With more politesse than is perhaps warranted, a “senior Whitehall aide” (Prime Minister Gordon Brown? Foreign Minister David Miliband?) has dubbed the U.S. government’s ire over the release of the Lockerbie bomber “disingenuous,” the Daily Mail reports. Statements issuing from Washington — Mr. Obama: “a mistake”; his mouthpiece: “we deeply regret”; his secretary of state: “absolutely wrong”; his attorney general (turning briefly from defenestrating the CIA): “simply no justification” — were all dissimulation, according to the Brits, uttered by the Obami, as if to say “Don’t look at us, we’re just as shocked as you are,” in an effort to deflect any blame by the victims’ survivors, and the rest of us, too. Of course, it wasn’t entirely successful. Some family members held the administration to account anyway. Stephanie Bernstein, who lost her husband in the bombing, called the decision “disgusting,” according to USA Today, and blamed “not only the British and Scottish governments but the Obama administration. ‘There’s plenty of shame to go around. This is not justice. It’s an abrogation of justice,’ she says.” And Susan Cohen, whose daughter was killed, agreed, calling Mr. Obama’s statement “soft” in an interview with CBS. Worse than soft, as it turns out. A straight out lie. As the “Whitehall aide” tells it:
Brown and Miliband “are said to have been ‘disappointed’ by the force of Washington’s response.” What will the Lockerbie families say now that the president and his dogsbodies have been unmasked? The Obami seem to be operating in a sort of orangutanian universe, in which they cover their eyes and, not seeing us, believe we cannot see them. This sort of thing isn’t going to help.
