Goldstone: the report that won't die...

From Tikun Olam.

Wow, when a nation like Libya makes your human rights record look bad, you know you’ve hit rock bottom. Barack Obama, Mahmoud Abbas and Bibi Netanyahu thought they were pretty deft at burying the Goldstone Report in Geneva a few days ago. But they neglected a few inconvenient facts, chief among them that if you try to suppress an idea whose time has come it will come back to bite you. That is true of Goldstone.

Libya not only sits on the Security Council, it also is president of the General Assembly. So that means that Qaddafi has the U.S. over a boulder twice over. If the U.S. vetoes Security Council consideration of the Report, Libya can introduce it before the General Assembly, where we don’t have veto. If Abbas hadn’t singed himself so badly in mishandling this affair, he might’ve been able to weasel out of this by telling Libya to take a hike. But Hamas already has his ass in a sling over his betrayal of the Gazans. He can’t very well dump Goldstone twice.

So Obama may have the Goldstone nightmare return to haunt him in the Security Council. It might even be passed by the General Assembly. So much for our president’s supposed political adeptness. Goldstone is the report that will not die. This time Obama has a chance to handle it better than he did in Geneva. Will he?