In what sense can Libya's overdue release of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor, all held for 8 horrifying years under a collective death sentence, be considered a diplomatic success? The medical workers were charged with infecting 400 Libyan children with HIV, which they supposedly did at the behest of the CIA. Now if you believe that, then perhaps I can interest you in another curious aspect of this bizarre affair. The Islamic "blood money" initially requested by the Tripoli regime on behalf of each child's family in order to call the whole thing off equalled exactly the amount the regime had to pay out to each family of the Lockerbie bombing. What a coincidence!

It should pain anyone with a conscience and a brain to consider that Muammar Qaddafi has been bought off, to the tune of $400 million, for freeing foreign aid workers he had no right to detain in the first place. On BBC radio this morning, one commenter, a dissident Libyan writer, made the instructive point that the U.S. missed a "golden opportunity" in 2003, when Qaddafi shut down and disclosed his nuclear weapons program, to use this uncharacteristic reduction in chutzpah to pressure him about human rights violations. Some things get swept under the Morrocan rugs the better to welcome a rogue state back to the "international table." But might Bulgaria have celebrated the return of its citizens (the Palestinian doctor is now one, too) a few years earlier?

In balancing the relief and anger over this sorry denouement to a scandal, credit must be paid to Cecilia Sarkozy, who negotiated the prisoners' release, thus making her husband's short presidency one of the most effective in French memory.

Why do I think Madame Chirac never so much as made a phone call to Tripoli during her spouse's agonizingly long tenure in the Elysee Palace?