White House: Hero's Welcome for Lockerbie Bomber 'Outrageous and Disgusting'

Al-Megrahi has been away from native soil since he was arrested in 1991 but, based on cheering crowds gathered Friday morning at Tripoli's military airport, the celebrity terrorist has not been forgotten. Youthful flag-waving supporters were bused in to greet him. Apparently, even a profession that equates suicide bombing with martyrdom offers some members a gratifying third act.

Evidence in al-Megrahi's trial tied the former head of security for Libya's state airline to a bomb hidden on Pan Am Flight 103 traveling from London's Heathrow to New York's JFK airport that caused the Boeing 747 to explode in the air over Lockerbie four days before Christmas 21 years ago. The catastrophe extinguished 270 lives and established a jihad blueprint for turning passenger airplanes into weapons of mass murder.

Actually, Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi may have more to do with al-Megrahi's enthusiastic greeting in Tripoli than the dying man's own cosmic destiny. In power for 40 years, Qaddafi has long been seen as a teapot despot known for harboring terrorists and throwing diplomatic spitballs at America. In 1986, President Reagan ordered air strikes against Libyan targets, killing members of the leader's family. Libya remained a "pariah state" at the top of our list of least-favored nations and eventually, U.S. intelligence traced the appalling horror against the Pan Am flight to Qaddafi's doorstep.

In 2003, Qaddafi, long considered wacky but shrewd and looking toward his own third act, paid $2.16 billion to compensate families of Lockerbie crash victims in exchange for the U.S. lifting trade restrictions against Libya. The leader's son, Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, is said to be his likely successor. Educated in Britain and fluent in English, Saif has been a conduit between Libya and the West. After Libya spent 27 years on the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism, full diplomatic relations between the African military dictatorship and the American democracy were finally resumed three years ago.

Although British Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked the Libyan leader to "act with sensitivity" and consider a modest reception for al-Megrahi, Qaddafi apparently could not resist sticking his thumb in the eye of his lifelong enemy. His son Saif personally accompanied the sick man home from Glasgow.

The White House pronounced the so-called security officer's raucous homecoming "outrageous and disgusting."