This would be, I guess, the same sort of "learning" by which the "casual U.S. reader" has bought the fiction that Amanda Knox was convicted of murder because the Italian justice system works on the principle of guilty until proven innocent, among other misinformation which the U.S. press has been duped into reporting.dgs49 wrote:Based on what a casual U.S. reader can learn about it, the Italian "criminal justice system" is even more fouled up than the one we have here.
Because she actually DID admit to having sex with him, to the police, and because all of the other documentary, physical and witness evidence corroborated the story she told. Her recantation took place in a TV interview she did on a network that just happens to be owned by Berlusconi (gee, nothing at all suspicious about that). Of course, that recantation did not serve to erase all of the other evidence, which paints a very clear picture of what happened all on its own, without any need whatsoever for her to confirm it.He says they didn't have sex and the girl says they didn't have sex. Why is this not the end of the matter?
Now, if that is all there was to this distasteful business, one might argue that there really isn't anything to get excited about. Regardless of whether one thinks it is a good thing to induce underage girls into acts of prostitution, one could make the case that it doesn't have any bearing on his ability to run the government. But alas, it did not end there. Unlike most of the other "young ladies" with whom he "kept company", he could not assist her in attaining legitimate employment (one of the usual reasons why so many young, beautiful women buzzed around him) because she did not have legal status in the country. So he came up with a story for her to use to explain the money he was giving her when she had no visible means of support. He told her to tell people that she was the niece of Hosni Mubarak, which would explain why she would be able to support her lifestyle without working.
So in an effort to avoid suspicion coming upon himself as the source of this girl's money, he drags in the name of a foreign head of state, without giving any thought to what the repercussions might be. Now Mubarak subsequently had his own troubles, but does it take even the slightest bit of imagination to conceive of the diplomatic firestorm that could have been ignited if it had ever gotten back to Mubarak that the Prime Minister of Italy was trying to pass off an underage prostitute as Mubarak's niece? Or if the true nature of her activities became known, and if Mubarak heard that all of Italy believed his niece to be a prostitute? No, of course Berlusconi thought absolutely nothing about throwing Italy's relationship with a key ally under the bus in order to preserve his personal reputation. He thought nothing about compromising his office by inventing such a potentially explosive lie in order to cloak his personal pecadilloes.
Ruby subsequently managed to get herself arrested over an accusation of stealing some 3000 euros from a woman in whose place she had been crashing and that she had been using for some of her assignations. She got word of her predicament to Berlusconi, who called the police station and told them that she was Mubarak's niece and that she should be released so as to avoid a diplomatic incident. What he was afraid of, of course, was what Ruby might say about him to the police if she was questioned or if she thought it would help to get her out of trouble. So he engaged in obstruction by giving false information to the police, he abused his office by ordering them to release her (and by inducing Nicole Minetti, a member of the Lombard regional legislature, to go to the police station to pick her up), and Mubarak could now have been further incensed by seeing his "niece" now being called a thief in addition to a prostitute.
So no, this wasn't just about sex. He abused the influence of his office. He tampered with at least one witness. He endangered Italy's international relationships. He interfered in a police investigation of a crime. He facilitated illegal immigration, by giving Ruby money to live on when she had no legal status in the country. Any one of these would have been enough in almost any other developed country to force him from office. But then, in any other developed country the Prime Minister would not personally control half the media outlets in order to spin the facts until they are unrecognizable.
I won't even bother to get into how not even remotely comparable all this is to Clinton's misdeeds, because such comparisons are so off the mark in so many respects as to be the stuff of idiots or diehard political partisans.
