Posted on 02/23/2011 10:06:41 PM PST by artichokegrower
Italy - President Obama and Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy shook hands Thursday, infuriating families of victims in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 by Libyan intelligence agents.
The grip-and-grin was caught on camera during the G-8 summit of world leaders in Italy. Khadafy was there as head of the African Union.
The encounter came as families who lost loved ones aboard the doomed plane met with officials in Washington and the British Consulate in Manhattan to protest the potential release of the lone terrorist convicted in the bombing.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is jailed in Scotland. But he has prostate cancer and could be turned over to Khadafy.
“This thing with Obama happened on the same day that we spilled our guts to his own administration that this killer should not be released! I’m disgusted and disappointed. Obama sent the wrong message,” said Stephanie Bernstein, 58, of Bethesda, Md., who lost her husband, Michael, 36, a lawyer who hunted Nazis for the Justice Department.
“I just hope this was a superficial ‘hello and goodbye,’ and not a show of support for a bad man who should have been taken out years ago,” said Jack Flynn, 71, of Montville, N.J., who lost his son John Patrick, a 21-year-old student at Colgate.
“It will be a real horror show now if they release Megrahi,” added Flynn, who broke down in a conversation with the Daily News. Both Bernstein and Flynn voted for Obama.
Although Libya is no longer on the State Department list of terrorist nations, Khadafy is still hated for protecting Megrahi.
Flight 103, a Boeing 747, was en route from London’s Heathrow Airport to JFK when it blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The terrorist bombing killed all 259 aboard and 11 on the ground.
Khadafy refused to turn over the suspects for a decade, worsening relations between Washington and Tripoli.
In 1986, after Libyan agents killed two U.S. servicemen in a bombing at a West Berlin disco, President Ronald Reagan ordered air strikes against Libya, denouncing “this mad dog of the Middle East.”
Shortly before the handshake, White House National Security Council member Denis McDonough said Obama would greet any leader who approached him.
“I don’t think he’s given much consideration to whose hand he’ll shake or whose hand he’ll not shake,” McDonough said.
Khadafy attempted an image makeover in 2003 when he agreed to pay $2.7 billion to the families of the 270 victims and dismantled his nuclear weapons. President George W. Bush took Libya off the list of terrorist
As disgusting and evil as Khadafy is, I don’t think he’s any worse than Obama. Both are pure evil, both hate America, and both hate freedom.
We are being tested in many ways and no one has the courage or intelligence to respond with strength and leadership. EVERYONE on team Obama has to go soon.
True. So hows about the Lockerbie bomber deal? Actions do indeed speak louder than words.
There's a reason the 'Rats scuttled the hearings.
What I'm wondering now is why the Pubbies aren't holding any.
The picture has been posted on Drudge as he too feels it should be resurrected for those with short memories!
We are being tested in many ways and no one has the courage or intelligence to respond with strength and leadership. EVERYONE on team Obama has to go soon.
Exactly, FRiend. Obama must NOT be elected to a second term - it simply must not happen. I don't think our country could survive it, quite frankly...
I guess they made the deal then that Obama would not oppose Gaddaffy Duck. He probaby bowed to him at some point, as well.
He just figured he was meeting another brother.
&&
Well, Gaddaffy is his brother, i.e., a mohammedan who wants to bring down America. He knew all about Moamar at that meeting.
Obama did the even more so with Chavez. But then, he hates America.
Actually, both of them do.
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