Tuesday August 10, 2004

HOW MUCH TO MAKE THIS GO AWAY? I'm surprised it hasn't dawned on anyone else: our treatment of Libya basically says you can do whatever you want to innocent civilians as long as you pay for it afterwards:

Libya agreed Tuesday to pay $35 million to some victims of a bloody terror bombing at a Berlin disco nearly two decades ago, making another step in Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's effort to rebuild relations with the West.

The deal, coming after much larger settlements for the bombings of two U.S. and French airliners, does not cover 169 American victims, including two soldiers who died in the blast at the La Belle disco on April 5, 1986. Lawyers are seeking separate compensation for them in U.S. courts.

Agreed to by German lawyers and officials of a Libyan foundation run by Gadhafi's son, the settlement deals with 163 non-U.S. citizens, including Germans who were wounded and the family of a Turkish woman killed by the bomb...

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli welcomed the accord, but he emphasized that the claims of U.S. victims also must be met.

Maybe one day Bin Laden will hold a pan-Arab telethon to pay off the vig on the World Trade Center.

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