chump-change payoffs

Like the Vatican which finds it cheaper to pay billions to victims of priest-sexual-abuses, so, I suppose, the CIA, MI6 and the like find it cheaper to pay off victims of their indiscretions.

Sami al-Saadi

In England, the government has agreed to pay Sami al-Saadi $3.5 million. Al-Saadi and his family say they were forcibly transferred (secret rendition) to Libya where al-Saadi was tortured in prison.

The story states:

Mr al-Saadi was a leading Gaddafi opponent and says that he was forced on board a plane in Hong Kong, along with his wife and four children, in a joint UK-US-Libyan operation. The family were flown to Libya. Mr al-Saadi was subsequently held and tortured.

Al-Saadi is quoted as saying,

Even now, the British government has never given an answer to the simple question: 'Were you involved in the kidnap of me, my wife and my children?'

Indeed, there is no indication in the BBC story as to why anyone might want to kidnap Al-Saadi and his family and yet the payment seems to indicate a willingness to admit some complicity and culpability. Maybe Al-Saadi was a bad guy ... but who said so and on what basis?

Some culpability but not full disclosure. The need to capture Al-Saadi gets no airing any more than the complicity of high-ranking Vatican officials or their canonical policies in abuse cases is opened to discussion.

The institutions maintain their coherence and inviolability with a payoff or two -- chump change when compared to the expense of examining assumptions and assertions held near and dear.

How many spires in the mind are like that, asserted and embraced and yet seldom inspiring a reflection on the premise that began it all? How much easier to provide a cheap payoff of credulity and mythology and praise.

No one in their right mind would call such reflection easy, but without it, the chump-change Band-Aids nourish little more than festering and pain ... for institutions as for individuals.