Transparency

TRANSPARENCY - The quality or state of being transparent.

TRANSPARENT - 1. Free from pretense or deceit: frank; 2. Easily detected or seen through: obvious; 3. Readily understood.

These definitions are from Webster's New Explorer Encyclopedic Dictionary, 2006 Edition.

Which of these definitiioons fits the current president? It's difficult to pick one which pertains to him. To some of us, he certainly is transparent; we can see right through him and his grand schemes. I guess to those who agree with him, he is free from pretense or deceit.

Certainly, the bills which have been foisted on us do not fit the dfinition of "transparent" and are not readily unerstood even by congress.

All of this researh into definitions was prompted by two recent articles I've seen. According to a recent New York Post article, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is going to suspend its hearings on the sudden release last year of convicted Lockerbie bomber and Libyan citizen Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. According to Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) the reason the investigation was stopped is that the Briticsh witnesses they wanted to question on the possible link between Megrahi's release and a big BP offshore-drilling deal with Libya refused to testify. Sounds reasonable.

BUT could the real reason be that the probe might also have had to disclose what President Obama and Attorney General Holder knew and when they knew it. This comes up because on Sunday, the London Times published a letter written by deputy US Ambassador Richard LeBaron in the days before Megrahi was set free. This letter tells Scotland's first minister that while the Obama administration opposed the terrorist bomber's release, it was nonetheless "far preferable" that he be sprung on compassionate grounds than be moved to a Libyan prison. At the very least, this letter undermines the president's statement that he had been "surprised, disappointed and angry" by the release last year. It looks like he knew all along and didn't want to make a diplomatic big deal about it.

Now that the hearings have been suspended, we may never know the truth of what happened during those days last year, or read the transcript that the White House is withholding of a conversation Holder had with his Scottish counterpart before the release. Now we may never know the whole story.

One wonders just how serious the president is in fighting and winning the War on Terror. His handling of this affair seems to be part of a pattern. He started with making the release of prisoners from Gitmo a priority, then he went on his apology tour and his top terrorism adviser John Brennan's pronouncement that jihad is a legitimate religious practice. He has turned NASA into a Muslim-outreach program.