Revisiting Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton Administration's 2011 War for Regime Change in Libya: Conclusion

Nelson Mandela with Libyan government leader against whom Hawk Democrats launched 2011 war. 

The Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration ended its Operation Odyssey Dawn overt military attack on Libya on March 31, 2011. But, along with other NATO government administrations, it continued to wage its overt war for regime change in Libya under the code name “Operation Unified Protector,” after Apr. 1, 2011.

So Libyan government leader Qaddafi then sent a letter on Apr. 6, 2011 to Democratic President Obama requesting that the Democratic Party leader put an end to NATO intervention in Libya.

But instead of agreeing to end U.S. military intervention in Libya, on Apr. 7, 2011 the Obama-Biden-Clinton administration again demanded that Qaddafi abdicate power and live in exile; and it continued to wage its war for regime change in Libya until Qaddafi was finally murdered on Oct. 20, 2011, in violation of international law.

According to the 2015 RAND Project Air Force Precision and Purpose study, during the Operation Unified Protector phase that began in early April 2011, “U.S. forces flew more than 7,100 total sorties…which represented nearly 27 percent of the total sorties during the” NATO “operation.” But, according to the Sowing Chaos: Libya In The Wake of Humanitarian Intervention book, “more than 2,000 residents” of the Libyan “city of Sirte,” were “killed in NATO air strikes;” and, by waging its war for regime change in Libya in 2011, “NATO handed over part of Libya’s territory to Al Qaida.”

In his 2016 Sowing Chaos: Libya In The Wake of Humanitarian Intervention book, Paolo Sensini noted that “the jury is still out as to whether the war on Libya was fought” by the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration “on behalf of fossil fuel interests or on behalf of banking interests.” But Sensini also observed that “by means of Obama’s Executive Order 13566,” Libyan financial assets  belonging to “the Central Bank of Libya (CBS), the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), the Libya Foreign Bank, and the Libyan National Oil Company (LNOC)” were “frozen,” prior to the start of its Operation Odyssey Dawn military attack; and “in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Qaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.”

What has been determined, though, is that the Libyan “rebels” who, with the military support of Democratic Party leaders (like Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton), were finally able to overthrow the Qaddafi-led government by the fall of 2011, were apparently illegally armed and trained by government of Qatar. As the 2015 RAND Project Air Force Precision and Purpose study revealed:

“…The U.N…raised concerns about…Qatar making arms transfers in violation of the arms embargo…The U.N….was `clearly informed that several countries, including Qatar, were supporting the [Libyan] opposition through the deliveries of arms and ammunition.’…Between the beginning of the [Libyan] uprising and July 2011, `approximately 20 flights had delivered military material from Qatar to…[the opposition] in Libya, including French anti-tank weapon launchers (MILANs)…

“…Qatar had personnel on the ground in Benghazi training the opposition. Rebel forces openly remarked…how Qatar had been with them from the beginning.

“Operating in the range of 50 to 150 personnel on the ground at any one time, Qatar’s Special Forces (SF) were used to train the opposition in a variety of small arms and tactics…The SF provided…the means for rebel forces to successfully engage pro-Qaddafi forces. On the ground direct assistance…was conducted with the main rebel brigades. These advisory teams…provided the main link between rebel ground units and NATO’s air power…This was used to supplement NATO targeting…

“The first official admission of Qatar’s involvement in training the opposition forces came in late October [2011]…Qatari Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Major-General Hamad bin Ali Al-Attiya remarked, `We were among them [the Libyan opposition forces] and the number of Qataris on the ground were hundreds in every region.’ He also noted that Qataris had been `running the training and communication operations’ and that `Qatar had supervised the rebels’ plans…`We acted as the link between the rebel and NATO forces.’…A team of 60 Qataris assisted the opposition in setting up command centers in Benghazi, Zintan, and Tripoli…Opposition forces were also flown back to Qatar for training…”

The pretext for launching the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration/NATO and Qatari governments’ 2011 “humanitarian military intervention” in Libya, despite the African Union’s March 11, 2011 call for no external foreign intervention in Libya, was that this war for regime change in Libya was needed to save the lives of Libyan civilians. Yet, as Seumas Milne observed in an op-ed column, titled “If The Libyan War Was About Saving Lives It Was A Catastrophic Failure,” that appeared in the Oct. 26, 2011 issue of the London Guardian, prior to the launching of the U.S./NATO’s “Operation Odyssey Dawn” on March 19, 2011 and “operation Unified Protector” after Apr. 1, 2011, “the death toll in Libya” was “perhaps around 1,000-2,000 (judging by U.N. estimates).” But, according to the same column, during the 8 months that followed the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration/NATO’s overt “humanitarian” military intervention in Libya, “as NATO leaders vetoed ceasefires and negotiations,” estimates of the numbers of new dead “range from 10,000 up to 50,000;” and “of these, uncounted thousands will be civilians, including those killed by NATO bombings and NATO-backed forces on the ground.”

