US Senate: Mind Your Own Business!

The United States Senate has called for Britain to hold a full and independent enquiry into whether BP lobbied for the release of the Libyan held in Scotland over the Lockerbie bombing. This position reveals two things: ignorance (the jurisdiction was not a British question, but a Scottish one) and arrogance (suppose the Senate held an independent inquiry into the Iraq War as Britain has done?)

Photo: US Senate: Mind Your Own Business!

The Senators sitting in the US Senate are elected by citizens of the United States of America to legislate on issues concerning them – and nobody else. Therefore the issue of the release of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a decision which pertained not to the British Parliament in London but rather to the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, in August 2009, on humanitarian grounds, has nothing to do with the US Senate. It is not a British question, it is a Scottish one and the fact that the matter was brought up with the British Prime Minister demonstrates a shocking level of ignorance from the part of those who are paid to know better.

And while we are on the issue of special independent enquiries, why has the US Senate not held one on the decision to take the United States of America to war in Iraq, as the British have done? And why does the Senate not hold a full and independent enquiry into the shopping list of artefacts at Iraqi museums drawn up by former Vice President Cheney’s cronies before the attack was launched?

Why does the Senate not hold an independent enquiry into the documentation which “proved” that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger, yet which had been forged, as per statements from AIEA Director Mohamed El Baradei? Why does the Senate not hold an enquiry into the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but subsequently was found not to have?

Why does the Senate not hold an enquiry into the allegations of torture of prisoners by personnel representing the US authorities? Why does the Senate not hold an enquiry into the orders to perform these barbaric acts, or the decision to perpetrate them in the air, or at sea, or on the territory of third party states?

Why doesn’t the Senate call for the IAEA to inspect the Negev Desert to see once and for all whether Israel has one hundred or two hundred nuclear warheads, or indeed none at all? Why does the US Senate not hold an enquiry into the hundreds of assassination attempts by personnel contracted by Washington against Fidel Castro?

Why doesn’t the US Senate hold an independent enquiry into the allegations by Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Talebaan, back in 1998 that the USA had offered to give the Talebaan regime 5 billion USD in return for the construction of a pipeline across Afghanistan?

And on the question of lobbying by BP, then why doesn’t the Senate hold a full and independent enquiry into the cajoling and skulduggery by Washington of the UNSC member states prior to the decision to invade Iraq?

We all know the answer; in which case, why doesn’t the US Senate mind its own business, and shut up?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru