Thursday, October 20, 2011

A Tough Ticket to Ride

We're told that Muammar Qaddafi survived the Predator attack, the French jet attack and was captured alive. Somehow, on the way to the hospital (video seems to suggest he was ambulatory...after a fashion, when he was loaded into a vehicle) he suffered a fatal injury.

I was a law student at Syracuse University in 1988 when Pan Am's Clipper Maid of the Seas exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. Thirty-five SU students on their way home for Christmas were among the 270 people murdered.

The passengers suffered unspeakable horrors in the last moments of their lives. Far from the blessing of instant death, many (including the plane's captain) were alive at the moment the debris fell to Earth. At least one flight attendant was alive in the wreckage, having fallen nearly six miles, when it was found. She died before rescuers could cut her from the "aircraft." A helicopter pilot claimed to have found a body clutching blades of grass.

I won't rejoice at the madman's demise. I don't feel closure.

But that must have been one hell of an ambulance ride.

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