Why the Mideast Exploded, Really

Consortium News
Ray McGovern

Exclusive: The new conventional wisdom, in the wake of angry protests roiling the Middle East, is that Muslims are either way too sensitive or irrational. How else to explain the fury over an offensive anti-Islam video? But the video was just the spark that ignited a long-smoldering fire, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

“Why Is the Arab world so easily offended?” asks the headline atop an article by Fouad Ajami, which theWashington Post published online last Friday to give perspective to the recent anti-American violence in Muslim capitals.

While the Post described Ajami simply as a “senior fellow” at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, Wikipedia gives a more instructive perspective on his checkered career and dubious credibility.

An outspoken supporter of the war on Iraq, Ajami was still calling it a “noble effort” well after it went south. He is a friend and colleague of one of the war’s intellectual authors, neocon Paul Wolfowitz, and also advised Condoleezza Rice. It was apparently Wolfowitz or Rice who fed Ajami’s analyses to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who cited Ajami’s views repeatedly in speeches.

The most telling example of this came in Cheney’s VFW address on August 26, 2002, in which the Vice President laid down the terms of reference for the planned attack on Iraq. Attempting to assuage concerns about the upcoming invasion, Cheney cited Ajami’s analysis: “As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street,’ the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.’”

Author and scholar Fouad Ajami.

In his writings, Ajami did warn, in a condescending way, that one could expect some “road rage … of a thwarted Arab world – the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds.” He then added:

“There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power’s simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region’s age-old prohibitions and defects.”

No One Better?

Ignoring the albatross of tarnished credentials hanging around Ajami’s neck, the Post apparently saw him as just the right academician to put perspective on the violence of last week in Middle East capitals. As for his record of credibility: Well, who takes the trouble to go to Wikipedia for information on pundits?

Nor were the Post’s editors going to take any chances that its newspaper readers might miss the benefit of Ajami’s wisdom. So the Post gave pride of place to the same article in Sunday’s Outlook section, as well. What the Post and other mainstream media want us to believe comes through clearly in the title given to the article’s jump portion, which dominates page 5: “Why a YouTube trailer ignited Muslim rage.”

Setting off the article were large, scary photos: on page one, a photo of men brandishing steel pipes to hack into the windows of the U.S. embassy in Yemen; the page-5 photo showed a masked protester, as he “ran from a burning vehicle near the U.S. embassy in Cairo.”

So – to recapitulate – the Post’s favored editorial narrative of the Mideast turmoil is that hypersensitive, anti-American Muslims are doing irrational stuff like killing U.S. diplomats and torching our installations. This violence was the result of Arabs all too ready to take offense at a video trailer disrespectful of the Prophet.

Nonetheless, it seems to be true that the trailer did have some immediate impact and will have more. According to an eyewitness, the 30 local guards who were supposed to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi simply ran away as the violent crowd approached on Tuesday night.

Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya’s Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the video trailer which made the guards abandon their post.
“There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet.”

Predictably, Islamophobes and Muslim haters with influence over Western media coverage are citing the violence as the kind of “irrational” over-reaction that “exposes” Islam’s intolerance and incompatibility with democratic values and demonstrates that Islam is on a collision course with the West.

It is no surprise that Ajami gives no attention to the many additional factual reasons explaining popular outrage against the U.S. and its representatives – reasons that go far deeper than a video trailer, offensive though it was. Ajami steers clear of the dismal effects of various U.S. policies over the years on people across the Muslim world – in countries like Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Afghanistan. (The list stretches as far as distant Indonesia, the most populous Muslim state.)

Last week’s violence not only reflects the deep anger at and distrust of the U.S. across the Islamic world, but also provides insight into the challenges posed by the power now enjoyed by the forces of extremism long held in check by the dictators toppled by last year’s wave of revolutions.

Cui Bono?

Who are the main beneficiaries of misleading narratives like that of Ajami. He himself concedes, “It is never hard to assemble a crowd of young protesters in the teeming cities of the Muslim world. American embassies and consulates are magnets for the disgruntled.”

So, does that mean the notorious video trailer is best regarded as a catalyst for the angry protests rather than the underlying cause? In other words, if the video served as the spark, who or what laid the kindling? Who profits from the narrative that neocons are trying so hard to embed in American minds?

Broad hints can be seen in the Washington Post’s coverage over recent days – including a long piece by its Editorial Board, “Washington’s role amid the Mideast struggle for power,” published the same day Ajami’s article appeared online.

CIA faces new waterboarding claims from Libya

The Telegraph
Alex Spillius

New claims of waterboarding by the CIA have emerged, contradicting claims by the US authorities that only three people were submitted to a practice widely regarded as torture.

The assertions were made by Libyan opposition figures arrested by the Americans and handed over to Col Muammar Gaddafi in the middle of the last decade when Washington was seeking rapprochement with the late Libyan dictator.

They are contained in a report by Human Rights Watch, which interviewed 14 former prisoners after the fall of Col Gaddafi. Most belonged to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group that had worked to overthrow him for 20 years.

Two out of the men interviewed said they were submitted to interrogation tactics that match previous instances of waterboarding.

After his arrest in Peshawar, Pakistan in 2003, Mohammed al-Shoroeiya said he was flown for half an hour to a location he later came to believe was in Afghanistan.

He said he was placed on a board that could rotate through 360 degrees. After a hood was put over his face, he said, “They start to pour water to the point where you feel like you are suffocating.”

When asked how many times this was done to him, he said: “A lot …a lot … it happened many times …. They pour buckets of water all over you.”

Khalid al-Sharif, who was arrested along with al-Shoroeiya, said: They gave me a different type of torture every day. Sometimes they used water, sometimes not.… Sometimes they stripped me naked and sometimes they left me clothed.”

Now head of the Libyan National Guard, Mr Sharif claimed he was held for two years in two different US-run detention centres believed to be operated by the CIA in Afghanistan.

Both men have always disavowed al-Qaeda and were never accused of sympathising with the global terror group by the Americans.

Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch and author of the report, said: “Not only did the US deliver Gaddafi his enemies on a silver platter but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first,” said “The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened.”

Human Rights Watch said the report demonstrated that Britain and numerous other countries were complicit in helping hand over Col Gaddafi’s opponents.

Intelligence documents discovered in Tripoli supported similar claims by Abdul Hakim Belhadj, leader of the LIFG who was a key figure in the overthrow of Col Gaddafi, and a deputy Sami Mostafa al-Saadi.

The US government has stated that only three senior al-Qaeda figures were submitted to waterboarding.

When he came into office in January 2009 President Barack Obama banned the practice and ordered an investigation into all so called harsh interrogation techniques. It recently concluded that CIA officials should be charged.

Last week Eric Holder, the US attorney general, announced that no one would be prosecuted for the deaths of a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002 and another in Iraq in 2003.

Robert Fisk: You can't blame Gaddafi for thinking he was one of the good guys

The Independent

Robert Fisk

The West may be celebrating his death, but that's just an accident of timing

We loved him. We hated him. Then we loved him again. Blair slobbered over him. Then we hated him again. Then La Clinton slobbered over her BlackBerry and we really hated him even more again. Let us all pray that he wasn't murdered. "Died of wounds suffered during capture." What did that mean?