In addition, in his Oct. 26, 2011 London Guardian column, Seumas Milne also, for example, noted:

“On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported the discovery of 53 bodies, military and civilian, in Qaddafi’s last stronghold of Sirte, apparently executed—with their hands tied—by former rebel militia.

“Its investigator in Libya, Peter Bouckaert, told me yesterday that more bodies are continuing to be discovered in Sirte, where evidence suggests about 500 people, civilians and fighters have been killed in the last 10 days alone by shooting, shelling and NATO bombing…

“That has followed a 2-month-long siege and indiscriminate bombing of a city of 100,000 which has been reduced to a Grozny-like state of destruction by newly triumphant rebel troops with NATO air and Special Forces support…

“…African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. Such attacks continue, says Bouckaert, who witnessed militias from Misrata this week burning homes in Tawerga so that the town’s predominately black population—accused of backing Qaddafi—will be unable to return…”

Nearly 5 years after Democratic Party leaders like Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton launched their war for regime change in Libya, Chris Stephens noted in a Feb. 16, 2016 London Guardian article, titled “Five Years After Qaddafi, Libya’s Torn By Civil War And Battles With ISIS,” that “civil war” in Libya “has raged since the summer of 2014;” and “it is a war that has left 5,000 dead, the economy in ruins” and “half a million homeless.” So, not surprisingly, a Libyan medical student then told the London Guardian reporter that in Libya “some people say they want to go back to the time of Qaddafi.”

And as recently as July 9, 2019, even Al Jazeera now reported that “the battle between rival groups for the Libyan capital has killed more than 1,000 people since” April 2019, “the United Nations said;” and “the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a brief statement on Tuesday that 1,048 people, including 106 civilians, have been killed” in Libya since April 2019 and an additional 5,558 have been “wounded, including 289 civilians.” The same July 9, 2019 Al Jazeera article also noted that:

“Fighting has emptied entire neighborhoods of civilians. Thousands of African migrants captured by Libyan forces funded and trained by the European Union are trapped in detention centers near the front lines. An air raid on one facility last week killed more than 50 people mainly migrants held in a hangar that collapsed on top of them. Libya slid into chaos after the 2011 NATO-backed uprisings…”

2020 Democratic Party presidential primary candidate Sanders and 2016 Democratic Party presidential Nominee Clinton at 2016 Democratic National Convention

(end of article)

Revisiting Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton Administration's 2011 War for Regime Change in Libya: Part 2

In his 2016 book, Sowing Chaos: Libya In The Wake of Humanitarian Intervention, Paolo Sensini noted that as early as Feb. 28 [2011], “Hillary Clinton made her first reference to the prospect of exile for Qaddafi.” The same book also indicated how the media was apparently used by the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration to apparently fabricate a “humanitarian” justification for its late March 2011 Operation Odyssey Dawn military attack in support of regime change in Libya:

“On Feb. 23 [2011]…the [anti-regime Libyan] rebels killed a number of loyalist civilians and military personnel. The video images of the bodies were falsely presented by the Western media as evidence of the massacre of 10,000 unarmed civilians, carried out by Qaddafi’s black mercenaries. More lies would soon be disseminated. Another video showed `mass graves’ on Tripoli’s beach. These alleged shocking images, it was discovered, recorded a routine task—the shifting of remains at the Sidi Hamed cemetery. These two stories were clearly propaganda stunts. This didn’t prevent Obama from thundering against intolerable levels of violence on Qaddafi’s part…

“…The satellite TV station, Al Arabiya, spread the news of 10,000 dead and at least 50,000 wounded or maimed in Libya…Reports appeared about Libyan airstrikes against Tripoli and Benghazi. There was talk also of `mass graves.’…Have we seen any photographs or video footage of the February [2011] massacre of thousands of people in Tripoli? None. Images of the Libyan air force bombing three districts of Tripoli? Not one witness was produced…The Russian armed forces monitoring the skies of Libya reported that they had no evidence of any Libyan airstrikes against civilians…

“What about the seaside mass graves story? What we saw was a cemetery, Sidi Hamed, with individual (!) graves. The contents of the graves had been moved well before the crisis erupted. It was a routine operation…The remains are shifted to make room for new graves. Such operations take place every one or two decades…What of the massacres that Qaddafi is said to have ordered in eastern Libya in February [2011]? No evidence of these either. Not one image of these alleged massacres (not even a shaky, blurred shot) has been produced…When the revolt broke out, the police resisted the attack on their buildings…Some of the `rebel’ groups…used heavy arms to attack police stations…

“We owe the military action to a media campaign on a grand scale…The lies had to be repeated incessantly…Ghassan Bin Jiddo—director of Al Jazeera’s office in Beirut--…was disgusted at the conduct of his colleagues. He submitted his resignation on Apr. 23, 2011, accusing Al Jazeera of conducting a massive campaign of falsification of the facts…Bin Jiddo’s complaints above all addressed the manner in which the reports coming out of Libya were distorted and manipulated…Following Bin Jiddo’s lead, other colleagues quit their jobs…The Western press failed to relay this story…

“…The story of the 10,000 protesters slaughtered by Qaddafi went mainstream globally. The impression for most people was that the story was true, despite the absence of video footage, photographs or other tangible proof.

“Despite the lack of convincing evidence…the European Union and the United States immediately…called for military intervention to halt the slaughter.

“They had not even a second’s worth of footage to back them up. The reports were pure propaganda…”

Yet on March 3, 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Democratic President Obama issued a statement which asserted that “Colonel Qaddafi needs to step down from power and leave.”

But even after the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration ended the “Operation Odyssey Dawn” phase of its 2011 war for regime change in Libya on March 31, 2011, the Libyan “rebels” that it was illegally supporting were still unable to overthrow the Libyan government that Qaddafi still led.So, not surprisingly, according to Paolo Sensini’s Sowing Chaos: Libya In The Wake of Humanitarian Intervention book, “American government officials told the Washington Post (March 30, 2011) on condition of anonymity that, `President Obama has issued a secret finding that would authorize the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and other support to Libyan opposition groups.'”

Yet the same book also observed that “a FOIA document reveals” then-U.S. Secretary of State and later 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary “Clinton was aware in March 2011 that, on a routine basis, the rebel militias in Libya summarily executed captured fighters as pro-government mercenaries,” in violation of international law.

Nelson Mandela and Libyan leader whose regime Democratic Party leaders helped overthrow 

(end of part 2)

Joan Coxsedge's `Some Facts About Libya'--Part 3

Pharma 150 chemical plant in Rabta, Libya

 In  Part 3 of her 2018 book, Some Facts About Libya: How the West destroyed this once prosperous nation, long-time Australian antiwar and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge--who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--recalls her 1989 visit to Libya in the following way:

Visiting Libya ten years later in 1989.

I returned to Libya in 1989 when it looked as if World War Three was about to break out. Washington had accused Libya of building a chemical weapons plant and was threatening to militarily destroy the country unless Qaddafi closed the plant down and allowed a US team to inspect the site. Based solely on US intelligence sources, Washington claimed with mounting hysteria that a satellite had pinpointed a construction site at Rabta, about 85 kilometers from Tripoli. We were assailed with a load of PR bull about Libya ‘threatening world peace’, which echoed around the world for most of January. Qaddafi continued to deny the charge.

Pressure from Washington was heating up and people became very nervous about the consequences for global stability. No one doubted the capacity of the US to carry out its threat. In 1986 US planes had bombed Tripoli and killed a number of people, including Qaddafi’s infant daughter. There was also deepening concern that President Reagan – already well away with Alzheimer’s disease – was about to vacate the White House with a literal bang. There was an added sense of urgency when two American F-14 Tomcat fighter pilots chanting ‘good kill, good kill’, shot down two Libyan MIG-23s over the Mediterranean, claiming self-defense. The Libyan pilots died.
  
Rather than waiting for something to happen, small groups from around the world traveled to Libya during that critical period to act as human shields to encourage some thoughtful talk. But once our media heard that a group of Australians were joining them they went feral, deciding for us in advance that our mission was solely concerned with passing judgement on Libya, to find it ‘guilty as charged’. We were also attacked for going to a country that was supposedly developing chemical and nuclear weapons, neglecting to mention that the nations they ardently supported – the US and Israel – had both in abundance.

We had many meetings with a variety of Libyans, the standout being our audience with their leader, Muammar Qaddafi. It took place in a large red, green and yellow Bedouin tent in the center of the Aziziya Barracks in Tripoli. Draped in a striking camel-colored mohair cloak, he talked of peace and that a genuine peace was not based on terrorism but based on love (tell that to the Yankees, I thought), and expressed surprise that the smear campaign against him had reached Australia. He believed that Australia should remain aloof from the imperialists – so did we – and expressed disappointment that bilateral agreements between us were sacrificed too readily considering that major programs of cooperation could be expanded.

