Ghaddafi's Three Grandchildren

[yellowwood]

So, the news tells us that Ghaddafi's son and three grandchildren have been killed in one of our strikes.

Three children:

I'm having a really hard time feeling a sense of accomplishment.

[malaise]

1. It is imperialism gone mad

and there is no way around that fact

[NNN0LHI]

2. The cable news readers are just giddy about this development

Sick people.

Don

[quinnox]

3. but "war is hell" and "he had it coming"

Those are the nauseating excuses given so far.

How can 3 children be guilty just because they were born into Quaddafi's family, a brutal dictator?

I don't get it, they were innocent, regardless of whose family they were born into.
I'd like to see one person explain to me how these children were deserving of being killed, and be specific.

[bluestate10]

8. No one will say that three children deserved to be killed. They could have

very well grown up to be world leaders in peace efforts. But the reality is that they were put in a military target zone by their grandfather. I ask you, do you mourn for the mothers or young children that were killed by Qaddafi snipers in Misrata? They were innocents.

[malaise]

10. What happens when the US is no longer the superpower

Will it then be OK for foreign governments to target your leaders, their children and grandchildren? How will you react then?
Which Western government can discuss the slaughter of citizens by any other government given the blood in the hands of Western imperialists.

This is about stopping those oil contracts with Libya and China and nothing else.

The wheel is turning - let's see how you react when it's your leaders and their families for the next top dog will invent just as many excuses as the current bullies of the world.

[quinnox]

yes, that is wrong as well but is no excuse

to do the same thing, otherwise we are no better than he is, when we are supposed to have the moral high ground.

Jesus, we have killed his daughter, a son, and three grandchildren of his by now, isn't that enough?
And by your logic, a crazed foreign leader could target the White House, or personal residences of our presidents, and say its a "command center" and anyone inside is a "human shield" so its ok to target it.

[bluestate10]

17. Your example is disingenuous, in the least.

While the President of the USA is the commander in chief of the military, the White House is not used explicitly as a command and control center for day to day battle commands. Now, if you had listed the Pentagon and the President and his family happened to be at the Pentagon when a foreign army hits it, then the event would be would be unfortunate for the USA, but the Pentagon is and always will be a legitimate military target. Qaddafi was using facilities in his residence to control thugs and move them around, the target was an active military center and as such, a target.

[bluestate10]

4. When dictators place military use facilities in or adjoined to residences, innocent people die

and will continue to die until the practice of using human shields ends. NATO went after a military target that supports a monster, in the end, that was a correct action.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. horseshit

this was an attempt to kill Gadaffi. This was not a military target. The excuse is always "human shields".

[bluestate10]

9. The facility contained a communications and control unit. That unit allowed

Qaddafi to control the actions of his murderous thugs. It was a legitimate military target.

[Fool Count]

18. Only in your sick little mind. And maybe also in sick little minds

of NATO planners.

[DCBob]

13. Its unfortunate, but I agree with this if indeed it was a significant military target..

used to attack the rebels.

[blueamy66]

16. I agree with you.

The blame should be on Gaddafi.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Where are the liberal hawk boosters here now?

Hows the Glorious Intervention going?

[bluestate10]

11. Intervention is the right thing to do. Will you weep for the mothers and children

that have been gunned down by Qaddafi snipers in Misrata? They were innocent. When a bastard puts military purpose units in residences, bad shit happens to those that are innocent. BTW, Qaddafi is working to make as much hay of the bombing as possible, where is his sense of grief? Sorry, Qaddafi has no human conscience, so the death of his child and grandchildren likely does not register with Qaddafi as more than a publicity tool.

[dems_rightnow]

7. I'm wondering about the report itself

Ghadaffi and his wife in the house. The strike killed everyone except those two people? Seems a touch... odd.

[bluestate10]

14. What is surprising? The report comes from practiced liars. nt

[Cirque du So-What]

12. I take no joy in this announcement

but if true, I can't help but wonder about the concept of karma in relation to the crew & passengers of Pan Am Flight 103 and the victims on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland. I realize this is ancient history to some, but 270 people were killed in that bombing - a good many of them as young or younger than Qadaffi's grandchildren.

Complete cockpit and cabin crew manifest

Captain James Bruce MacQuarrie (55, US citizen, 10910 flight hours)
First Officer Raymond Ronald Wagner (52, US citizen, 11855 flight hours)
Flight Engineer Jerry Don Avritt (46, US citizen, 8068 flight hours)
Purser Mary Geraldine Murphy (51, British citizen, 25 years seniority)
Purser Milutin Velimirovich (35, US citizen, 10 years seniority)
Flight Attendant Siv Ulla Engstrom (51, Swedish citizen, 28 years seniority)
Flight Attendant Elisabeth Nichole Avoyne-Clemens (44, French citizen, 20 years seniority)
Flight Attendant Noelle Lydie Campbell-Berti (41, US and French citizen, 18 years seniority)
Flight Attendant Elke Etha Kühne (43, German citizen, 18 years seniority)
Flight Attendant Maria Nieves Larracoechea (39, Spanish citizen, 17 years seniority)
Flight Attendant Irja Syhnove Skabo (38, US and Norwegian citizen, 16 years seniority)
Flight Attendant Paul Isaac Garrett (41, US citizen, 15 years seniority)
Flight Attendant Lilibeth Tobila Macalolooy (27, US citizen, 3 years seniority)
Flight Attendnat Jocelyn Reina (26, US citizen, 11 months seniority)
Flight Attendant Myra Josephine Royal (30, US citizen, 9 months seniority)
Flight Attendant Stacie Denise Franklin (20, US citizen, 9 months seniority)

The flight deck crew was New York/JFK based, while the cabin crew was based out of London/Heathrow and truly international. Places of birth or nationality included: three from the USA, two from France, and one each from Sweden, West Germany, Spain, the Philippines, England, Dominican Republic, Norway and Czechoslovakia. Many of these crewmembers had become naturalized US citizens while working for Pan Am.