He was a crazy combination of Don Corleone and Donald Duck – Tom Friedman's only moment of truth about Saddam Hussein – and we who had to watch his ridiculous march-pasts and his speeches bit our lips and wrote about Libyan tanks and marines and missiles that were supposed to take this nonsense seriously. His frogmen flipped and flapped through Green Square in the heat and we had to take this rubbish at face value and pretend that it was a real threat to Israel; just as Blair tried to persuade us (not unsuccessfully) that Gaddafi's pathetic attempts to create "weapons of mass destruction" had been skewered. This, in a country that couldn't repair a public lavatory.

So he is gone, the colonel who was once beloved of the Foreign Office (after the coup against King Idris), then guarded as a "safe pair of hands", then loathed because he sent weapons to the IRA, then loved, etc, etc. Can you blame the man for thinking he was a good guy?

And did he perish so? Shot down while trying to resist? We lived with Ceausescu's death (and that of his wife), so why not Gaddafi's? And Gaddafi's wife is safe. Why shouldn't the dictator die thus? Interesting question. Did our friends in the National Transitional Council decree his demise? Or was this "natural", a death at the hands of his enemies, an honourable end to a bad man? I wonder. How the West must have been relieved that there would be no trials, no endless speeches from the Great Leader, no defence of his regime. No trials mean no accounts of rendition and torture and no cutting of sexual parts.

So let us not recall any grovelling to Gaddafi. More than 30 year ago, I went to Tripoli, and met the IRA man who sent the Semtex to Ireland and protected the Irish citizens in Libya, and the Libyans were quite happy that I should meet them. And why not? For this was a period in which Gaddafi was the leader of the Third World. We got used to the ways of his regime. We got used to his cruelty. We connived at it, once it became "normal". Thus it was important to finish the documentation of his viciousness on our behalf.

Indeed, the end of any juridical evidence of torture by Gaddafi's regime care of (of course) and on behalf of the UK government would be a good thing, wouldn't it? The UK woman who knew all about this torture – unnamed but I know her name, so make sure she does not misbehave again – will she be safe from prosecution (which she should not be)? And will we all make cosy with Muammar Gaddafi's mates in the aftermath of his demise?

Libya: BBC concocts mass grave story in brazen propaganda piece

empirestrikesblack
Martin Iqbal

In a truly stunning display of dishonesty, the BBC has reported, citing no evidence to back its claim, that a mass grave containing over 1,200 bodies has been found in Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison complex. The BBC attempts to tie this ‘finding’ to the equally concocted ‘Abu Salim prison massacre’, as it claims that the bodies are those of the inmates supposedly killed in 1996.

In a piece posted today, the BBC uses the headline: “More than 1,200 bodies found in Tripoli mass grave“. Categorically, absolutely, unequivocally, this is an out-and-out lie; 1,200 bodies have not been found.

This is revealed to the reader within the BBC’s own concocted report in the paragraphs that follow (emphasis mine):

A mass grave believed to contain up to 1,270 bodies has been found in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, says the National Transitional Council (NTC).
The remains are thought to be those of inmates who were killed by security forces in 1996 in the Abu Salim prison.
…
Excavation at the site is expected to start soon.
…
Several bone fragments and pieces of clothing have already been found in the top soil.

While the unelected, illegitimate terror council known as the NTC claims to have found merely ‘several bone fragments‘, the BBC claims that 1,200 bodies have been found in its deliberately misleading headline.

Even this weak slew of lies from the BBC exposes the fragile nature of the ‘Abu Salim massacre’ propaganda, as it refers to the evidential basis of the event (emphasis mine):

A few eyewitnesses have talked about the fact they were killed in their jail cells by grenades and sustained gunfire after a protest.
Officials in the new government say they will need foreign forensic help to determine exactly what happened there.

The BBC’s report contains testimony from a ‘Sami Assadi’, who claims to have lost two brothers in the incident.

“Mixed feelings really. We are all happy because this revolution has succeeded, but when I stand here, I remember my brothers and many, many friends have been killed, just because they did not like Muammar Gaddafi.”

The inclusion of this testimony is a blatant attempt to twist and distort the reality on the ground. The BBC suggests that the ‘revolution’ has succeeded. In reality the ‘rebels’ and the foreign soldiers & special forces leading them, don’t even hold Tripoli, in addition to countless other locations still held by the Libyan resistance. These include Bani Walid and Sirte – locations now subject to NATO-prescribed blockades in an attempt to starve the resistance into submission, coupled with lethal bombing campaigns.

In its crude attempt to deceive the public, the BBC even manages to contradict itself in this one-page report. The testimony it provides above suggests that the alleged victims of the ‘Abu Salim massacre’ were killed because they “did not like Gaddafi“, while the BBC itself claims earlier in the piece, that they were killed for protesting against conditions in the prison.

Most certainly, this ‘mass grave’ propaganda will drop out of the news without a retraction from the BBC, as it turns out to be an utter falsehood. The ‘Abu Salim massacre’ is an event toted by globalist-Zionist funded Human Rights Watch as the trump card in the propaganda war against Libya. ‘Abu Salim’ is an event for which there is no physical evidence, and HRW’s report on the event hinges on the testimony of one person who is now residing in the United States. Laughably, HRW even admits that they cannot independently verify a single detail of the man’s claims.

The "Liberation" of Libya: NATO Special Forces and Al Qaeda Join Hands "Former Terrorists" Join the "Pro-democracy" Bandwagon

Global Research

Michel Chossudovsky

Extensive war crimes have been committed. NATO has blood on its hands. The heads of government and heads of state of NATO member countries are responsible for extensive war crimes

The "pro-democracy" rebels are led by Al Qaeda paramilitary brigades under the supervision of NATO Special Forces. The "Liberation" of  Tripoli was carried out by "former" members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

The jihadists and NATO work hand in glove. These "former" Al Qaeda affiliated brigades constitute the backbone of the "pro-democracy" rebellion.

NATO special forces with "boots and the ground" pass unnoticed. Their identity is not known or revealed. They blend into the Libyan rebellion landscape of machine guns and pickup trucks. They are not highlighted in the photo ops.

Special forces composed of  US Navy SEALS, British Special SAS Forces and French legionnaires, disguised in civilian rebel garb, are reported to be behind major operations directed against key government buildings including Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound in central Tripoli.

Reports confirm that British SAS were on the ground in Eastern Libya prior to the onset of the air campaign. Special Forces are in close coordination with NATO air operations. "Highly-trained units, known as ‘Smash’ teams for their prowess and destructive ability, have carried out secret reconnaissance missions to provide up-to-date information on the Libyan armed forces." (SAS 'Smash' squads on the ground in Libya to mark targets for coalition jets, Daily Mirror, March 21, 2011) 

NATO special forces and the CIA sponsored Islamic brigades under the command of "former" jihadists constitute the backbone of combat capabilities on the ground, supported by the air campaign, which now includes Apache helicopter raids.

The remainder of the rebel forces include untrained trigger happy gunmen (including teenagers) (see photo below), which serve the function of creating an atmosphere of panic and intimidation.

What we are dealing with is a carefully planned military intelligence operation to invade and occupy a sovereign country.

Zohra Bensemra/REUTERS

Killing the Truth. The Role of the Western Media

The Western media constitutes a major instrument of war. NATO war crimes are obfuscated. Popular resistance to the NATO led invasion is not mentioned.

A narrative of  "liberation" and  "opposition pro-democracy rebel forces" is instilled in the inner consciousness of millions of people. Its called the "NATO Consensus".

"The NATO Consensus" which upholds the "humanitarian mandate" of the Atlantic alliance cannot be challenged. The bombings of civilian areas as well as the role of a terrorist militia are either trivialised or not mentioned.