In the General People’s Congress, we met Libya’s Deputy Prime Minister, Ibrahim Abukhazan, who also mentioned his desire to re-establish links with Australia. Libya had been forced into confrontation with the United States after its revolution, he said, and any genuine revolution would get the same reaction. Prior to 1969 all of Libya’s resources went to overseas capitalists, who used the country as a military base, with their political institutions getting their instructions from the British and American embassies. He believed Libya should be allowed to build new relationships, but the shock of its revolution was so profound that Western reaction remained one of undiluted hatred, despite its style of democracy being a consecration of what was aspired to in the West by Voltaire and the Rights of Man, but never realized because our governments got their orders from Washington.

We were eventually driven to Rabta, but only on the outskirts where a huge tent city had sprung up, not close enough to pass judgement on its function one way or another. We joined thousands of anxious people keeping vigil, singing and holding hands and praying for peace. The furor over Libya lasted for most of January, but collapsed with the end of Reagan’s presidency. A story buried on page 17 in the New York Times on 2 March 1990 – ignored by our own media – stated that White House officials had admitted that the Pharma 150 plant at Rabta was not going to manufacture chemical weapons after all, but was being ‘converted’ into a pharmaceutical plant. Which was precisely what the Libyans had been saying all along. 

Joan Coxsedge's `Some Facts About Libya'--Part 2

Jamahiriya Museum in Libya

In  Part 2 of her 2018 book, Some Facts About Libya: How the West destroyed this once prosperous nation, long-time Australian antiwar and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge--who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--recalls her 1979 visit to Libya in the following way:

Visiting Libya in 1979.

In 1979 I was invited to Libya to take part in a conference on Palestine with the moniker ‘The Conference of Tripoli on Imperialist, Zionist and Reactionary Scenes against the Arab Nation, the Danger of these Schemes to the Vital Interest of All Nations and to the Problems of Peace and Liberation all over the World’. Not the most popular subject in Australia, but of interest to me because I believed the Palestinians got a spectacularly rotten deal when the world salved its conscience by giving away their land after WW2. It took place six years after the Yom Kippur War, a year after the ‘Camp David Agreement’ and a year before the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed a new law proclaiming Jerusalem the ‘eternal capital of Israel’. 

The conference was well organised and extraordinarily interesting. Security was tight, for good reason. Palestinian leaders with a price on their heads using aliases flew in from around the world. Many of their colleagues had been assassinated by Israeli hit squads.

Apart from Muammar Qaddafi who opened the conference, I met George Habash, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Vanessa Redgrave, the tall, strikingly handsome British actress. And we all rose to our feet to give a standing ovation of welcome to a delegation from the newly elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua, their debut on the international stage.

At the start of proceedings we were each given a copy of Qaddafi’s The Green Book, Libya’s answer to Mao’s Little Red Book, except the Libyan version was much longer. In it Qaddafi called parliamentary democracy a sham where voters ‘stand in long queues to cast their votes in ballot boxes in the same way as they throw other papers into the dustbin’. Quite a few would agree with that. He preferred direct popular participation in people’s congresses – a notion not too far removed from the slogan of Russia’s 1917 October Revolution, which called for ‘all power to the Soviets’ (local committees) – even though that slogan later bit the dust. On the second day, I gave a paper titled ‘The Impact of US Imperialism on Australia’.

 Thanks to a hostile media, I doubt if many would associate Libya with art and architecture, despite it being an archaeologist’s heaven back then. In the centuries before Christ, when Greek supremacy went down the drain after the sacking of Carthage and Corinth, Rome ruled the region for more than eight centuries before it lost control to the Arabs in the seventh century AD. Despite another thirteen hundred turbulent years, many of the ancient monuments survived. Western Libya in particular was richly endowed as I discovered during my tour of Sabratha and Leptis Magna, birthplace of Emperor Septimus Severus. 

I walked down streets where ruts from ancient chariot wheels were still visible and past the remains of houses where people had lived and worked until the end of the 4th or 5th century. I fingered grooves on a stone counter made by ancient butchers and fishmongers when they sharpened their massive knives and roamed in and out of small shops and stalls that had once sold spices and wines and goods made from leather.

But the building that took the cake was the ‘Hunting Baths’ whose domes and vaults had been buried under sand for fifteen centuries. Inside, a series of warm and hot rooms were lined with hollow tiles where hot air from the furnaces passed through, and most astonishing of all was the discovery that the 2000-year-old bathhouse still worked!

During my drive to Sabratha I stopped at the Jamahiriya Museum to look at its collection of priceless mosaics and worry whether these magical places and ancient artefacts have managed to survive the savagery and barbarism of the 21st century.

