I was surprised to see a news show tonight with Neil Cavuto on Fox News in which he did an interview with a man that lost his daughter in the Pan Am Tragedy. Mr. Cohen who he was interviewing, felt that the U.S. shouldn't be negotiating and lifting sanctions that we have had on Libya. He made it very clear that he does not forgive this terrorist regime (duh) and has grave concerns about us making bargains with Kadafi.

Cavuto keeps asking him to think of the greater good- us having the opportunity to get rid of wmd in the world and infers Cohen should forgive him 'after all these years.' Cavuto has a good point regarding the wmd but why would he expect a man who's family has been destroyed by the violent murder of their daughter, to see it the same way?

Cavuto always talks about his daughter being the most important thing in his life- can't he understand the loss of a child would be horrific? He often reports on her activities at college, her boyfriends, etc., and you can see he totally adores her.

At any rate the most insensitive thing that Cavuto said during this segment was when he referred to the Pan Am crash (caused by a bomb) as an 'accident'. Can you imagine? This is a tragedy that was clearly a deliberate act of terrorism.

Just heard some of the letters that people wrote into the show in regards to his interview with Mr. Cohen who lost his daughter in this tragic crash and was shocked that someone wrote in that he should get over it because he received 4 million dollars. I can only hope that the person that wrote that letter doesn't have kids, because they obviously don't understand a thing about what they mean to some of us. How clueless some people can be.

Guess Mr. Cohen was right afterall:

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
U.S. Looks Into Alleged Libya Plot to Kill Saudi


From Times Staff and Wire Reports


WASHINGTON "” The United States is investigating allegations that Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi ordered the assassination of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, U.S. officials said Thursday.

More at:


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya11jun11,1,1628391.story?coll=la-headlines-world


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This message has been edited. Last edited by: BF,

Someone told me that the Cohens wrote a book about their daughter and this horrific tragedy entitled, Pan Am 103: The Bombing, the Betrayals, and a Bereaved Family's Search for Justice. This person highly recommended this book and I have a great deal of respect for his opinion.

quote:

Pan Am 103: The Bombing, the Betrayals, and a Bereaved Family Search for Justice

From Air Safety Week:

Pan Am 103 Verdict Not Strong Enough to Deter Future Terrorists
Air Safety Week, April 30, 2001

Victim's Parents Level Charge in Updated Memoir

In the fight against air terrorism, the January 31, 2000, verdict of four Scottish judges struck a blow, but one that was not nearly strong enough given the enormity of the toll of innocents in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, according to the parents of one of the victims. Dan and Susan Cohen, who lost their 20-year old daughter, Theodora, published a searing memoir last year of their anguished 12-year search for justice. The just-published 2001 edition is updated with details of the trial and verdict. The judges found Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi guilty and pronounced a life sentence (in reality, the cap is 20 years, after which he will be deported from Scotland to Libya, according to Dan Cohen). Co-defendant Lamen Khalifa Fhimah was acquitted. The conviction was a source of immense relief to families who had pushed so hard and so long for justice, not just for consolation monuments such as the Scottish cairn of stones erected in Arlington Cemetery to honor the dead. At the same time, the verdict left the Cohens deeply dismayed at the message left hanging in the air for future terrorists. Below, extracts of their gripping account of the trial's beginning, and of its final denouement:

The Trial's Opening

"Unlike at most American trials, there were no opening statements. There was a reading of the indictment. Then the defense notified the court that as a 'special defense' they would attempt to incriminate Palestinian terrorists for the bombing. After that, the prosecution began calling its witnesses and at this point the theatrical aura was shattered by brutal reality.

"Early in the parade of witnesses was air controller Alan Topp, who was the first to see the radar image of Pan Am 103 break up into separate images. Topp recalled shouting across the room to his supervisor to come over and look at the screen. The supervisor shouted back that he was busy talking to the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary because another plane had reported sighting a large fire on the ground near the town of Lockerbie.

" 'That's when the penny dropped,' " Topp said.

"What Topp saw on his radar screen - innocuous-looking green boxes on a map grid representing the final seconds of Pan Am 103 - was displayed on monitors throughout the courtroom. Spectators gasped. I was one of them.

"Then came the witnesses from Lockerbie itself - people who had been on the ground when the pieces of the plane and its contents fell to earth. William Pattie told of how a flaming engine from the 747 slammed into a relative's house, destroying it so completely that the remains of the two people inside could never be found.

"Jasmine Bell described visiting her brother's house in Lockerbie when the debris from the plane came falling from the sky and all around her. She slipped in the darkened driveway of the house and her hand touched something. 'It's just meat,' her brother said as he pulled her away. 'Just meat.'

"At Tundergarth, three miles from Lockerbie, the cockpit of the plane almost floated down over the house of Ken Anderson. 'There were bodies lying around the cockpit.' He got a flashlight and looked inside. 'I could see the pilot.'

"I had read many of these accounts before. But to hear them told firsthand, by the people who had experienced them, was entirely different. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe.'

"I tried to see if the defendants had any reaction to this grisly testimony, but they were almost entirely hidden from view behind their video monitors"

The Trial's Judgement

"On the first defendant Megrahi - 'Guilty'.... I was so relieved that I barely noticed or cared that the verdict on Fhimah was 'Not Guilty.' They got the main guy - the guy who had been identified as a 'fairly high' Libyan intelligence agent. His conviction pointed the finger of guilt right back at Libya and Gadhafi...

"Yet looked at objectively, what had we won? Two hundred seventy people had been murdered. The case was the subject of the largest criminal investigation in history. It dragged on for over 12 years. The trial itself lasted nine agonizing months and cost over $80 million. And one man had been convicted. Not the ringleader. Not the boss. A middle-level operative, the sort of disposable character every state possesses. If he actually serves his entire sentence it will be 20 years under soft prison conditions. The wing of the Glasgow prison where Megrahi will be housed has already acquired the local nickname 'the Gadhafi Cafe.' That would work out to about 27 days for each person murdered.

"By any accounting, that isn't justice. It isn't even partial justice. It's a piddling excuse for justice. Though some in the (U.S.) State Department tried to portray the trial's outcome as the result of a successful policy, that claim is self-serving. Would any future terrorist be deterred by such an outcome? That seems doubtful. The reverse is more likely; you can pull off a murderous frontal attack on the most powerful nation on earth and pay only a minimal price." (Reprinted with permission of the authors. "Pan Am 103: The Bombing, The Betrayals; and a Bereaved Family's Search for Justice," by Susan and Daniel Cohen, 2001. http://www.penquinputnam.com)