Killing the truth is an integral part of the military agenda.

Realities are turned upside down.

The lie becomes the truth.

Its an inquisitorial doctrine. The NATO consensus dwarfs the Spanish Inquisition by a long shot.

The criminal invasion and occupation of Libya is not mentioned. The lives of independent journalists in Tripoli who report on what is actually happening are threatened. The catch words are "Liberation" and "Revolution" with NATO's mandate limited to R2P ("Responsibility to Protect").

Liberation or Invasion? By camouflaging the nature of the military operation, not to mention NATO atrocities, the Western media has contributed to providing the Transitional Council with a semblance of legitimacy and international recognition. The latter would not have been forthcoming without the support of the Western media.

NATO special forces and intelligence operatives on the ground are in permanent liaison with military planners involved in coordinating NATO strike sorties and bombing raids on the Libyan capital.
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- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-06

Intensive Bombing Raids over Tripoli

On August 27, NATO acknowledged the conduct of 20,633 sorties since March 31st, and 7,768 strike sorties. (These figures do not include the intensive bombing raids conducted in the two weeks prior to March 31st). Each fighter jet or bomber carries numerous missiles, rockets, etc. depending on the ordnance specification of the aircraft.

Multiply the number of strike sorties (7768 since March 31) by the average number of missiles or bombs launched by each of the planes and you get a rough idea of the size and magnitude of this military operation. A French Dassault Mirage 2000, for instance, can transport 18 missiles under its wings. America's B-2 Stealth bombers are equipped with bunker buster bombs


France's Mirage 2000 used in Operation Odyssey Dawn against Libya,

USAF Stealth B-2 Bomber used in Operation Odyssey Dawn

Pursuant to NATO's humanitarian mandate, we are informed by the media that these tens of thousands of strikes have not resulted in civilian casualties (with the exception of occasional "collateral damage").

Not surprisingly, already in mid April, three weeks into bombing campaign, the Atlantic Alliance announced that "NATO planes flying combat missions over Libya are starting to run out of bombs" (UPI, April 16, 2011);

    "The reason we need more capability isn't because we aren't hitting what we see -- it's so that we can sustain the ability to do so," one NATO official told the Post. "One problem is flight time, the other is munitions." (Ibid)

The bombing raids over Tripoli were intensified in the course of the last two weeks. They were intended to support ground operations led by NATO special forces and the Islamic paramilitary brigades. With limited NATO ground force capabilities, NATO strategists decided to intensify the bombing raids.

Global Research's Correspondent in Tripoli, whose life is threatened for revealing NATO war crimes described a shift in the pattern of bombing, starting in mid-July, with increasingly intensive air raids leading up to the ground invasion on August: 20th:

    "Until approximately 2:35 a.m EET [July 17], the strident noises of fighter jets over Tripoli could be heard. The bomb blasts triggered an atmosphere of fear and panic over the entire city, a poignant psychological and emotional impact on tens of thousands of people, from the young to the elderly. It also alerted people and brought them out onto their balconies while they witnessed the bombing of their country.

    One of the explosions resulted in a huge mushroom cloud, pointing to the possible use of bunker buster bombs. ... There was something unusual in the pattern of this NATO bombing operation.

    The bombings tonight were not like other nights. The sounds were different. The smoke plumes were different. In previous bombings the smoke would usually go up vertically like a fire, but tonight the smoke plumes were horizontal and hovering above Tripoli with a white cloud in the horizon.

    People who were not directly affected by the bombs, within a radius of 15 kilometres experienced burning eyes, lower back pain, headaches." (Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, NATO Launches Bombing Blitzkrieg over Tripoli hitting Residential Areas , Global Research, July 17, 2011)

The mass killing of civilians in a Blitzkrieg environment as well as the creation of a generalized atmosphere of panic is intended to curtail the population's resistance to the NATO-led invasion.

The Death Toll

According to sources from our correspondent in Tripoli, the death toll in the course of the last week (20-26 August) is of the order of 3000. The hospitals are in a state of turmoil, unable to come to the rescue of the wounded. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirms that medical supplies are in short supply throughout the country.

Libya: NATO Humiliation Increasing per Airstrike

The rebels, led on ground by NATO special forces and
protected by NATO planes in the air have still failed
to take Tripoli after a week of fighting. Attempts to
seize other cities still under Libyan government
control are also significant tactical failures. The media,
unable to point to a victorious rebel government
seated in Tripoli is now attempting to sell the "chaos"
angle - that combat is degenerating into genocide, in
hopes the world will beg for a stabilization force.
The only problem is that "genocidal" rebels are led, armed,
trained, and organized by NATO officers on the ground.

Activist Post
Tony Cartalucci

Each NATO warplane that passes over Libya's coast and releases its ordnance upon the city of Tripoli is a glaring reminder that not only have the NATO-backed rebels failed to take the city, but the fighting there is beyond their ability to face without constant air support. As each bomb tears through Tripoli's already NATO-battered infrastructure - most recently destroying a fire station in the Abu Salim district - the world is given daily affirmations of just how duplicitous and premature NATO's desperate claims of "victory" were, made now nearly a week ago. To add injury to insult, UK's Foreign Secretary William Hague was imploring South Africa to release funding to NATO's proxies in Benghazi and suggested that failing to do so would be "risking a humanitarian disaster." Hague has not yet explained how the persistent aerial bombardment of a heavily populated city isn't already causing a verified humanitarian disaster. 

There are now reports that NATO's Al Qaeda brigades have been stalled before entering the coastal cities of Sirte and Bin Jawad, both lying between Benghazi and Misrata. In fact, by reading between the rhetoric, we see that the rebels have not only failed to achieve anything beyond the most symbolic of victories amidst immense chaos sown throughout Tripoli, they are in fact in a more tenuous position than ever before, with their forces stretched in multiple locations facing an entrenched Libyan army on multiple fronts.

By claiming victory while conducting daily air strikes upon a "captured city," for those that are able to put the pieces together, NATO exposes a tenuous grip on a bungled drawn out campaign. Of course there is no possible way NATO believed Libya could be taken over within days, not weeks, and must be acutely aware that even if Tripoli fell tomorrow - which it most likely won't - there will still be entire cities under Libyan government control along with Libya's vast southern interior. Occupation was NATO's true endgame from the beginning, waiting only for the proper pretext to begin landing troops on the ground. Getting that pretext has proven to be difficult.

Occupation cannot begin until either Benghazi's terrorist leaders are able to squat in Tripoli long enough to call in NATO forces for assistance, or if NATO can create enough chaos, murder, and mayhem to get the "international community" to beg for a "stabilization force." However it appears that the rebel forces are incapable of producing either result without NATO's constant bombardments from overhead, betraying media reports that "Tripoli has fallen" or that NATO has achieved any sort of victory.

NATO SLAUGHTER IN TRIPOLI: "Operation Mermaid Dawn" Signals Assault by Rebels' Al Qaeda Death Squads

Global Research

Thierry Meyssan

Tripoli, Libya, Aug. 22, 2011, 1 AM CET– On Saturday evening, at 8pm, when the hour of Iftar marked the breaking of the Ramadan fast, the NATO command launched its “Operation Siren” against Libya. 

The Sirens were the loudspeakers of the mosques, which were used to launch Al Qaeda’s call to revolt against the Qaddafi government. Immediately the sleeper cells of the Benghazi rebels went into action. These were small groups with great mobility, which carried out multiple attacks. The overnight fighting caused 350 deaths and 3,000 wounded. 