Joan Coxsedge's `Some Facts About Libya'"--Part 1

Italian imperialist troops occupying Libya in 1911

In  Part 1 of her 2018 book, Some Facts About Libya: How the West destroyed this once prosperous nation, long-time Australian antiwar and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge--who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--summarizes some of the 20th-century history of Libya in the following way: 

History of Libya in the 20th century.

For most of their history the peoples of Libya have been subjected to varying degrees of foreign control from Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals and Byzantines, right up to their last 20th century oppressor, the Italians, who occupied the country in 1911.

Italy attacked Tripoli, claiming it was a war of liberation against Ottoman rule when it was really an attempt to re-establish a Roman Empire in Africa. Despite a major revolt by the Arabs, the Ottoman Sultan ceded Libya to the Italians, leaving Tripoli largely under Italian control.

In 1920 the Italian government recognized Sheikh Sidi Idris as the hereditary head of a nomadic tribe. Idris was then given the title of "Emir" by the British, eventually becoming King of the Free Libyan State.

But after dictator Benito Mussolini came to power, fighting intensified. His appointee, General Badoglio, waged a ferocious pacification war and in 1922 Idris fled to Egypt. His [General Badoglio's] successor, General Graziani, was even worse, being given carte blanche by Mussolini to crush Libyan resistance. Unencumbered by either Italian or international law, Graziani enclosed a large slab of the desert with barbed wire, incarcerating the entire population in a huge concentration camp. More than 300,000 perished in the most appalling conditions.

Allied forces kicked out the Italians in 1943 and in 1944 Idris returned from exile. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty, Italy relinquished all claims to Libya, and in November 1949 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that Libya should become an independent state with King Idris, a close ally of Britain, representing Libya in all subsequent UN negotiations. On 24 December 1951 Libya declared its independence and became a constitutional and hereditary monarchy under Idris, the first country to achieve independence through the United Nations. 

Oil was discovered in 1959 and Libya--one of the world's poorest--became extremely rich, except the wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few. In typical colonial fashion, Idris wasted no time in handing over Libya's natural resources to his new European masters.

Discontent grew throughout the Arab world, with increasing calls for a more unified Arab entity. In 1969, inspired by the example of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Colonel Qaddafi and a small group of army officers staged a coup d'etat and kicked out the ailing Idris, who returned to Egypt. The new regime, headed by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the new Libyan Arab Republic with the slogan "freedom, socialism and unity," with Qaddafi as its leader.

The new rulers pledged to remedy backwardness, take an active role in the Palestinian and Arab cause and encourage domestic policies based on social justice, non-exploitation and an equitable distribution of wealth. One of their first acts was to close down British and US military bases, nationalize the oil and provide free healthcare and free education for the Libyan people, giving them the highest standard of living in Africa.

In the 1970s Libya claimed leadership of Arab and African revolutionary forces and sought an active role in the international scene.

Australian Anti-War Activist Joan Coxsedge Condemns `Brutal Cowardly War' in Libya by `Washington and Its Cronies'

In an Oct. 30, 2011 letter from Australia, long-time Australian anti-war activist and writer Joan Coxsedge (who’s also a former elected anti-war member of the Victoria State parliament in Australia and a long-time Latin American solidarity activist) summarized the current world situation, from an anti-war and anti-imperialist left perspective, in the following way:

“I’d prefer to talk about cheerful happy things seeing as how we’re close to Christmas, but the world we live in is so out of whack, so full of hate, deception, war and injustice, we cannot turn our back on its descent into barbarism. I’m thinking of our young and the sort of world I want for them.

“Libya, like everywhere else, wasn’t perfect, and yet it was an example of an independent, prosperous and secular African country which used its great oil wealth for the benefit of the Libyan people, providing free education and health care and decent housing, and helping poor parts of Africa, but which has been completely destroyed in a brutal cowardly war called `humanitarian’ by Washington and its cronies.

“More than 26,000 ‘sorties’ dropped more than 30,000 bombs - an estimated two Libyans killed per bomb without a single NATO casualty. But a major problem looming for freedom-loving NATO and its quisling National Transitional Council (NTC) - now the ‘legitimate’ government of Libya - is that the CIA’s proxy ‘Rebel’ army is led by the violent Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a self-described affiliate of al-Qaida in North Africa. The ‘rebels’ expelled most of Libya’s African migrant population followed by a massacre and ethnic cleansing. Bodies of black men hang along the highways and bound and tortured black Africans are dumped by the roadside, all under the eye of the first Black President of the US of A. The lynchings have been so horrific that African leaders across the continent have been forced to loudly protest, which must have been heard in the White House, but Obama and his cohorts in the western capitals and television news channels prefer words like ‘pro-democracy’, ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘liberation’ to describe the orgy of looting and killing. Mob rule with Orwellian overtones where War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.

