Lopsided Policies & Politics

I was reading a commentary by Ann Woolner for The Bloomberg.com on line magazine entitled " U.S. Sides With Oil Firms, Not Libya's Victims: Ann Woolner " in which she is discussing the possibilities that the US congress might exempt Libya from a four month old law forcing former / or other wise considered terrorist sponsored states from compensating it's victims of terrorism .She is very much against any such action on the US Congress part to allow leniency as is most Americans .

She sites some reasons for the law passage in the US Congress and gives examples of the acts that are heinous by any ones thinking , the States that condoned them or actually sponsored the appalling ( Among such plaintiffs are hundreds of Americans who sued rogue countries responsible for terrorizing them or killing people they loved.These are men and women who have been kidnapped, held captive, tortured or maimed, or whose child, parent, husband or wife was blown apart by a suicide bomber or an exploding airplane carrying a bomb.The families of 241 Americans killed in the 1988 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, last year won a $2.6 billion judgment against Iran. In January a judge in Washington awarded $6 billion against Libya because of the 1989 bombing of a French aircraft in which 170 people were killed, including seven Americans. ) actions .


President Bush is asking that Libya be exempted from this new law since it will hurt the newly signed trade agreements between the two countries . The oil companies in particular , also construction , as well as much needed technology support systems such as telecoms and internet .

Ok , this isn't too surprising considering the state of the American economy and the price of oil on the open market .The need in Libya for almost everything after years of imposed sanctions left the country in a commodity's vacuum limbo . My question along with many Libyans is this .... WHEN will America compensate the Libyan victims for the 1986 bombings by America to Libyans sleeping peacefully in their beds when they were bombed into wakefulness ?

The bombings here in Libya that killed , maimed many people , destroying their homes and property ? Several delegations from Libya have gone to the UN headquarters in Switzerland at different times to petition for their compensation for these acts of terrorism by America . The Libyans have even tried to petition the US (The April 1986 American bombing of Libya took the lives of scores of people and wounded another hundred or so. The dead included Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi's young daughter; all of Qaddafi's other seven children as well as his wife were hospitalized, suffering from shock and various injuries. A year later, 65 claims were filed with the White House and the Department of Defense under the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Foreign Claims Act, on behalf of those killed or injured. The claimants, who were asking for up to $5 million for each wrongful death, included Libyans, Greeks, Egyptians, Yugoslavs and Lebanese.[9] Before long, the number of claimants reached to about 340, but none of their claims got anywhere in the American judicial system, with the Supreme Court declining to hear the case.[10] ) to no avail .

This has always seemed to me to be lopsided Justice where only the mighty are supported in their claims of injustice and the little people are neglected and ignored .Does this mean that only Americans hurt when they lose their family members to terrible acts of violence and not Libyans ?