States suffered no international sanctions or even reprimands, and Vincennes Captain Will Rogers was greeted as a hero on his return to the U.S. some months later (“Crew of Cruiser That Downed Iranian Airliner Gets a Warm Homecoming” was the New York Times headline–10/25/88). Rogers was even awarded a Legion of Merit, one of the highest military honors, for “exceptionally meritorious conduct.” The shootdown was treated very benignly by the U.S. corporate media (Extra!, 7-8/88).
The bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie followed the destruction of the Iranian plane by only five and a half months, and officials and experts quickly saw Iranian vengeance as a possible motive.
Iran, of course, hasn’t “proven its innocence” in the Pan Am 103 case. Would Schultz have the U.S. bomb Iran in retaliation for Lockerbie as well?
I’m not saying it’s OK to retaliate against a country some 20 yrs. after the fact but: (1) Didn’t Libya as much admit that they were responsible for the Lockerbie bombing by serving up their intelligence asset for trial?; and (2) not that I’ve followed the thing particularly closely, but I don’t recall any serious questions regarding the fairness of the trial and the evidence against him– there are people who think OJ didn’t do it, but they’re not given a lot of creedence.
Pan Am was destroyed by a joint deal between the US and Iranian governments to give Iran its one and only only revenge for IR655. Libya was frmed for the atrocity, which it had nothing to do with.
Sorta shoots a hole in the whole “humanitarian” rationale, don’t it?
And it might be enlightening to do a check on how often these folks called for Qaddafi’s head (and its seriously psychotic contents) in the last few years, when he was our ally in The War on Terror ™, don’t you think?
Besides the good article on the Lockerbie bombing by Ed Herman linked to above (ie; http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3920 ), Bill Blum also did a good in-depth article (http://killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm) that really presents the original, plausible plot in detail (the one discarded for geo-political purposes). Both of these articles are based on US and foreign government intelligence pronouncements and intercepts, not questionable eye-witnesses or speculative heresy. Individuals like ‘john’ above would do well to read them, as they are NOT in the same league as the exotic OJ / 911 / Kennedy assassination theories.
If Ed Herman doesn’t rub your rhubarb, try Gareth Peirce in the London Review of Books.
@Charles Norrie: That makes no sense at all.
You do realize that Libya did admit responsibility, right?
John –
There is, in fact, tremendous doubt surrounding Megrahi’s conviction. The SCCRC (which reviews Scottish prosecutions and refers them for appeals) had strongly challenged it and referred his case to the High Court. He was up for an appeal when, to the regret of everyone but him, Gaddafi and their closest friends and families, he was freed and scooted back to Libya.
If you’d like a taste of how much doubt there is, consider that the only witness to connect the man to Lockerbie gave such dubious evidence that the prosecuting judges themselves had to admit it “didn’t in a number of respects fit [him]”.
Libya did (sorta, almost) admit responsibility but there’s cause to suspect this was itself deceptive. Consider the words of the nation’s then-Prime Minister…
Q: So payment of compensation didn’t mean any acceptance of guilt?
A: I agree with that, and this is why I said we bought peace.
Or Gaddafi’s son, Saif…
Q: So, to be very clear on this, what you’re saying is that you accept responsibility but you’re not admitting you did itâ┚¬Ã‚¦
A: Of course.
Q: That, to many people, will sound like a very cynical way of conducting your relationships with the outside world.
A: What can you do? Without writing that letter, we would not be able to get rid of the sanctions.
Q: So the statement was just wordplay.
A: Yes.
Q: It wasn’t an admission of guilt?
A: No.
None of this means it wasn’t Libya – I believe it could have been – but there’s no damning evidence to suggest it was.
You don’t need damning evidence. You don’t need proof beyond all doubt. You don’t need proof to a mathematical certainty. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Key word: reasonable. It ain’t what I say it is, or what Gareth Pierce says it is– it’s what the fact-finder says it is.
This guy was a Libyan intelligence asset. If they didn’t want to, they didn’t have to give him up for trial.
So, John, let’s say the U.S. government gave you up for a trial. Would you consider is it just for folk to blithely presume you’re guilty?
@BenSix:
I wouldn’t want people presuming that before the trial, no. But we’re not before trial here, are we?
The Libyan agent had a trial. One under the British legal tradition– a tradition not know for farcical show trials, at least not in the modern age. He had competent counsel. He’s had appeals with competent counsel, too.
Almost every single trial can be monday-morning quarterbacked and made to seem like a miscarriage of justice. There is no perfect investigation and prosecution. And even if there is one that comes close, there’s a finite number of things that were done and an infinite number of things that coulda been done; so someone thinking about it enough can always put together a documentary that casts doubt just by asking “Well, why didn’t they x,y,z…”
Was it a perfect case? No, apparently not. But was it proved beyond a reasonable doubt? Yes; by definition. Was it a miscarriage of justice and has an innocent man been sitting, until recently, in prison? Sorry, but I find the evidence more convincing than some others do, I guess. And I imagine the countervailing theory that it was Iran completely implausible– it woulda required Ocean’s-11-ish sophistication and timing. And framing an uninvolved 3rd party. This ain’t the movies; sheer odds say it couldn’t have happend the way the various authors say.
