:wtf: Its time we address BP as BRITISH PETROLEUM and not some faceless, meaningless corporate call letters. Its BRITISH PETROLEUM who created the worst environmental disaster that has affected the economic livelihood of every U.S. Gulf state. Twenty years would be too optimistic to hope for a recovery if ever.
" During his recent visit to the White House, British Prime Minister David Cameron adamantly denied any link between BP and the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, rejecting any possibility of a new investigation into the matter, maintaining that there is ‘no need for further investigations’.
Four US Democratic senators led by New Jerseys’ Frank Lautenberg, have sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to ‘hold a hearing and thoroughly investigate the role that oil contracts played in the decision to release Mr Megrahi.’ He further, along with senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Charles Schumer and Robert Menendez, wrote to UK Ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald last week urging a full investigation into the release of Mr Megrahi who is ‘still alive and reportedly living in luxury.’
‘Was this corporation willing to trade justice in the murder of 270 innocent people for oil profits?’ Senator Schumer added that the answer to that would ‘help us understand if BP might use blood money to pay claims for damage in the Gulf of Mexico.’
‘The evidence here may be circumstantial but if I were a prosecutor, I'd love to take this case to a jury,’ said New York Senator Charles Schumer. But without the cooperation of the UK government, such an investigation will remain unfeasible.
So, what exactly IS the circumstantial evidence? Where there’s smoke…
Cameron not only condemned the release of al-Megrahi, he attempted to shift the blame onto the Scottish, conveniently overlooking Gordon Brown’s approval of the agreement in 2007. ‘It was a government decision’, where the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill had the right only to veto the application. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague wrote to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to insist there was ‘no evidence’ to support claims the release of al-Megrahi was linked to any BP oil deal. In his letter – copied to foreign relations committee chair Senator John Kerry – he said;’There is no evidence that corroborates in any way the allegations of BP involvement in the Scottish Executive's decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009 nor any suggestion that the Scottish Executive decided to release Megrahi in order to facilitate oil deals for BP.’
Leaked ministerial letters, however, clearly show that it was the British government which decided it was ‘in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom’ to release al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had bogged down. Two letters by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, clearly shows that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, made by the UK government in London for British national interests. While Straw originally intended to exclude Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement with Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, under which British and Libyan prisoners could serve out their sentences in their home country, Straw later changed his mind after Libya insisted the Lockerbie bomber would be included and dragged their feet over the deal with BP as leverage for six months until Whitehall caved.
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<http://crooksandliars.com/nonny-mouse/where-there-s-smoke-there-s-bullsht>
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