The situation calmed somewhat on Sunday during the course of the day. 

Then, a NATO warship sailed up and anchored just off the shore at Tripoli, delivering heavy weapons and debarking Al Qaeda jihadi forces, which were led by NATO officers. 

Fighting stared again during the night. There were intense firefights. NATO drones and aircraft kept bombing in all directions. NATO helicopters strafed civilians in the streets with machine guns to open the way for the jihadis. 

In the evening, a motorcade of official cars carrying top government figures came under attack. The convoy fled to the Hotel Rixos, where the foreign press is based. NATO did not dare to bomb the hotel because they wanted to avoid killing the journalists. Nevertheless the hotel, which is where I am staying, is now under heavy fire. 

At 11:30pm, the Health Minister had to announce that the hospitals were full to overflowing. On Sunday evening, there had been 1300 additional dead and 5,000 wounded. 

NATO had been charged by the UN Security Council with protecting civilians in Libya. In reality, France and Great Britain have just re-started their colonial massacres. 

At 1am, Khamis Qaddafi came to the Rixos Hotel personally to deliver weapons for the defense of the hotel. He then left. There is now heavy fighting all around the hotel.

BREAKING NEWS: NATO Massacres of Civilians Aimed at "Cleansing" the Libyan People's Resistance

Global Research
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Photographic Evidence of NATO War Crimes

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted intensive attacks on Libyan civilians in the night of August 8 and in the early hours of August 9, 2011 from approximately 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. EET.

Civilians in Tripoli and many other cities in Libya were bombed indiscriminately by NATO.

A large number of casualties occurred in the city of Zliten, in the district of Misurata. In Zliten, 85 people were killed including 33 children, 32 women, and 20 men as a result of NATO’s deliberate targeting of residential areas and civilian infrastructure. Many of the injured civilian victims are in critical condition and near death.

Zliten has been under constant NATO bombardment for several days. The recent NATO attacks started at about 11:30 p.m. EET on August 8, 2011. At least 7 civilian homes belonging to local farmers were destroyed, killing entire families. In all 20 families were the targets of the NATO bombings.

The images below pertain to destroyed farm houses in Majer, near Zliten.

Destroyed farm house in Majer, near Zliten. Copyright of all photos above. Matthew Ozanon 2011


Colonel Roland Lavoie, NATO’s official military spokesperson for Operation Unified Protector, confirmed that NATO bombed Zliten at 11:45 p.m. on August 8, 2011 and 2:34 a.m. on August 9, 2011.

In a second round of bombing, NATO targeted the same homes once more when local residents had arrived to the rescue of those who had been bombed.

Dismembered bodies were recovered from the ruble throughout the day. According to a Libyan eyewitness, a pregnant woman was killed with her dead unborn child exposed out of her torn body.

Media Disinformation

The only members of the international press that reported the damage of the bombings in detail were Russia Today (RT), TeleSUR, Chinese Central Television (CCTV), and independent journalists.

CNN was present taking footage, but essentially released nothing and distorted the facts.(See photos below)

‘Propaganda’ has become an excuse for our failure in Libya

Liberal Conspiracy
Flying Rodent

Deborah Haynes, Good Lapdog

Deborah Haynes, defence editor at the Times, writes these strange words in a piece bemoaning the snafu that is our latest war.

In a war of information and perception, the truth no longer matters. It is all about the message and in Libya, the regime is coming out on top.
(Times, 11th August)

It’s an odd column, listing the following points as presentational problems for Nato and the Libyan rebels:

1.  Nato forces have killed quite a lot of kids in Tripoli recently.  Additionally, Nato’s bombing campaign is causing major medical shortages, power cuts and petrol shortfalls for the civilian population.

2.  Gaddafi’s stooges on TV are making much hay from these facts.

3.  The rebels claimed they’d killed one of Gaddafi’s sons, when he is in fact alive and well.

4.  The rebels are disorganised, fractious and appear to have a Jihadist problem.

5.  Our record of having bombed a whole series of Muslim countries this decade is making it very easy for Gaddafi’s stooges on TV to portray Nato as crusaders and aggressors.

6.  The failure of a coup to materialise is being exploited by Gaddafi’s stooges as evidence that there is no majority desire to end Gaddafi’s reign.

7.  This means that the rebels’ challenge appears fatally flawed and that Nato are after Libya’s oil, and that…

…this is a huge Propaganda Fail on Nato’s part.

Well.  Let’s note here that, while Haynes bemoans all of these points as propaganda problems, she doesn’t actually bother to question their accuracy at all.

To pick a few of these points – Britain and France are not leading a holy Christian war and are probably not primarily motivated by lust for Libya’s resources.  Nonetheless, Nato does appear to be killing quite a lot of kids and intentionally depriving the citizenry of medicine and fuel; the rebels are fractious and disorganised, and so on. 

Further, the failure of a coup to materialise may actually mean that there’s no majority desire in Tripoli to end Gaddafi’s reign.

The problems raised here are, for the most part,  facts and not inconvenient lies promulgated by a tyrant’s pet broadcaster.

The quote at the top of this post – “In a war of information and perception, the truth no longer matters” – would be a tiresome truism were it made by a disinterested observer.

Far from being disinterested, The Times has been the foremost cheerleader for the Libyan war from the start, bigging up our chances of quick victory and egging on intervention like Manchester United’s prawn-sandwich brigade in hospitality.


For the defence editor of the Times to disavow the importance of truth itself in piece which essentially concedes that the entire war is a travesty is… interesting, to say the least.

Media coalition says NATO, Israel may have breached Geneva Convention

Rianovosti

A coalition of news organizations called on the United Nations on Friday to investigate reports that NATO and Israeli forces have targeted journalists in breach of international law.

The International News Safety Institute (INSI) said the international coalition conducting an air operation in Libya and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) may have violated the Geneva Convention and a Security Council resolution "which calls on all members states to protect journalists and media staff working in conflict zones."

"We call on NATO and the IDF to respect the safety of journalists and allow them to go about their business free from harm or threat of harm," INSI Director Rodney Pinder said.

The War on Libya: Divisions within The Transitional Council and Rebel Forces

Global Research
Michel Chossudovsky and  Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The death of General Abdel Fattah Al-Younes, Commander in Chief of Rebel Forces was announced on July 28. Younes was Colonel Qaddafi’s former interior minister who defected to the rebels. Younes was also key leader of the Transitional Council based in Benghazi.

His death has created a vacuum in the military command structure, which will inevitably contribute in the short-run to weakening the military capabilities of the insurgency. It will also have repercussions on the timing of NATO operations.

Unconfirmed reports state that Younes died in the battlefield in fighting on the ground against the Libyan military. For several days there were rumors that Al-Younis was dead. These reports stated that he was fighting in the Western Mountains and he could have been killed in battle. Other reports state that he was killed by the Transitional Council.

Even within rebel circles there are claims that Al-Younes was killed "because he was a traitor".

The official release of the Transitional Council states that  General Al-Younes and two top military commanders aides were killed by gunmen.on Thursday July 28.

"Abdel Fattah Younes was killed after being summoned to the de facto rebel capital of Benghazi to appear before a judicial inquiry, opposition leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil announced at a press conference late on Thursday night."

Secret Negotiations with Tripoli?