One under the British legal tradition– a tradition not know for farcical show trials, at least not in the modern age.
The Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six stand in brazen contradiction.
If you think the evidence against Megrahi is compelling, John, I respect your view. (Nor do I dismiss the possibility of guilt.) On the other hand I’d love to know how you’ve arrived at it because, quite frankly, I’ve not seen no valid evidence myself.
If you accept the verdict on the basis of your trust in the judiciary system it’s surely relevant that the SCCRC – in the British legal tradition – have disputed it and referred the case for an appeal. Hans Köchler, the U.N.’s observer to the trial, is also sceptical; as is Robert Black, who helped to organise it. This is not, in other words, some kind of fringe obsession.
It might also be noteworthy that Saddam didn’t manage to prove that he didn’t possess WMDs.
The connection between Libya and Lockerbie is extraordinarily tenuous. I tried (probably in vain) to summarise it in a blog post: http://milomitu.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/al-megrahi/ but you’re better off getting hold of the report that British satirical/investigative magazine Private Eye published on the subject here: https://secure2.subscribeonline.co.uk/PEYE/digital_downloads.cfm
A report on the trial written by an observer appointed by the UN is here: http://www.i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm – amongst other things, he observes “A general pattern of the trial consisted in the fact that virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility to a very high extent, in certain cases even having openly lied to the Court. Particularly as regards Mr. Bollier and Mr. Giaka, there were so many inconsistencies in their statements and open contradictions to statements of other witnesses that the resulting confusion was much greater than any clarification that may have been obtained from parts of their statements. Their credibility as such was shaken. It seems highly arbitrary and irrational to choose only parts of their statements for the formulation of a verdict that requires certainty “beyond any reasonable doubt.”
Nice work, BenSix and Big Em. I don’t think john wants to consider the possibility that the Iranians were behind the Lockerbie bombing, for whatever reason. I wonder how many Americans remember that despicable Vincennes business? There was video shot on the ship the day the plane was shot down–many of the crew were cheering after the missile hit the airbus. An officer finally shouted at them to quiet down, perhaps realizing what it was that the crew had just blasted out of the air (if I remember correctly, the passengers were pilgrims on their way to Mecca[!]). The critic Paul Fussell, in his book “BAD (Or, The Dumbing Of America),” has a short chapter on the incident titled “BAD Naval Missle Firing.” The short chapter, in it’s entirety:
Q. Who caused the crash of the Pan Am 747 at Lockerbie, Scotland?
A. The United States Navy.
Q. How?
A. The Pan Am plane was destroyed to avenge the BAD missile firing by the Navy that brought down an Iranian airliner some months before. The Navy’s mistake–it thought the civilian plane a fighter plane about to attack–was in large part occasioned by reliance on grandiose electronic sensing and aiming equipment. It was also caused by the sailors being scared so shitless–or so automatically following Navy regulations–that they wouldn’t allow the terrifying object to get close enough to be identified by an old-fashioned CPO looking at it through binoculars.
Q. Was this sort of reliance on showy technology also responsible for the turret explosion on the USS Iowa, as well as various U.S. Navy collisions and runnings-aground that followed, so embarrassing that naval activity ceased for a while so that officers could try to figure out what was wrong?
A. Very likely. What was wrong was BAD.
P.S.: I like Ed Schultz, but that was a profoundly dumb thing to say. Every once in a while he puts his foot in his big mouth. A pity.
P.P.S.: BenSix, how do you get italics into the text here?
Tim –
Put before the word[s] that you’re trying to italicise and when you’d like the italics to end. Delete the dashes, though. I had to put ’em in or it would have italicised me.
The high level of knowledge and intelligence most of these discussions on Fair’s Blogs and Website display always keep my interest. Just thought I’d throw that out. Don’t stop them coming.
It is one of the reasons I support “Fair” and visit here.
I haven’t forgotten the performance of the vaunted “Aegis Ballistic Missile System” in the outrageous attack on a plane full of Muslim pilgrims. Lockheed’s been selling them around the world since those days in the Gulf… & there’s about 100 ships equipped with them now… NATO & SEATO members only, I think.
People talk about how “crazy” Gadhafi is… but I think that’s misleading. Mad?.. well, yes… and apparently a believer in “magical realism” (or what the New Age folks call “visualizing your ideal reality”). I don’t think that makes him “crazy”. I mean, hells bells, half the U.S. Senate, by that token, are as crazy as batshit-worshiping Martians. ^..^
Considering that the corporate media has been my only source of information concerning Gadhafi for many decades, I will safely assume he may actually be the on par with Mother Theresa! NO JOKE!
FAIR has taught me to NEVER trust the corperate media which includes NPR and PBS! America’s negative propaganda about Gadhafi is a lead up to our eventual invasion and occupation of Libya. If your country has OIL and you’re not padding the pockets of our mega-rich globalists, you can rest assured that you’re on our “hit-list”!
