The US won't stop pushing the British government and BP on the Lockerbie Bomber's release
Anti-Britishness over BP in the United States was futile and immature. But anti-Britishness was rare across the pond over the oil disaster and came from the few and not the many. It leaves you to wonder if we Brits would be so erudite in our words for our transatlantic cousins if Exxon was spewing oil into the Solent which ended up engulfing pretty much the whole of the south coast of England. Answer: probably not.
This anti-British malarkey seems to have been played up in the press over here. What is beyond belief is how some elements of the media backed BP, with some critical of Obama’s dealings with the oil giant. It was only a few months ago Obama could do no wrong in the eyes of virtually everyone on the island nation, with the 44th President more popular here than the states of Uncle Sam. But now, because of an oil firm HQed in the Georgian splendour of St James Square in London that has 40% of its shareholders living in the USA, a notoriously bad modern history of disasters across the pond and the failure of its outgoing CEO to live up to his pledge three years ago of being laser like when it comes down to health and safety compliance, the love for Obama has madly been lost in Britain like a brief summer fling.
The response of the Obama administration and most politicians in the US has been firm, fair and reasonable. Even more so was the request by US Senator Robert Mendez and friends who called for Blair, Jack Straw, Tony Hayward, Alex Salmond and Kenny Macaskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary who, so-everyone in the British government says, made the final decision to release the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, to attend a Senate hearing over why he was released last year and if BP’s lobbying and offshore drilling contract in Libya played a part.
This hearing was scheduled to Thursday its been cancelled as everyman refused to attend citing the narratives they realised they wouldn’t be able help or they were not the right person for the Senators to speak to. How do you know until you have been asked the questions? When the issue involves the release of the man convicted for murdering 190 Americans, many from Mendez’s state of New Jersey, it is hard for a reasonable person not to heed his call when he says: “It is a game of diplomatic tennis that is worthy of Wimbledon, but not worthy on behalf of the lives of the families who still have to deal with this terrorist act and the consequences of the loss of loved ones in their lives.”
David Cameron’s trip to the US last week was overshadowed, entirely of his own making, by the Lockerbie saga. He first turned down a request by five senators to meet and discuss Megrahi’s release with them on his two-day trip because his team said he did not have the time. In the end, he u-turned and made the time as the clamour in the US became so great, making him look silly for declining in the first place. He should have said yes in the first place.
If it is true, as Kenny Macaskill has said that he granted Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds and that’s the only reason, why is everyone so afraid of heading to Capitol Hill to explain this? Instead it makes the release of the Lockerbie bomber stink and the reasoning seem all the more implausible, especially to those in the United States.