Al-Younes may have been attempting to return to Tripoli. There have also been reports regarding secret negotiations between Transitional Council members and the Libyan government. A faction within the Transitional Council may have been searching for a negotiated solution with Tripoli.

Barely two weeks earlier, top level talks were held in Brussels (Wednesday, July 13) between a Transitional National Council delegation and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The delegation also met with the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body. Fogh Rasmussen confirmed that "NATO would continue its bombing campaign in Libya as long as Gadhafi's forces threaten civilians". "As long as that threat continues, we must continue to deal with it,"

While in Brussels, rebel NTC leader Mustafa Abdel Jabril categorically denied the holding of talks with Tripoli: "All this talk about negotiations taking place between the regime and the National Transitional Council are totally false claims," The Associated Press: Rebels deny talks with Gadhafi, July 13, 2011)

Divisions within the Transitional Council and the Military

The death of Al-Younes has resulted in internal fighting within the Transitional Council. The leadership of  Mustafa Abdel Jibril is being questioned, particularly by members of Al-Younes' Obeide tribe. Jibril had been seeking a surge in NATO's bombing campaign in support of "a military advance" on Tripoli by rebel forces.

Following the death of General Younes and two top military commanders, rebel forces are in disarray. Factional divisions are developing within rebel forces.

The CIA Connection

There have also been accusations that Younes was assassinated by a rival faction of the insurgency headed by military commander Khalifa Hifter, who is known to be a CIA asset:

General Hifter retired to suburban Virginia, where he has lived for the last 20 years in Vienna (a small town) which is five minutes from CIA headquarters in Langley. ... Manipulations Africaines, a book published by Le Monde Diplomatique in 2001, traces Hifter's CIA connection back to 1987, stating that he was then a colonel in Gaddafi's army and was captured fighting in Chad against the U.S.-backed government of Hissène Habré. Hifter defected to the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), the main anti-Gaddafi group, which was CIA-backed. He organized his own militia, which stopped functioning once Habré was defeated by Idriss Déby (supported by France) in 1990. ....  "The Hifter force, created and financed by the CIA in Chad, vanished into thin air with the help of the CIA shortly after the government was overthrown by Idriss Déby." The book quotes a U.S. Congressional Research Service report dated December 19, 1996, to the effect that "the U.S. government was providing financial and military aid to the LNSF, and that a number of LNSF members were relocated to the United States."  (Asad Ismi The Middle East Revolution: The Empire Strikes Back: Libya Attacked by the US and NATO, Global Research, May 18, 2011)

Commander Khalifa Hifter tends to support the Islamic faction of the rebellion which is integrated by members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

REPORT FROM TRIPOLI: More NATO "Humanitarian Intervention:" The Bombing of Al Fateh University, Campus B

Cynthia McKinney
Global Research

Since coming to Tripoli to see first hand the consequences of the NATO military operations, it has become clear to me that despite the ongoing silence of the international press on the ground here in Libya, there is clear evidence that civilian targets have been hit and Libyan civilians injured and killed.

This Tuesday morning I was taken from my hotel across the city through its bustling traffic to the Al Fateh University.

On 9 June, Dean Ali Mansur was outside in the parking lot.  The sky was blue like Carolina blue.  The clouds were white--no chemtrails in sight.   Puffy and white.  Dean Mansur was visibly upset.  It seems that some of the young men at Al Fateh University, Campus B were fighting over girls.  He explained to me that Libyans are hot blooded.  With a gleam in his eye, he whispered to me that girls are important to young men. 

Yes, that was clearly evident today as I approached the campus of Al Fateh University, Campus B, formerly known as Nasser University.  Under the trees, throughout the lawn as we approached the campus gates, I could see young men and women talking to each other, talking on cell phones,  walking to and fro, assembled, probably talking about the latest campus news--whatever that might be.  Today, on the Al Fateh campus, life was teeming.  Student life seemed vibrant. This feel and ambiance of this university was not unlike the hundreds of other universities that I have visited in the US and around the world.

Libyan boys and girls are like ours. My son would easily fit into the life of this university.

The campus seemed vibrant, too.  Cranes everywhere indicated a healthy building program, adding new buildings to enhance the student learning environment.  Despite the students' fracas, Dean Mansur had everything to be happy about as he saw his university becoming bigger, better, and stronger.  Her told me that they had even signed an agreement with a British university to begin programs in the English language.  Not English studies, Dean Mansur emphasized, but an entire curriculum of study taught in the English language!  Of course, he entoned, that's all disappointingly ended now.

Al Fateh University, Campus B consists of about 10,000 undergraduates, 800 masters degree candidates, and 18 Ph.D. students; 220 staff, 150 ad hoc professors, 120 employees.  It has eight auditoriums, 19 classrooms, 4 extra large classrooms. It also has a rural campus at Al Azizia where 700 students are taught and are a part of the university system.  Dean Mansur compares himself to a mayor because he has so many responsibilities presiding over a large community of students engaging in a rich and vibrant academic life.

Dean Mansur told me that life at the university and, for him personally, changed forever on the afternoon of Thursday 9 June, 2011.

He recalled that the university opened as usual around 8:00 am and was to close later that evening at about 8:00 pm.

Thursday, 9 June, he thought, was going to be just like any other day, except for the fracas over the girls that had cleared the campus of many of the students who didn't want to have any part in the fighting.  So, outside in the campus parking lot, Dr. Mansur told me he was preoccupied  thinking how he would deal with the disciplinary issue before him.

Then, out of nowhere and all of a sudden, he heard something loud up in the sky. 

He said it began out of no where, a loud roar.  Then a frightful high pitched the hissing sound.  He said he looked up into the sky and couldn't hardly believe his eyes:  something shiny up in the sky appeared dancing in front of him. He said it moved about like an atari game or something. It danced and zig-zagged all over the sky.  He said he was transfixed on the object for what seemed like minutes but in truth must have only been seconds.

Up and down and sideways it raced in the sky and then, without warning, it just came crashing down into the ground nearby.  It was a NATO missile.

Tragically it had found its target:  Al Fateh University, Campus B. 

Dean Mansur said he saw one missile, lots of fire, lots of different colors all around it, and then a huge plume of smoke.  He saw one missile, but heard what seemed like many explosions. He said he now can't honestly say how many.

Dr. Mansur said the force and shock of the blast held him frozen  in his place.  He said his heart stopped for a moment.  He wasn't afraid, just frozen.  He didn't run away; he didn't cower; he said he just stood stupefied.

The force of the blast cracked thickened concrete wells, shattered hundreds of windows and brought numerous ceilings down in lecture halls.

Whether it was a wayward Tomahawk Cruise Missile or a misdirected laser guided bomb, no one knows.

His immediate thoughts were for the thousands of his students in the university and for his own three children who study there.

After about 30 minutes, the Libyan press came to see what had happened.  the University President and other officials of the school all came.  But to Dr. Mansur's surprise not the international press. 

And what did they see?

The media saw the widespread structural damage to many of the buildings, all of the windows blown out in every one of the eight auditoriums.  Doors blown off their hinges.  Library in a shambles.  Books and debris everywhere.  The campus mosque was damaged.  Glass heaped up in piles.  Some efforts at cleaning up had begun.

Dr Mansur says that they have kept the university, wherever practicable, in much the same condition as it was on the day of the attack. Except that the main classroom area that students work in has been cleaned and will be renamed the Seif Al-Arab auditorium complex in memory of Muammar Qaddafi's son murdered on April 30, 2011 in his home by NATO bombs.

