Free the bomber, break the bank

The "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" broadcast of August 19 reported that Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, known as the Lockerbie Bomber, was being released on compassionate grounds. He has prostate cancer and is close to death. 

The Libyan national was sentenced to life in prison for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988 that killed 259 passengers and crewmembers plus another 11 on the ground in the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, where big chunks of the aircraft fell. 

A majority of the passengers, 169, were Americans. 

At the end of her report, NBC Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell stated, "Tonight U.S. officials say there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop the convicted bomber from going free." 

This and the report of U.S. officials pursuing the Swiss bank accounts of Americans may serve as a perfect illustration of the mentality that drives our nation's foreign policy. 

After months of intense political bullying against the non-coercive, sovereign nation of Switzerland and threats of prolonged legal action and intimidating fines against UBS, that country's second largest bank which, like all Swiss banks, is guaranteed bank-client confidentiality under the Swiss constitution, the United States has forced the involuntary discloser of the names of some 4,450 American account holders suspected of committing the "crime" of safeguarding their own money from the greedy grasp of the American IRS. 

Thus, apparently, U.S. officials absolutely could not bully, pressure, or intimidate the Scottish government from releasing the mass murderer of Americans but found no problem with bullying, pressuring and intimidating a privately owned bank in another peaceful country. 

Evidently, there was just no loot for the American government gangsters to score from a dying mass murderer like there is from productive entrepreneurs. 

Evidently, there were no international points to be scored on the world stage to swell the egos of American Alpha Bureaucrats by trying to keep a terrorist in the tank. 

Evidently, keeping a bomber behind bars presented no arrogant power-grabbing opportunities to government-huggers obsessed with moving up in the power-glutton's pecking order. 

Evidently, there were no important news clips or sound bites worth pursuing by advocating for the still-grieving families of the victims. 

As always, politics, national or international, is always about money, power, and ego.