Strauss-Kahn allegedly told maid during attack, “Don’t you know who I am?” « Hot Air“Don’t you know who I am?”
How did John Forbes Kerry get into this?
The world is not a neat place with good guys and bad guys. Sometimes there are the bad and the worse.
DSK has a history as a bad abusive guy. He may just be guilty as Sin, the easy answer could be correct. He may also be not guilty. He may have been entrapped or framed or some other complicated explanation may be true. For example he may have been targeted because of his prior conduct and his political associations and he may still be guilty of the crime he is charged with.
The maid may not be the simple religious saint heroic single mother we were first told about. She may be a terrible person and mixed up with bad people. That would not justify rape. DSK is probably guilty of many forms of abuse and should have been flagged in a security review as susceptible to blackmail but that does make him guilty of this crime. The questions are, whether he is being framed and how reliable is the evidence of the two principles involved?
There are five possible answers. The terms Guilt and Innocence are used in reference to their characters except when I consider that the accused may be guilty of the assault in question. Here they are in ascending probability.
1. Innocent Frenchman framed using innocent maid. Least likely.
2. Innocent Frenchman framed using guilty maid. Very Unlikely.
3. Guilty Frenchman framed using guilty maid. Unlikely.
4. Guilty Frenchman caught having assaulted innocent maid. Possible.
5. Guilty Frenchman caught having assaulted guilty maid. Probable.
#1 demands an Oliver Stone level of conspiracy by outside forces. #2 & #3 are scarcely better except that the maid would have been a knowing participant or selected for the role due to shady associations. Note that even in situations #4 & #5 the encounter may have been arranged to target DSK in order to remove him from the IMF or from the French Presidential campaign or even because of his stated support for Israel.
It was his responsibility to conduct himself with sufficient discretion so as to frustrate any such conspiracy. If he walked into it and gave his enemies ammunition then that was his fault. If he had given his enemies the ammunition in prior episodes but was not guilty this time then it is his job to make that, very hard to prove, case.
A wise man would conduct his affairs with care, and maintain cordial open and supportive relations with the staff and security services wherever he goes, so as to provide an extra layer of protection in case something goes wrong. It appears that he failed to do so.
Compare this case to that of Bill Clinton. The counter argument to the "just about sex" claim was always that sexual misconduct is properly consider in determining the fitness for office of anyone in a position of trust, such as a nonelective one that requires a security clearance, because of the possibility of being blackmailed or framed. Clinton due to his selfish misconduct seriously imperiled the operation of the government. That was his responsibility and not his accusers. To his credit he did differ from DSK in putting some effort into maintaining civil relations with subordinates whose opinions could prove important. In that Bill Clinton differs from his spouse, who is surrounded by people waiting for the day she falls.
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