“Qaddafi’s final moments are part of the long trail of savagery. At the end of the battle for Sirte, NATO planes bombed his convoy, killing a large number of people. In Sirte’s Mahari Hotel, more than 50 bodies, some with hands bound, were executed at close range and others were taken from their hospital beds and murdered. Qaddafi survived but was tortured and sodomised by a frenzied mob – captured on phone camera - and allegedly shot by 22-year old Sanad al-Ureibi. Only a few days earlier, US Sec.of State Hillary Clinton, visiting Libya, had said: ‘we hope he can be captured or shot soon’ an incitement against US law and grounds for impeachment.

“I hope Mrs Clinton will be detained in some foreign country and handed a subpoena. According to CBS news, she had a laugh on learning about Qaddafi’s death: ‘we came, we saw, he died,’ she said. Ominous, but should we be surprised? As independent journalist Thomas Mountain writes about the Obama presidency: ’Isn’t this the guy who raised over $500 million to help him buy the White House, with $300 million of that from Wall Street...Isn’t this the guy who surrounded himself before his election with the very worst criminals from the Clinton White House?’

“Meanwhile, the race for juicy contracts has begun. As Qaddafi’s mutilated body lay in a meat store in Misrata, the UK’s Defence Secretary Philip Hammond told British companies to ‘pack their suitcases’ and head to Libya and an Israeli-American company has offered young Libyans jobs to train as police if they refuse to give up their guns.

“Next in line for a ‘democratic’ makeover, Syria and Iran. In Syria, heavily-armed gangs using legitimate demonstrations as cover have killed soldiers, police and civilians in the most brutal way, weapons shipped from Turkey and Lebanon paid for by US ‘fronts’ and others with old scores to settle like the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. If the Syrian government is brought down, there will be bloody turmoil and the status of women and minorities will go down the drain.

“US Attorney-General Holder has upped the ante against Iran by making wild and fabricated claims that it has employed a used-car salesman with a conviction for fraud to hire Mexican gangsters to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. A puerile story but an all too familiar one, using blatant lies to justify another murderous intervention.

“Americans need reminding that while Obama is stripping $320bn from their basic healthcare (50 million can’t afford health insurance and 46 million live below the poverty line), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost (so far) an obscene $1,268,965,662,411.

“Since we lurched into the 21st century, Washington has destroyed the US Constitution, the separation of powers, international law, the accountability of government and sacrificed every moral principle in its quest to rule the world. Former 4-star general and NATO commander Wesley Clark has described a neocon plan to invade 7 countries in 5 years. On cue, Obama announced he was sending troops to Uganda, South Sudan and the Congo, but only in ‘self-defence’.

“With Libya secured, the US invasion of the African continent is well under way. The target? China replacing al-Qaida as the official American ‘threat’. Whereas China brings Africa investment and infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases. And sooner or later, it’s naked aggression against China and Russia will blow up in our faces, specially here in Australia, where Pine Gap and other US bases play such an integral role in US war games.

“But Americans – like most Australians – have no idea why we’re at war in the Middle East; that our liberties are vanishing and that hard economic times are here to stay, a delusional world created for us by our global masters. While we drown in trivia and irrelevancy no longer permitted to know the truth, our monolithic media bombard us about weapons of mass destruction and demonize Washington’s handpicked enemies.

“But now we have a way to bypass the gatekeepers. All over the web dissident writers are offering alternative analyses of events and drawing attention to significant information ignored or sidelined by the mainstream. Final thought. Barnaby is the 2nd stupidest Joyce in Australia. Unions, fight back!”

Was Gaddafi Executed Without Trial After Being Captured Following NATO Air-Strike?

An initial October 20, 2011 Reuters article about the mysterious circumstances surrounding former Libyan government leader Gaddafi's recent death, stated the following:

"`He (Gaddafi) was also hit in his head,' NTC official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters. `There was a lot of firing against his group and he died.'

"Mlegta told Reuters earlier that Gaddafi, who was in his late 60s, was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked. He said he had been taken away by an ambulance.".

Kucinich Accuses NATO & Democratic Obama Administration of International Law Violations in Libya in Aug. 23, 2011 Statement

WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 23, 2011) – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who has led the fight in the House challenging the Obama Administration’s actions in Libya, today released the following statement:

“Libyan rebels have entered Tripoli. As gun battles break out across the city, it is timely to enter into a discussion as to how the rebels arrived there. It is time to review the curious role of NATO and the future of U.S. interventionism.

"A negotiated settlement in Libya was deliberately avoided for months while NATO, in violation of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions 1970 and 1973, illegally pursued regime change. NATO chose sides, intervened in a civil war and morphed into the air force for the rebels, who could not have succeeded but for NATO’s attacks.