On Thursday, NATO missiles.  Friday and Saturday are considered the weekend here.  Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, the students are back to school undaunted by the bombing.  In many of the classrooms I saw today, students were taking final exams amid the debris.  As I walked around the campus, one male voice shouted out and spoke to me in Arabic:  "Where's Obama?"

Good question I thought.

I've always wondered if the politicians who regularly send our young men and women away to war and who regularly bomb the poor peoples of the world have ever, themselves, been on the receiving end of a Cruise Missile attack or placed themselves and their family at the mercy of a laser guided depleted uranium bomb. Maybe, just maybe I thought, that if they had experienced first hand the horror of a NATO attack on a civilian target they might just stop and question for a minute the need to dispatch our armed forces to attack the people of Libya.

 I didn't want to disturb the students taking exams so I found some students standing outside not taking exams to talk to.  I asked them if they had anything to say to President Obama.  One professor, a woman, spoke up readily and said, "We are working under fire:  physical and psychological."  One student spoke up and said that President Obama should "Free Palestine and leave Libya alone."  He continued, "We are one family." 

More on that later, but briefly, every Libyan is a member of a tribe and every tribe governs itself and selects its leaders; those leaders from all of the tribes then select their leaders, and so on until there is only one leader of all of the tribes of Libya.  I met that one tribal leader yesterday in another part of Tripoli and I am told he is the real leader of this country. He presides over the Tribal Council which constitutes Libya's real policymakers.  So when the young man said "We are one family," that is actually the truth.

Dr. Mansur, trained in the United States and spoke fondly of his time in the US and the many friends he made there.  He is proud of his students and the richness of his university's community life.  He was just like any University Dean in the United States.

In my view God intervened on Thursday 9 June, 2011.

On the day that the missile struck, not one student was killed.  It could so easily have been different.  It could have been a catastrophe taking the lives of hundreds of teenagers.

I am told that in the surrounding area immediately outside the university others were not so fortunate.

Reports are that there were deaths in the nearby houses.

It's a funny thing about war. Those  who cause war become oblivious and removed from its consequences; they seem happy to inflict harm on others and become numb to its ill effects while war's victims find a way to normalize the abnormal and live with the constant threat of death and destruction.

After visiting Tripoli,  I remain as opposed to war as ever before.

The students at Al Fateh University continue their studies despite the siege that their country is under. 

And oh, that second group of students that I randomly spoke to?  I asked them how much they pay for tuition.  They looked at me with puzzled faces even after the translation.  I asked them how much they pay for their books.  Again, the same puzzled face.  Tuition at Al Fateh University is 16 dinars per year--about $9.  And due to the NATO embargo on gasoline imports, the school now has started 10 free bus lines to its surrounding areas in order to make sure that the students can get to school, free of charge.

I told them that I was about to enter a Ph.D. program in the US myself and that I needed tuition and book money costing tens of thousands of dollars.  I continued that my cousin is in debt $100,000 because she went to the schools of her choice and received a Master's degree. 

They said to me, "We thank Muammar Qaddafi.  Because of Muammar Qaddafi we have free education.  Allah, Muammar, Libya obes!"

Well as for NATO, they still cling to the chimera that their strikes are against military targets only and that theirs is a "humanitarian intervention."

I'm still waiting to find evidence somewhere in the world that bombing poor civilian populations of the Third World from the air is good for their voting rights, democracy, medical care, education, welfare, national debt, and enhancing personal income and wealth distribution.  It seems clear to me that complex life issues require more complex intervention than a Cruise Missile could ever deliver.

Human rights fact-finders show Libyan deaths, injuries not 'propaganda'

Examiner
Deborah Dupre

In the CIA kick-started war on Libya, The New York Times report Monday by John F. Burns, calling Libyan civilian casualties "propaganda," does not square with a series of WBAIX in-hospital interviews by  Joshalyn Lawrence that show civilian victim survivors of US/NATO intensifying bomb raids, both witnessed by a human rights fact-finding mission including Cynthia McKinney and former MPs who report it is NATO spin that mainstream media is reporting.

"Sightings of civilian casualties have been rare," reported Burns yesterday.

"Visits to bombing sites, hospitals and funerals have produced a succession of blunders, including patients identified as bombing victims who turned out not to be, empty coffins at funerals and burials where some of those interred turned out not to be airstrike victims at all."

The Lawrence videos, on WBAIX channel, of hospitalized civilians is evidence that, rather than injuries and killings by bombs being "rare" or reporting "blunders," they are realities.

Graphic images of the wounded are documented in the WBAIX videos created by  Joshalyn Lawrence.

In the videos, one after another wounded innocent civilian described atrocities to Cynthia McKinney, in a fact-finding mission with a team including a delegation of former MP's and professors from France all now in Tripoli.

The live-stream Lawrence videos on DeBar's channel document the NATO attacks and the injured, showing their wounds, and describing friends and co-workers killed.

McKinney's fact-finder team is seen entering one hospital room after another, each with the injured and the doctor explaining how the injury occurred and showing the injuries.

Houses are "completely destroyed" and meanwhile, according to McKinney, NATO has its own psychological operation in progress.

In a statement today by McKinney, she refutes NATO claims about making "significant progress" in "protecting Libyan civilians" and "targeting military intelligence headquarters in downtown Tripoli." 

Today's fact finder team, of which McKinney is a delegate, planned a program to visit camps of internally displaced persons in the area but this cannot occur because of US/NATO attacks.

"[W]e are not able to complete our program while Tripoli is under attack.  I will do my best to visit some of the areas bombed today when/if this attack lets up."

Like The New York Times, The Washington Post headlined "Libya government fails to prove claims of NATO casualties" and the Los Angeles Times headline was, "Libya officials put a spin on a conflict."

"These bombs and missiles are not falling in empty spaces:  people are all over Tripoli going about their lives just as in any other major metropolitan city of about two million people," stated McKinney.

Why?

"I don't understand why they want to kill us," said one young woman seen standing with others outside the Tripoli hospital room, explaining that the old are also being injured and killed.

"Why?" is the question repeatedly asked by the injured who are able to speak.

Political analyst Webster Tarpley answered that question Monday on Press TV, stating that the "goal of all this all along has been to smash Libya into various parts to drive Gaddafi out of power and to seize control of the oil to re-impose the yoke of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in still more severe form than we ever had it."

"And I think right now desperation is growing, especially in London and Paris, that old Suez 1956 combination unreconstructed Imperialist," said Tarpley.

"They are desperate now because what they met with so far are not working. They tried high level bombing, combined with this rebel rabble underground with a lot of al-Qaeda fighters included in it and that's not working."

Wayne Madsen, who was among those in the hospital with McKinney and others, seeing the patients and witnessing the injuries, has reported (www.waynemadsenreport.com) that early mainstream media reports included photos of Libyan rebels waving weapons and discharging them into the air, while "NATO member nations were supposedly locked in debate as to whether or when to provide weapons to the rebels."

"Someone in the media finally pointed out that the weapons being waved about in the photos were NATO standard issue," reported Madsen.

Foreign Secretary William Hauge has said that NATOS's almost three month-long mission is intensifying and it could last more than months according to Press TV.

Tarpley speculates that the US aggression on Libya could bring President Obama down.  Republicans who have been long-time warmongers "are now ceasing on the Libyan war as a means of attacking Obama."

