Why Is President Obama Sending 12, 000 U.S. Troops To Libya?

Countercurrents
Cynthia McKinney

It is with great disappointment that I receive the news from foreign media publications and Libyan sources that our President now has 12,000 U.S. troops stationed in Malta and they are about to make their descent into Libya.

For those of you who have not followed closely the situation in Libya, the resistance to rule of the National Transitional Council is strong. The National Transitional Council (NTC) cast of characters has about as much support on the ground as did Mahmoud Abbas before the United Nations request for Palestinian statehood or Afghanistan's regal-looking but politically impotent Hamid Karzai or for that matter, George W Bush after eight years. The NTC not only has to contend with a vibrant, well-financed, grassroots-supported resistance, but the various militias of the NTC are now also fighting each other. I believe this “sociocide” of Libyan society, as we previously witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan before it, is part of a carefully crafted plan of destabilization that ultimately serves U.S. imperial interests and those of a Zionist state and its US agents who are bent on Greater Israel's suzerainty over huge swaths of Arabic-speaking populations. Pakistan is also on the list for neutering in Muslim and world affairs, saddled with its own unpopular civilian leadership that finds itself in the hip pocket of the United States for survival, often getting sat upon by its fiscal guarantor.

The “Arab Spring” has sprung and the indelible fingerprints of malignant foreign financed operations must be erased if the people are to have a chance to truly govern themselves. Unfortunately, these foreign-inspired organizations are present and operating in just about every country in the world. The threat is ever-present like sleeping cells–all that is needed is that the right word to “activate” be given. Both Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez can write tomes on the impact of the National Endowment for Democracy in the political life of their countries.

In other words, those who create the chaos have a plan and in the midst of chaos, they usually are the ones who will win. Those who wrote the plan of this chaos were affiliated with the Project for a New American Century–read A Clean Break if you already haven't. General Wesley Clark told us of the plan to invade and destroy the governments of seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. “These people took control of the policy in the United States,” Clark continues. He concludes, “This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and . . . collaborators from the Project for a New American Century: they wanted us to destabilize the Middle East.” Richard Perle, Bill Kristol publicize these plans and “could hardly wait to finish Iraq so they could go into Syria,” Clark goes on. “The root of the problem is the strategy of the United States in this region. Why are Americans dying in this region? That is the issue,” he finishes.

Now, from Libya, reports are that even while the Misrata rebels (NATO allies responsible for the murder of hundreds of Libyans, including Moatessem Qaddafi) attempted to scale the petroleum platforms in Brega (an important oil town in Libya), they were annihilated by the Apache helicopters of their own NATO allies. A resistance Libyan doctor-become-journalist reported yesterday that all of the petroleum platforms are occupied by NATO and that warships occupy Libya's ports. Photographs show Italian encampments in the desert with an announcement that the French are to follow. Another news outlet reports that Qataris and Emiratees are the engineers now at the oil plants, turning away desperate Libyan workers.

While long lines exist for Libyan drivers to get their gas, foreign troops ensure the black gold's export. Libyans lack enough food and the basics, the country has been turned upside down, and contaminated with uranium while the true number of dead and unaccounted for remains high and unknown. Thousands of young Libyans, supporters of the Jahamiriya, languish under torture and assassination in a Misrata prison where a humanitarian disaster is about to unfold because Misrata rebels want to kill them all and have already attacked the prison once to do so. An urgent appeal to contact the International Red Cross was issued yesterday to help save the lives of the prisoners. And finally, Black Libyans continue to be targeted for harassment and murder in Libya by US/NATO allies on the ground. Teaching hate, given the images of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan released yesterday, urinating on Afghani dead bodies, is not a difficult thing to do, it would seem. Videos are posted of Black Libyans being beaten, whipped, threatened, harassed, and humiliated. These videos remind me of the antebellum South–reminiscent of the days of slavery and The Confederacy. So, when I use the word “descend” to describe U.S. anticipated actions, I mean just that: U.S. troops are about to descend into the hell on Earth created by their President and the leaders of other countries who approved of, aided, or participated in the death of Libyan-owned society. A report from last night indicates that one militia, fearing other militias even invited foreigners in to protect them.

AP Interview: UN envoy warns of missing Libya arms

Associated Press
Karin Laub

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Some weapons depots in Libya have still not been secured properly, and "much has already gone missing" from unguarded sites, the top U.N. envoy in Libya said in an interview Sunday.

Preventing more weapons from being smuggled out of country will be difficult, considering the nature of the vast desert nation's borders, the envoy, Ian Martin, told The Associated Press.

"That has to be a priority now, to secure what still remains in Libya," he said. "Over time, the international community can assist Libya and its neighbors with that, but I am afraid there is not a quick and easy solution to that problem."

During the chaos of Libya's 8-month civil war, human rights groups and reporters came across a number of weapons depots that were left unguarded and were looted after Moammar Gadhafi's fighters fled.

Martin said the unsecured weapons remain a "very, very serious cause for concern." He said they include shoulder-held missiles, mines and ammunition.

Martin noted progress concerning chemical weapons and nuclear material. Last week, Libyan officials said they discovered two new sites with chemical weapons that had not been declared by the Gadhafi regime when it vowed several years ago to stop pursuing non-conventional weapons. Officials also said they found about 7,000 drums of raw uranium.

Evidence found of pro-NATO massacre in Sirte, Libya

Liberation
Derek Ford

NTC government turning back the clock on women's rights

The U.S. government and NATO countries used alleged human rights violations as a pretext for the war on Libya. These allegations were later proven false by numerous human rights groups, including Amnesty International. Now evidence has surfaced pointing to human rights violations committed by the pro-NATO Libyan rebels.

Human Rights Watch announced on Oct. 24 that they had discovered 53 decomposing bodies at a hotel in the city of Sirte, which rebels were using as a prison. Evidence indicates that many or all of the victims appear to have been summarily executed. Some of them had their hands tied behind their back, bullet holes were found in the ground and spent rifle shells were strewn about. Many were shot in the head. Several have already been identified as Gaddafi supporters.

The UK Defense Minister said that the mass killing may be a war crime but that it would be “virtually impossible” for Britain to investigate, although Britain, along with the United States, played an integral part in the war.

Quryna, a local newspaper in Sirte, reported on Oct. 26 that 267 bodies of Gaddafi supporters were buried in a mass grave. The story, which cited the Red Cross, said that the bodies were found throughout Sirte and its suburbs and had been buried by the NTC.

Just days before these gruesome discoveries, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reiterated the imperialists' line. He told the press at NATO headquarters in Brussels that “Our military forces prevented a massacre and saved countless lives.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Throughout the seven-month war, pro-NTC rebels were notoriously brutal. Peter Bouckaert, of Human Rights Watch, said that “This latest massacre seems part of a trend of killings, looting and other abuses committed by armed anti-Gaddafi fighters who consider themselves above the law.”
NTC attacks women’s rights

On Oct. 23, as Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the NATO-backed National Transition Council, was officially declaring Libya “liberated” he also announced that Libyan law will now be in accordance with sharia. While sharia law can be interpreted in various ways, Jalil singled out Libyan laws on divorce and marriage in his speech: “The law of divorce and marriage … This law is contrary to sharia and it is stopped.”

Previously in Libya, women were allowed to marry and divorce freely and polygamy was outlawed. After divorce, women left marriages with their previous assets, the family home and generally all joint assets. These practices will now be abolished and polygamy and secret marriages will be legalized.
This may be the first of many laws to turn back the clock on women’s rights in Libya. Under Moammar Gaddafi’s government, women were highly educated and well-represented in all occupations, including positions in the government. This is the liberation that NATO has brought to Libya.

Gadhafi son seeks flight to Hague war crimes court

The Vancouver Sun

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi

DUBAI - Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, fearing for his life if captured in Libya, has tried to arrange for an aircraft to fly him out of his desert refuge and into the custody of the Hague war crimes court, a Libyan official said on Thursday.

Details were sketchy and confirmation not available but a picture has built up since his father's grisly killing while in the hands of vengeful rebel fighters a week ago that suggests Moammar Gadhafi's 39-year-old heir-apparent has taken refuge among Sahara nomads and is seeking a safe haven abroad.

Even if he can still draw on some of the vast fortune the Gadhafi clan built up abroad during 42 years in control of North Africa's main oilfields, his indictment by the International Criminal Court at The Hague over his efforts to crush the revolt limits the options open to Saif al-Islam.