"NATO acted with impunity. The NATO command recklessly bombed civilians in the name of saving civilians. Usurping the United Nation's traditional role, NATO looked the other way as the arms embargo was openly violated by U.N. member nations.

"NATO's top commanders may have acted under color of international law but they are not exempt from international law. If members of the Gaddafi Regime are to be held accountable, NATO's top commanders must also be held accountable through the International Criminal Court for all civilian deaths resulting from bombing. Otherwise we will have witnessed the triumph of a new international gangsterism.

"The reasons for the U.S./NATO intervention in Libya keep changing. First it was about the potential for a massacre in Benghazi. When the massacre did not materialize and once the war against Libya was underway, the reasons for intervention changed.

"We were reminded Libya had spent 'forty years under a tyrant.' We were urged to remember the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, which occurred 23 years ago this December 21st. Yet almost 20 years later, on November 18, 2008 the Associated Press reported that President George Bush called Colonel Gaddafi personally "to voice his satisfaction that Libya has settled a long-standing dispute over terrorist attacks, including the bombing of a Pan Am jet over Scotland."

"On December 19, 2003 Libya voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapon-making capability and on January 6, 2004 ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Its relationship with the U.S. on the mend, Libya then opened up to international investment and began the wholesale privatization of its industries, leading to massive unemployment and dissatisfaction with the state of things, particularly among younger Libyans.

"I mention this not to sympathize with Colonel Gaddafi’s brutality or to minimize the great tragedy of Flight 103. But if the U.S. had come to terms with Gaddafi’s past violence, why does the Obama Administration invoke it as justification for an attack on Libya? One conclusion could be that the reasons for the March 2011 attack were bogus.

"Once into the war, the Administration promptly passed off nominal responsibility for the war to NATO, after beginning the war without congressional authorization. NATO became the beneficiary of U.S. funds, U.S. war planes, U.S. drones, U.S. bombs, and U.S. intelligence assets.

"NATO violated UNSC resolutions. The Obama Administration violated the U.S. Constitution by bypassing Congress on the war. These are not mere academic matters. They have moved the world community from the rule of law to the rule of force and have set a precedent for NATO to become the new global-cop. Far from bringing a new level of security to the world scene, NATO has brought a new level of insecurity and unaccountability.

"The question of the reason for United States’ involvement in Libya remains.

"Was the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency involved in planning for regime change prior to events in February and March in Benghazi? Did the CIA and its assets have a role in fomenting a civil war?

"Was the United States, through participation in the overthrow of the regime, furthering the aims of international oil corporations in pursuit of control over one of the world's largest oil resources?

"Did the United States at the inception of the war against Libya align itself with elements of Al Qaeda, while elsewhere continuing to use the threat of Al Qaeda as a reason for U.S. military intervention, presence and occupation?

"The foreign policy objectives of the Obama Administration are cloudy. Pledges to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are in doubt. The Iraq War is supposed to be over at the end of this year, yet that promise appears to be fading. The U.S. presence in Afghanistan appears to be open-ended. The latest reports describe a U.S. commitment in Afghanistan through 2024. This raises the question as to whether the Administration has full control over the military and intelligence apparatus.

"In the case of Libya, now that NATO, with the help of the U.S., has brought the rebels into the streets of Tripoli to fight, what follows? What’s the plan? Who governs and for whose sake? Will Libya become NATO's protectorate?

"It is not only the Gaddafi compound in Tripoli that will be left in ruins by NATO’s actions; it will also be the Obama Administration’s relationship with the African Union (AU). The AU and its member nations have been repeatedly rebuffed by the U.S. in its efforts to bring about a peaceful, negotiated settlement for the regime’s transition out of power. While the U.S., through NATO, has been bombing Libya, China has spent time building commercial opportunities across the African continent.

"As the Administration indulges itself with wars in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan - spending hundreds of billions of dollars on military adventurism - the United States has massive economic problems at home. Resources which should be spent creating jobs in America are going to perpetuate war abroad. Resources which should be used to build bridges in America continue to be used to bomb bridges elsewhere.

"Millions of Americans are begging for a chance to earn their daily bread while the government spends its money on daily bombing. While the government has yet to produce a viable jobs program to put millions of unemployed back to work, the waste of resources on war is guaranteed to continue: The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are NOT to subject to spending caps in the budget. The American people get myths, rhetoric and unemployment while war profiteers get the gold. Can you imagine what the people of Libya will get?”