The war power act, that "would have required Obama to get congressional approval for what he is doing within 60 days meaning by about May 20th," stated Tarpley. He furthered:

"At May 20th the second clock starts which gives him 30 days to pull out. If Obama does not pull out of the attack on Libya by about the 20th of June, he could be brought down by the Republicans in the House, who might use that as a vehicle to express their resentment so they build up some other issues." 

Yesterday, African Americans in Harlem urged public support on Wednesday as they protest the US/NATO attacks on Libyan Africans and the targeted killing of Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gidaffi, the man praised by Nelson Mandela for supporting the Anti-Apartheid struggle and the man who has said 'No' to the establishment of a US military command (Africom) on the African continent to take the nation's oil. ("African Americans Emergency gathering to stop Qadaffi assassination," Dupré, D., National Human Rights | Examiner.com)

McKinney asked today, "What were you doing today between 1:00 pm and now?"

"The people of Tripoli endure the trauma of repeated bombings in their immediate environment."

Tomorrow Referring to "Imperialist" Nuremberg crimes against humanity in Libya, Tarpley said that "undoubtedly," depleted uranium and cluster bombs are being used, "and all the rest."

Investigations have revealed that the U.S. Navy used cluster bombs on Libyans that injured the innocent, including children.

"[A]nd that's what they call democracy these days."

Sources

WBAIX

Wayne Madsen

New York Times

Press TV

Cynthia McKinney

Libyan lawsuit filed against Sarkozy

PressTV

Two French lawyers are to take legal action against French President Nicolas Sarkozy for crimes against humanity over NATO-led military operations in Libya.

Attorneys Jacques Verges and Roland Dumas have offered to represent Libyan families that have fallen victim to NATO strikes against Sarkozy, AFP reported.

“The two lawyers are going to file a complaint in the French courts in the name of the Libyan families,” a Libyan justice ministry official Ibrahim Boukhzam said.

Verges denounced a French state led by “hoodlums and killers,” adding that he and Dumas were “going to break the wall of silence.”

Dumas has further condemned his country's actions against a “sovereign country” and said he would be willing to defend Gaddafi if he were to be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

During a visit to Tripoli, Dumas and Verges accused NATO forces of killing civilians instead of protecting them.

French warplanes were the first to strike Muammar Gaddafi's forces after a UN resolution calling for the protection of Libyan civilians and a no-fly zone was passed.

Sarkozy announced the launch of military actions in Libya, backed by Western and Arab allies, on March 19.

According to the Libyan government, hundreds of civilians have been killed by NATO strikes. NATO claims that it has targeted areas under the control of pro-Gaddafi force. 

NATO's Feast of Blood

Activist Post
Cynthia McKinney

While serving on the House International Relations Committee from 1993 to 2003, it became clear to me that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was an anachronism. Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States in response to the Soviet Union's survival as a Communist state. NATO was the U.S. insurance policy that capitalist ownership and domination of European, Asian, and African economies would continue. This also would ensure the survival of the then-extant global apartheid.

NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet Response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a "cordon sanitaire" around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the "Cold War."

Avowed "Cold Warriors" of today still view the world in these terms and, unfortunately, cannot move past Communist China and an amputated Soviet Empire as enemy states of the U.S. whose moves any where on the planet are to be contested. The collapse of the Soviet Union provided an accelerated opportunity to exert U.S. hegemony in an area of previous Russian influence. Africa and the Eurasian landmass containing former Soviet satellite states and Afghanistan and Pakistan along with the many other "stans" of the region, have always factored prominently in the theories of "containment" or "rollback" guiding U.S. policy up to today. 

With that as background, last night's NATO rocket attack on Tripoli is inexplicable. A civilian metropolitan area of around 2 million people, Tripoli sustained 22 to 25 bombings last night, rattling and breaking windows and glass and shaking the foundation of my hotel. 

I left my room at the Rexis Al Nasr Hotel and walked outside the hotel and I could smell the exploded bombs. There were local people everywhere milling with foreign journalists from around the world. As we stood there more bombs struck around the city. The sky flashed red with explosions and more rockets from NATO jets cut through low cloud before exploding.

I could taste the thick dust stirred up by the exploded bombs. I immediately thought about the depleted uranium munitions reportedly being used here--along with white phosphorus. If depleted uranium weapons were being used what affect on the local civilians?

Women carrying young children ran out of the hotel. Others ran to wash the dust from their eyes. With sirens blaring, emergency vehicles made their way to the scene of the attack. Car alarms, set off by the repeated blasts, could be heard underneath the defiant chants of the people. 

Sporadic gunfire broke out and it seemed everywhere around me. Euronews showed video of nurses and doctors chanting even at the hospitals as they treated those injured from NATO's latest installation of shock and awe. Suddenly, the streets around my hotel became full of chanting people, car horns blowing, I could not tell how many were walking, how many were driving. Inside the hotel, one Libyan woman carrying a baby came to me and asked me why are they doing this to us?

Whatever the military objectives of the attack (and I and many others question the military value of these attacks) the fact remains the air attack was launched a major city packed with hundreds of thousands of civilians.

I did wonder too if the any of the politicians who had authorized this air attack had themselves ever been on the receiving end of laser guided depleted uranium munitions. Had they ever seen the awful damage that these weapons do a city and its population? Perhaps if they actually been in the city of air attack and felt the concussion from these bombs and saw the mayhem caused they just might not be so inclined to authorize an attack on a civilian population.

I am confident that NATO would not have been so reckless with human life if they had called on to attack a major western city. Indeed, I am confident that would not be called upon ever to attack a western city. NATO only attacks (as does the US and its allies) the poor and underprivileged of the 3rd world.

Only the day before, at a women's event in Tripoli, one woman came up to me with tears in her eyes: her mother is in Benghazi and she can't get back to see if her mother is OK or not. People from the east and west of the country lived with each other, loved each other, intermarried, and now, because of NATO's "humanitarian intervention," artificial divisions are becoming hardened. NATO's recruitment of allies in eastern Libya smacks of the same strain of cold warriorism that sought to assassinate Fidel Castro and overthrow the Cuban Revolution with "homegrown" Cubans willing to commit acts of terror against their former home country. More recently, Democratic Republic of Congo has been amputated de facto after Laurent Kabila refused a request from the Clinton Administration to formally shave off the eastern part of his country. Laurent Kabila personally recounted the meeting at which this request and refusal were delivered. This plan to balkanize and amputate an African country (as has been done in Sudan) did not work because Kabila said "no" while Congolese around the world organized to protect the "territorial integrity" of their country.

I was horrified to learn that NATO allies (the Rebels) in Libya have reportedly lynched, butchered and then their darker-skinned compatriots after U.S. press reports labeled Black Libyans as "Black mercenaries." Now, tell me this, pray tell. How are you going to take Blacks out of Africa? Press reports have suggested that Americans were "surprised" to see dark-skinned people in Africa. Now, what does that tell us about them?

The sad fact, however, is that it is the Libyans themselves, who have been insulted, terrorized, lynched, and murdered as a result of the press reports that hyper-sensationalized this base ignorance. Who will be held accountable for the lives lost in the bloodletting frenzy unleashed as a result of these lies?

Which brings me back to the lady's question: why is this happening? Honestly, I could not give her the educated reasoned response that she was looking for. In my view the international public is struggling to answer "Why?".

What we do know, and what is quite clear, is this: what I experienced last night is no "humanitarian intervention." 

Many suspect it is about all the oil under Libya. Call me skeptical but I have to wonder why the combined armed sea, land and air forces of NATO and the US costing billions of dollars are being arraigned against a relatively small North African country and we're expected to believe its in the defense of democracy. 

