Sorry

Taken from the 'Scotsman' this morning: "THE Khmer Rouge's chief torturer and jailer has expressed "excruciating remorse" over the deaths of more than 14,000 people killed under his watch at a notorious prison during Cambodia's Maoist revolution of the 1970s." The man apologising is, Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who was in charge of the notorious S-21 prison in Pnom Pen and to be a little more specifice he is apologising for "crimes against humanity, enslavement, torture, sexual abuses and other inhumane acts"

Well, somehow Duch, I don't think an apology is going to swing it and I am afraid that this is a little bit more serious than bumping into someone in a supermarket and saying, "sorry". Nevertheless, while it might be difficult to get the charges of "sexual abuses" to stick against Blair and Bush, their motley crews and that band of raggle taggled Zionists down Palestine way, a similar apology from them might be interesting and, who knows, we might even take it seriously if they make it before the ICC has indicted them.

Moreover, while we should be more than a trifle sceptical about Duch's defence that he "was like a screw in the machinery of a car that could not be removed", which is a bit like, "I was only obeying orders", it might, nevertheless, be emphasised that the band of criminals mentioned above ultimately gave the orders. No, "sorry", I am afraid, is just not good enough, certainly not for Duch and for the others mentioned in this post? Well, would we have accepted a "sorry" from Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot?