Letters

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Monday
May 14, 2001

Scapegoat

In the recent flap over allegations of Iranian involvement in the Khobar bombing, Louis Freeh is being portrayed as a patriot fighting for truth and justice in the face of obstruction of justice by self-serving politicians

["Ghost of Khobar", "Look in the mirror"]. Freeh supposedly believes that he has evidence sufficient to indict Iranians and yet he chose to wait for a change in administrations to get a more favorable result. In my opinion, it is highly unethical to sit on evidence. If there has been obstruction of justice, would this not fit the description? Is he looking for justice for the victims or revenge, or even worse, a scapegoat?

What kind of civil servant makes decisions about justice based on politics? The courts should decide the validity of Freeh's evidence. Justice is not a political decision. If a grand jury determines that indictments should be handed down then it should be so. In the mean time there is no usefulness in spreading rumors, except for self-serving political reasons.

There is no doubt that within Iran and within the U.S. there are people and politicians so filled with hate that they encourage and take pleasure in the murder of the other nation's citizens. Here in the U.S. we have a number of members of Congress that have no qualms about having their faces and words of support published in the newspapers of the Mojahedin-e Khalq / National Council of Resistance alongside their symbols of violence.

It is mind-boggling to think that while we are about to execute Timothy McVeigh, we have in our own government people who accept the same rationalizations of terrorists abroad. Day by day, with total disregard for innocent life, the MEK/NCR claim some new violent attack on a government or public building in Iran.

I do not find it hard to imagine that there are quite a few in the Iranian government that think similarly toward the U.S. but this is not evidence, in itself, of direct involvement in Khobar or other attacks. Freeh's actions have kept us from examining the evidence and we are left only with our imaginations and speculation.

We need to move beyond this stage of unproductive rumor-spreading and hate-mongering. To fight terrorism we need to remove politics from our handling of this criminal phenomenon AND we need to condemn those in our midst that encourage and give aid and comfort to terrorists.

Bradley Hernlem, Ph.D.

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