Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Robber vs. robber.

Robber vs. robber. Witnesses who testified against former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling were "robbed of their free will" by prosecutors, suggesting they were eager to tell the government what it wanted to hear, Skilling's defense attorney Daniel Petrocelli said Tuesday.

Petrocelli's abstractions stand in stark contrast with the real burden encountered by Enron's employees, pension funds, mutual funds, and Enron shareholders who were "robbed of their money" by a couple of CEOs with strangely self-indulgent and wealth-secreting agendas.

Consider also Enron's legendary status in supporting a political regime whose primary purpose appears to have been looting the US Treasury (not to mention Baghdad) and mortgaging the country while handing the borrowed piles of money to America's most wealthy.

In other words, "robbing" may not have been such a clever metaphor for Petrocelli's closing argument. But it sure is apt.