The other night Jon said it best: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-22-2011/america-at-not-war—obama-s-communication-gap
THATS LIKE INVESTIGATING THE TIES BETWEEN THE BUSH FAMILY AND THE HUSSEIN FAMILY. TRY PROVING THAT THERE ISN’T ANY CONFLICT OF INTEREST WHEN OUR PRESIDENT ENDS UP BEING THE TERRORIST WE SUPPORTED TO GO KILL A MILLION IRAQI CITIZENS. WHO NEEDS TO BE CHARGED WITH WAR CRIMES ??? HOW ABOUT THE CRIMES AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY THIS PRESIDENT ???
An oil baron who doesn’t toe the US line is a dead duck! See Hussein in Iraq, and Chavez in Venezuela. I know Chavez isn’t dead yet…
Saddam did toe the line and it still got him invaded and later killed. The US is a fickle mistress and can turn on you at any time. He couldn’t say no when the US came to him to help him out. You don’t turn a gift monster down.
Oh, the hypocrisy! Some are pitching for revenge while Wall Street has kept over 30 BILLION dollars of Qaddafi’s money nice and safe with a nod from the Treasury Dept. and the White House. The hypocrisy! The charade! The lies! American citizens can’t even open up a $200 bank account without having to provide a DNA sample yet here comes Terrorist #1 and dumps 30 BILLION Dollars into US bank and nobody finches an eye. And, yeah, I’m quite sure that Qaddafi didn’t have to provide any of the documentation or wasn’t subjected to scrutiny we little people have to endure in the name of “terrorism.” What a farce!
It is about protecting Europe’s oil supply.
Remember when I mentioned months ago that Soros had a huge interest in Brazilian oil…….and with Obama in charge it would be better to invest there than here- under Obama?Caught hell for that.Did you see BAM pushing for Brazilian exploration and promising Billions in funding while giving American companies a colonoscopy?Sometimes I am so right it scares me
Libya never admitted to carrying out Lockerbie. It was forced to admit to responsibility for its officers, which is an entirely different matter, and since Mr Margrahi had done nothing wrong, but was framed, that was no admission. The fact that Mr Mouusa Koussa has of his own accord come to Britain, and many of the ignorant in the US say he has matters to address, and he has ben interviewed by Scottish Crown prosecutors and the police, says it all. Libya had nothing to do with lOckerbie and it was a convenient fiction dreamt up by the CIA to conceal their own hand in the Lockerbie atrocity.
Now Mr Shukri Ghanem, ex-Libyan oil minister and sometime Prime Minister has defected to Tunisia. Surely he must know something about Lockerbie. But are US kakistocray apologists leaping up and down on the touch line to have him deported to Scotland?
No, of course the adminisrartion (US) is not. Obama knows quite well that the US’s own CIA (and Pasdaran) carried out the Lockerbie bombing and he’s still too scared to tell the world.
A little advice from and older and less dangerous country. In the second Bloody Sunday in (London)derry, British trrops killed Irish nationalist demonstrators. the world knew is was a stupid criminal act. The UK denied it for years until a £200M inquiry with full leagl parphenalia produced a report, and basically said “We did it”.
Peace then broke out between Britain and Ireland on all sides. So the Queen went to the Republic and a really good time was had by all. She made a speech where she didn’t quite say nostra culpa, and at the same time no-one officially said that she was to use that tired old American phrase a “victim of crime”, which technically she is.
Sensitive papering over the cracks and decorating the the fabric of Irish-British relations and it’s somehow as if 700 years of hostilities have gone away.
The US has got to do that to its own polity and with many nations that it has inflicted wrongs and misdeeds on, and suffered some itself.
It could start by owning up to the trutch of Lockerbie, not with a mere government statement, but a proper small and sensibility financed inquiry by an independent judge.
i’ve tried to talk to you people and then get cut off…Stop giving our money to illgales and support our own,give them a SS# and let them pay like the rest of us,and send the rest back over the border,they sure want support us in any other country and we better have a pass port..stop giving to other country’s and bring our miltary back home,let other people pay the bill for awhile,we’re making other country’s rich and our people are going down hill,tax the oil companies,make wall street vand the banks pay back what they used on the bail out,put Colen Powell in there he could get this country put together from bushes mess,or Aron Brown,Dan Rather,so far there’s been no one taht’s worth a shit running..Palin never finished her term in Alaska,so how can she run for a higher job,all she does is make herself a laughing stoke in this country,the people had better stop borrowing from medicare,it wasn’t put in there for that reason and they never pay back that’s why it’s in this shape..gas prices up and we help the ones that’s charging this country in high prices..Check on the ones running and i bet you they aren’t clean under the covers,I tell you this country is going to have war here over what’s going on and supporting the illegals you watch and see…they’d better leave medicare alone,and let the people on the hill take a cut back and please send the cry baby back home to moma..Janice Wills..
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