Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's release reveals the sickening hypocrisy of the US and British governments

Left: US tax dollars at work
The release of the man accused of bringing down Pan Am flight 103 has caused an uproar in US government circles. The Scottish judge that released Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on humanitarian grounds (he is expected to live only three months) has angered US and UK authorities. Both governments have "warned Libya about the sensitivity of the issue." according to the BBC.

"Obviously the sight of a mass murderer getting a hero's welcome in Tripoli is deeply upsetting, deeply distressing." says David Milllibamd, the UK foreign secretary. President Obama has called the welcome "outrageous" and "disgusting."

Now I have no love for Mr. al Megrahi or Libya's dictator Colonel Gaddafi and am completely opposed to the type of terrorist acts Mr. Megrahe was accused of committing. But the hypocrisy of British and US imperialism has no bounds.

While this is going on, Lt. William L. Calley, the US officer responsible for the massacre of 500 Vietnamese villagers, men women and children during the unprovoked attack on the country by the US referred to as the Vietnam War, was speaking at a Kiwani Club meeting in Columbus GA. Calley was the only American army officer convicted in the My Lai massacre and apologized for his actions. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment but served 3 years house arrest after mass murderer Richard Nixon reduced his sentence. How many such atrocities occurred and were never given the light of day?

I am not going to question Calley's sincerity in this instance. I am not going to attack the American soldiers, overwhelmingly young workers, that were in My Lai that day. War destroys our humanity. We are thrown in to inhuman situations like Iraq, young men and women and we do what we can to survive and can just as easily turn in to monsters we never believed we could become. They are sent there by the Richard Nixons, Henry Kissingers and Donald Rumsfelds of this world; these people were all mass murderers. Kissinger is indeed an angel of death who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars giving speeches to corporations and governments; he is free to travel and live a very good life in America. He has not been laid off.

When oppressed minorities or small nations fight back against strong ones they often resort to methods we consider "unfair" not "cricket" as the British upper class say.Ther are many ways to kill.

The US government killing machine slaughtered an estimated 3 million people in Vietnam. It sprayed Dioxin, one of the most toxic substances known on to the Vietnamese people, their food, and even American troops; Vietnamese children are still being born with deformities due to the US use of chemical warfare. No apologies, no arrests and convictions. It invaded Cambodia illegally, lied to the American people about it and killed an estimated 600,000 people.* Its unmaned drones kill countless civilians daily in Pakistan and Afghanistan (bombing a sovereign country it is not at war with against its wishes). It bombs weddings and funerals by mistake and assumes a $100 payment will make things right; it is the greatest purveyor of terrorism in the world and the best recruiter for al Queda. There are also the few million dead in Iraq from its support of Hussein, its sanctions and now its invasion.

I sympathize with the relatives of the victims of Megrahi's actions. Personally, I would like to think if I had lost someone on that flight I could find the compassion to allow a man with three months to live to die with his family.

But the hypocrisy of the US government and its British lapdogs is truly disgusting. Clinton, increasingly Obama, and the likes of Blair or Brown, their comments fall on deaf ears, millions of deaf ears in the former colonial world.

They have no credibility.

*(see The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens and Sideshow by William Shawcross for more details)