BOY, IS THIS WEIRD – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  From London's Daily Mirror, and other sources:

Barack Obama will demand the Lockerbie bomber as the price of supporting a new government in Libya.
The US President says the deportation of freed Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi is a condition of him backing the rebels if they win power.

Mr Obama wants Megrahi to be tried in the States for putting a bomb on the New York-bound jet that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, a crime for which he was convicted by a Scottish court

Cancer-stricken Megrahi has disappeared in Libya where he has been living after being released from jail because he supposedly had only months to live,

Intelligence sources fear he has been taken into ruler Colonel Muhamar Gaddafi’s own compound - and that Libyan leader would rather kill him than let his Lockerbie secrets be revealed.

Megrahi is believed to know the full story of the bombing in which 270 died and can name everyone involved - including Gaddafi.

COMMENT:  Look, I'm all for having this "terminally ill" man (who goes on forever) dispatched to the United States, but this certainly is an odd time to bring it up.  After all, what did the rebels have to do with this case?  And to make our backing of a rebel government dependent on extradition seems almost as if we're trying to deny backing. 

Of course, given Obama's history of appeasing dictators, maybe he's missing Gaddafi already.  He certainly did nothing to dislodge the Iranian mullahs during the 2009 Iranian revolt. 

I'd imagine that, if Gaddafi falls, Mr. al-Megrahi will suddenly suffer a severe misfortune, for the reason stated in the story, and that extradition, except for remains, will cease to be an issue.

March 6, 2011