That may explain an apparent willingness, in communications monitored by intelligence services and shared with Libya's interim rulers, to discuss a surrender to the ICC, whereas his mother and surviving siblings simply fled to Algeria and Niger.

The Court, which relies on signatory states to hand over suspects, said it was trying to confirm the whereabouts and intentions of Saif al-Islam and ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, the third man indicted along with the elder Gadhafi.

A source with Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC), which drove the Gadhafis from power in Tripoli in August, told Reuters the two surviving indictees were together, protected by Tuareg nomads, in the rugged wilderness of the "Triangle", close to the borders of Algeria and Niger.

"Saif is concerned about his safety," the source said. "He believes handing himself over is the best option for him."

The younger Gadhafi, once seen as a potential liberal reformer but who adopted a belligerent,

win-or-die persona at his father's side this year, was looking for help from abroad, possibly Algeria or Tunisia, to fly out and take his chances at The Hague, where there is no death penalty:

"He wants to be sent an aircraft," the NTC source said by telephone from Libya. "He wants assurances."

COURT SEEKS CONFIRMATION

ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said the court was trying to confirm the NTC comments and work out how to move the suspects:

New Libya Born from an Act of Terrorism

Libya: A campaign built on sand

The Daily Telegraph
Con Coughlin

Four months ago, when David Cameron led the international call for military intervention in Libya, the general assumption within government circles was that Col Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator, would realise the game was up the moment Nato warplanes began bombing his forces.

It did not seem to matter to Mr Cameron and his principal allies in the anti-Gaddafi campaign that the main purpose of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which provided the legal justification for military action, was to protect anti-Gaddafi rebels from the possibility of being massacred by forces loyal to their leader.

Together with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama, Mr Cameron demanded that the military offensive would end only when Gaddafi was removed from power, so confident was he in the operation's likely outcome. At a stroke an operation conceived on the basis of liberal interventionism had been transformed into one determined to achieve regime change.

And it is to this end that Nato has undertaken a sophisticated bombing campaign designed as much to intensify the pressure on Gaddafi's regime to give up its vice-like grip on power as to protect Libya's civilian population. Apart from taking out Gaddafi's air defences and launching thousands of raids against pro-Gaddafi forces, the campaign has increasingly targeted the regime itself, bombing the Libyan dictator's Bab al-Azizia barracks and vital fuel supply lines.

Yet, more than three months into the Nato offensive, Gaddafi remains as resolutely in power in Tripoli today as he was when the first bombs were dropped in March. In recent days, we have seen the extent of the support he continues to enjoy when thousands of his own supporters turned out in Tripoli to hear an address by the Libyan leader.

Meanwhile, Saif al-Islam, his son and heir apparent, appeared on French television to taunt those responsible for prosecuting the Nato offensive. "We will never surrender," he said in an interview. "We will fight. It's our country. To tell my father to leave the country, it's a joke."

While the Gaddafi clan appears to have lost none of its resolve, the same cannot be said for the Nato member states and Arab nations that originally backed the intervention, but are now desperately seeking an exit route. From the start of the military offensive, Nato's operations have been severely hampered by the fact that only half a dozen countries have been prepared to conduct combat operations.

This has meant that the lion's share of the more than 9,000 sorties have been flown by British and French warplanes, with Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Jordan and Qatar also making valuable contributions to the war effort.

But many other Nato nations, particularly Germany, have been unhappy from the outset at the demands made by the likes of Mr Cameron that Gaddafi's removal, rather than the protection of Libyan civilians, is the ultimate goal. They have done their best to frustrate the military operation by refusing to contribute vital equipment, such as tankers used for mid-air refuelling, and regularly objecting to attacks on targets that are not deemed to pose a direct threat to Libya's civilian population.

Now the simmering tensions that have severely hampered the effectiveness of the Nato mission have broken into the open with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, claiming he was against the operation from the start. "I am against this intervention, which will end in a way that no one knows," he said.

Mr Berlusconi's comments are highly significant, as Nato is relying heavily on Italy's cooperation to maintain its air operations against Libya. Nato's operational headquarters is in Naples, while most of the combat missions are flown from air bases in southern Italy. Italian officials have already indicated that they do not want a further 90-day extension of Nato's deadline for military operations, which is due to expire in late September.