Notable passengers

Prominent among the passenger victims was the 50-year-old UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, who would have attended the signing ceremony at UN headquarters on 22 December 1988 of the New York Accords.<23> Also aboard were Volkswagen America CEO James Fuller and Volkswagen America Marketing Director Lou Marengo who were returning from a meeting with Volkswagen executives in Germany; English musician Paul Jeffreys and his wife, poet and former girlfriend of musician Robert Fripp, Joanna Walton, credited with writing most of the lyrics on the 1979 album Exposure. Jonathan White, aged 33, was the son of David White who played Larry Tate on the sitcom Bewitched.

U.S. intelligence officers

There were at least four U.S. intelligence officers on the passenger list, with rumours, never confirmed, of a fifth on board. The presence of these men on the flight later gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories, in which one or more of them were said to have been targeted.<24>

Matthew Gannon, the CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was sitting in Clipper Class, Pan Am's version of business class,<25> seat 14J. Major Chuck "Tiny" McKee, an army officer on secondment to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Beirut, sat behind Gannon in the center aisle in seat 15F. Two Diplomatic Security Service special agents, acting as bodyguards to Gannon and McKee, were sitting in economy: Ronald Lariviere, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, was in 20H, and Daniel O'Connor, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, sat five rows behind Lariviere in 25H, both men seated over the right wing. The four men had flown together out of Cyprus that morning. There was also a Department of Justice Special Agent on the flight, Assistant Deputy Director Michael S. Bernstein.

Lockerbie residents

On the ground, 11 Lockerbie residents were killed when the wing section hit 13 Sherwood Crescent at more than 800 km/h (500 mph) and exploded, creating a crater 47 m (154 ft) long and with a volume of 560 m3 (730 cu yd),<26> vaporizing the house and its occupants, Dora and Maurice Henry. Several other houses and their foundations were completely destroyed, and 21 others were damaged so badly they had to be demolished. Four members of one family, Jack and Rosalind Somerville and their children Paul, 13, and Lynsey, 10, died when their house at 15 Sherwood Crescent exploded.

Kathleen Flannigan, age 41, Thomas Flannigan, 44, and their daughter Joanne, 10, were killed by the explosion in their house 16 Sherwood Crescent. Their son Steven, 14, saw the fireball engulf his home from a neighbour's garage where he had gone to repair his sister's bicycle.

The fireball rose above the houses and moved toward the nearby Glasgow–Carlisle A74 dual carriageway, scorching cars in the southbound lanes and leading motorists and local residents to believe that there had been a meltdown at the nearby Chapelcross nuclear power station. Father Patrick Keegans, Lockerbie's Roman Catholic priest, was preparing to visit his neighbours at around 7 pm that evening when the plane destroyed their home. There was nothing left of his neighbours to bury. The priest's home, at 1 Sherwood Crescent, was the only house that was neither destroyed by the impact nor gutted by fire.<27>

For many days, Lockerbie residents lived with the sight of bodies in their gardens and in the streets, as forensic workers photographed and tagged the location of each body to help determine the exact position and force of the on-board explosion, by coordinating information about each passenger's assigned seat, type of injury, and where they had landed. Local resident Bunty Galloway told authors Geraldine Sheridan and Thomas Kenning (1993):

"A boy was lying at the bottom of the steps on to the road. A young laddie with brown socks and blue trousers on. Later that evening my son-in-law asked for a blanket to cover him. I didn't know he was dead. I gave him a lamb's wool travelling rug thinking I'd keep him warm. Two more girls were lying dead across the road, one of them bent over garden railings. It was just as though they were sleeping. The boy lay at the bottom of my stairs for days. Every time I came back to my house for clothes he was still there. 'My boy is still there,' I used to tell the waiting policeman. Eventually on Saturday I couldn't take it no more. 'You got to get my boy lifted,' I told the policeman. That night he was moved."<28>

Despite being advised by their governments not to travel to Lockerbie, many of the passengers' relatives, most of them from the US, arrived there within days to identify their loved ones. Volunteers from Lockerbie set up and manned canteens, which stayed open 24 hours a day, where relatives, soldiers, police officers and social workers could find free sandwiches, hot meals, coffee, and someone to talk to. The people of the town washed, dried, and ironed every piece of clothing that was found once the police had determined they were of no forensic value, so that as many items as possible could be returned to the relatives. The BBC's Scottish correspondent, Andrew Cassell, reported on the tenth anniversary of the bombing that the townspeople had "opened their homes and hearts" to the relatives, bearing their own losses "stoically and with enormous dignity", and that the bonds forged then continue to this day.<29>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

Those who rail over the (still unverified) deaths of Qadaffi's grandchildren without recognizing that his hands bear the blood of the innocent are henceforth considered haughtily sanctimonious in my estimation.

[Gravel Democrat]

15. the psychopaths that call themselves leaders

don't even give it a second of thought.

They don't even have to explain how a "No Fly Zone" has morphed into bombing Ghaddafis house because tomorrow will bring another disaster to the front.

Insanity. What happened to the people I once considered my countrymen? I am so very sad.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED?