Forget Yemen and Somalia.  Scotland is the next front in the Global War on Terror, or is it overseas contingency operations?  The Wall Street Journal reported today:

“Scotland’s government has rebuffed a U.S. Senate committee request to send two Scottish officials to testify next week at a hearing that will explore the country’s release last summer of the convicted Lockerbie bomber.

Neither Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill nor Scottish Prison Service health director Andrew Fraser will attend the hearing, a Scottish government spokesman said Thursday, noting that Scotland had already provided comprehensive written information to the Senate.

The Senate request comes amid renewed allegations that oil company BP PLC, may have influenced Scotland’s decision to release the convicted bomber.

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has invited BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward, BP Special Adviser Mark Allen and former U.K. Justice Secretary Jack Straw to testify. A spokesman for BP said Thursday that the company had received the invitations but had yet to respond. Mr. Straw couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

The Senate intends to explore Scotland’s decision last summer to release former Libyan security agent Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, including 189 Americans, when it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The inquiry will look at ‘allegations surrounding the decision to release al-Megrahi, and in particular, whether a $900 million oil exploration deal between BP and Libya directly or indirectly influenced the decision to release al-Megrahi,’ hearing chair Senator Robert Menendez (D., NJ) wrote in the invitations.”

That B-1 bombers might soon be levelling strategic targets to include the distilleries at Famous Grouse, Langavulin, Jura, and Laphraoig is not to be borne lightly by Americans who believe in preserving constitutional liberties.  The American Conservative should call for the raising of volunteer regiments to defend the right of every US citizen to eat haggis and drink scotch whisky without any interference from the lickspittles in the United States Senate.  We will call on Mel Gibson to lead us and our banners will read “Remember the Whisky Rebellion, God and our Right!”