What I have seen in long lines to get fuel is not "humanitarian intervention." Refusal to allow purchases of medicine for the hospitals is not "humanitarian intervention." What is most sad is that I cannot give a cogent explanation of why to people now terrified by NATO's bombs, but it is transparently clear now that NATO has exceeded its mandate, lied about its intentions, is guilty of extra-judicial killings--all in the name of "humanitarian intervention." Where is the Congress as the President exceeds his war-making authority? Where is the "Conscience of the Congress?"

For those of who disagree with Dick Cheney's warning to us to prepare for war for the next generation, please support any one who will stop this madness. Please organize and then vote for peace. People around the world need us to stand up and speak out for ourselves and them because Iran and Venezuela are also in the cross-hairs. Libyans don't need NATO helicopter gunships, smart bombs, cruise missiles, and depleted uranium to settle their differences. NATO's "humanitarian intervention" needs to be exposed for what it is with the bright, shining light of the truth.

As dusk descends on Tripoli, let me prepare myself with the local civilian population for some more NATO humanitarianism.

Stop bombing Africa and the poor of the world!

Cynthia McKinney is a former member of Congress from Georgia. She can be reached at: hq2600@gmail.com.

'NATO to privatize Libyan resources'

Nato units left 61 African migrants to die of hunger and thirst

Guardian

Refugees from Libya reach Lampedusa. A Nato ship failed
to rescue a boat in trouble – leaving 61 people on board to die.

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned.

A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. "Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard," said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. "By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying."

International maritime law compels all vessels, including military units, to answer distress calls from nearby boats and to offer help where possible. Refugee rights campaigners have demanded an investigation into the deaths, while the UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency, has called for stricter co-operation among commercial and military vessels in the Mediterranean in an effort to save human lives.

"The Mediterranean cannot become the wild west," said spokeswoman Laura Boldrini. "Those who do not rescue people at sea cannot remain unpunished."

Her words were echoed by Father Moses Zerai, an Eritrean priest in Rome who runs the refugee rights organisation Habeshia, and who was one of the last people to be in communication with the migrant boat before the battery in its satellite phone ran out.

"There was an abdication of responsibility which led to the deaths of over 60 people, including children," he claimed. "That constitutes a crime, and that crime cannot go unpunished just because the victims were African migrants and not tourists on a cruise liner."

This year's political turmoil and military conflict in north Africa have fuelled a sharp rise in the number of people attempting to reach Europe by sea, with up to 30,000 migrants believed to have made the journey across the Mediterranean over the past four months. Large numbers have died en route; last month more than 800 migrants of different nationalities who left on boats from Libya never made it to European shores and are presumed dead.

Underlining the dangers, on Sunday more than 400 migrants were involved in a dramatic rescue when their boat hit rocks on Lampedusa.

The pope, meanwhile, in an address to more than 300,000 worshippers, called on Italians to welcome immigrants fleeing to their shores.

The Guardian's investigation into the case of the boat of 72 migrants which set sail from Tripoli on 25 March established that it carried 47 Ethiopians, seven Nigerians, seven Eritreans, six Ghanaians and five Sudanese migrants. Twenty were women and two were small children, one of whom was just one year old. The boat's Ghanaian captain was aiming for the Italian island of Lampedusa, 180 miles north-west of the Libyan capital, but after 18 hours at sea the small vessel began running into trouble and losing fuel.

Using witness testimony from survivors and other individuals who were in contact with the passengers during its doomed voyage, the Guardian has pieced together what happened next. The account paints a harrowing picture of a group of desperate migrants condemned to death by a combination of bad luck, bureaucracy and the apparent indifference of European military forces who had the opportunity to attempt a rescue.

The migrants used the boat's satellite phone to call Zerai in Rome, who in turn contacted the Italian coastguard. The boat's location was narrowed down to about 60 miles off Tripoli, and coastguard officials assured Zerai that the alarm had been raised and all relevant authorities had been alerted to the situation.

Soon a military helicopter marked with the word "army" appeared above the boat. The pilots, who were wearing military uniforms, lowered bottles of water and packets of biscuits and gestured to passengers that they should hold their position until a rescue boat came to help. The helicopter flew off, but no rescue boat arrived.

No country has yet admitted sending the helicopter that made contact with the migrants. A spokesman for the Italian coastguard said: "We advised Malta that the vessel was heading towards their search and rescue zone, and we issued an alert telling vessels to look out for the boat, obliging them to attempt a rescue." The Maltese authorities denied they had had any involvement with the boat.

After several hours of waiting, it became apparent to those on board that help was not on the way. The vessel had only 20 litres of fuel left, but the captain told passengers that Lampedusa was close enough for him to make it there unaided. It was a fatal mistake. By 27 March, the boat had lost its way, run out of fuel and was drifting with the currents.

"We'd finished the oil, we'd finished the food and water, we'd finished everything," said Kurke, a 24-year-old migrant who was fleeing ethnic conflict in his homeland, the Oromia region of Ethiopia.

"We were drifting in the sea, and the weather was very dangerous." At some point on 29 or 30 March the boat was carried near to a Nato aircraft carrier – so close that it would have been impossible to be missed. According to survivors, two jets took off from the ship and flew low over the boat while the migrants stood on deck holding the two starving babies aloft. But from that point on, no help was forthcoming. Unable to manoeuvre any closer to the aircraft carrier, the migrants' boat drifted away. Shorn of supplies, fuel or means of contacting the outside world, they began succumbing one by one to thirst and starvation.

The Guardian has made extensive inquiries to ascertain the identity of the Nato aircraft carrier, and has concluded that it is likely to have been the French ship Charles de Gaulle, which was operating in the Mediterranean on those dates.

French naval authorities initially denied the carrier was in the region at that time. After being shown news reports which indicated this was untrue, a spokesperson declined to comment.

A spokesman for Nato, which is co-ordinating military action in Libya, said it had not logged any distress signals from the boat and had no records of the incident. "Nato units are fully aware of their responsibilities with regard to the international maritime law regarding safety of life at sea," said an official. "Nato ships will answer all distress calls at sea and always provide help when necessary. Saving lives is a priority for any Nato ships."

For most of the migrants, the failure of the Nato ship to mount any rescue attempt proved fatal. Over the next 10 days, almost everyone on board died. "We saved one bottle of water from the helicopter for the two babies, and kept feeding them even after their parents had passed," said Kurke, who survived by drinking his own urine and eating two tubes of toothpaste. "But after two days, the babies passed too, because they were so small."

On 10 April, the boat washed up on a beach near the Libyan town of Zlitan near Misrata. Of the 72 migrants who had embarked at Tripoli, only 11 were still alive, and one of those died almost immediately on reaching land. Another survivor died shortly afterwards in prison, after Gaddafi's forces arrested the migrants and detained them for four days.

Despite the trauma of their last attempt, the migrants – who are hiding out in the house of an Ethiopian in the Libyan capital – are willing to tackle the Mediterranean again if it means reaching Europe and gaining asylum.

"These are people living an unimaginable existence, fleeing political, religious and ethnic persecution," said Zerai. "We must have justice for them, for those that died alongside them, and for the families who have lost their loved ones."

Additional reporting by John Hooper and Tom Kington in Rome, and Kim Willsher in Paris
• This article was amended on 9 May 2011. The picture caption used the wrong figure for the death toll. This has been corrected.