August 22, 2011 Update From Tripoli:

August 21, 2011 Press Conference In Tripoli On Results of NATO Bombing Campaign

Another RT News Aug. 21, 2011 Report on NATO Attack on Tripoli

RT News' Aug. 21, 2011 Update On NATO Bombing of Tripoli

San Francisco Anti-War Activists Protest Against Endless U.S. Military Intervention In Libya

Libyan People Protest Against Endless US/UK/French/NATO Bombing of Tripoli

Cynthia McKinney Interviewed By RTNews In Libya

Minister Farrakhan Opposed U.S. Military Attack On Libya

Anti-War Writer Diane Johnstone Opposes US/UK/French Governments' Military Attack On Libya

George Galloway Opposes US/UK/French Government Military Attack On Libya

Libya's Pre-1996 History Revisited: Part 12

A Wall Street Journal editorial recently proposed that the Democratic Obama-Clinton Administration consider the option of some kind of “humanitarian military intervention” in Libya in 2011 in response to the recent deadly attacks on demonstrators inside Libya by the current Libyan regime’s security forces. Yet most people in the United States know very little about the hidden history of Libya. Guy Arnold’s 1996 book, The Maverick State: Gaddafi and the New World Order, for example, observed:

“…The United States gave notice on 26 March [1986] that it planned to conduct exercises from 23 March to 1 April in an area of the Mediterranean which included the Gulf of Sidra…Americans fired a number of missiles at Libyan radar installations on land on the grounds that they were a threat to US planes while US planes and ships attacked Libyan missile-armed ships `that were deemed to threaten the U.S. fleet’ and two of the Libyan ships were sunk. On 27 March the Pentagon announced that the exercise was to be concluded. The US ships remained in the central Mediterranean…

“…On 14-15 April [1986], US military planes from bases in Britain and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in a raid that was in retaliation for Libya’s alleged responsibility for terrorist activities in Europe. Casualties amounted to 130 including Gaddafi’s adopted daughter…

“…The United States claimed that the bombing had been precise, on military targets; in fact it was imprecise and killed civilians…

“…The story of the US raid on Libya, both before when it had to be justified and afterwards when it had to be explained, is a sorry tale of lies, half-truths, misinformation and dishonesty in pursuit of a vendetta more suitable to a Sicilian bandit than an American President…”

Libya's Pre-1996 History Revisited: Part 11

A Wall Street Journal editorial recently proposed that the Democratic Obama-Clinton Administration consider the option of some kind of “humanitarian military intervention” in Libya in 2011 in response to the recent deadly attacks on demonstrators inside Libya by the current Libyan regime’s security forces. Yet most people in the United States know very little about the hidden history of Libya. Guy Arnold’s 1996 book, The Maverick State: Gaddafi and the New World Order, for example, observed:

“Military confrontation between the United States and Libya was to occur in August 1981 when US Navy planes operating from carriers of the US Sixth Fleet on naval exercises in the Mediterranean flew deliberately close to the Libyan coast and then shot down two Libyan jets which had challenged the US presence in the Gulf of Sidra. The air fight took place about 60 miles off the coast of Libya but whereas Libya claims the normal twelve-mile coastal limit it makes an exception of the Gulf of Sidra where it has drawn a baseline across the mouth of the Gulf of Sidra and extended its limit twelve miles to the north of this…

“…In March 1982…President Reagan decided to ban the import of Libyan oil and prevent certain listed items from being exported to Libya…

“Perhaps, above all, it was the extension of Libyan activities into Latin America, even more than Gaddafi’s hard line on the United States’ ally Israel, which infuriated Washington. He focused his support upon Nicaragua and El Salvador although also making arms, funds and training available to leftist groups throughout the region. In 1981, according to the State Department, Gaddafi provided $100 m to Nicaragua; from May 1982 several deliveries of Libyan arms were made to the Sandinistas and the Salvadoran guerrillas…As Gaddafi said in his speech of 1 September 1983 (the fourteenth anniversary of his coup), `When we ally ourselves with revolution in Latin America, and particularly Central America, we are defending ourselves…’…

“…Between 1975 and 1983 Libyan forces were expanded from 22,000 in the former year to 85,000 in the latter…By 1983, of $28bn worth of arms purchases about $20bn had come from the USSR or East Europe…

“…During the year [1985]…the Nation of Islam, headed by Louis Farrakhan…received a $5m loan from Gaddafi for use in providing economic assistance to American blacks…

“…The President [Reagan]…went on to impose sanctions on virtually all economic activities between the United States and Libya, the measures to take effect no later than 1 February [1986]…A second executive order blocked Libyan government property in the United States. The sum total of the US measures amounted to some of the most comprehensive sanctions ever mounted by the Washington administration…

“…In March 1986…reports suggested that Gaddafi had secretly given $400m to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua…”