Libya

The Lockerbie bombing was orchestrated, not by Libya, but by Syria. However, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, we needed Syria on side. So we blamed Libya instead.

Then our self-inflicted dependence on any old despot’s oil, for want of the real nuclear deterrent that is civil nuclear power, eventually compelled us to suck up to Gadaffi. We couldn’t admit that we’d made up the whole thing about him and Lockerbie. So we connived with him to put an innocent man behind bars, and our bars at that. But now he’s going to get justice, it seems. In which case, will anyone else...?

As for any discontinued Libyan WMD programme, there never was one, just as there never was one in Iraq, and just as there is not one in Iran. Gadaffi and his dependents who run the West on his oil decided to pretend to have had such a programme, but to have given up on it, in order to provide the excuse for bringing their cosy relationship into the open. He is a good boy, unlike that naughty Saddam Hussein.

Isn’t he?