The Libya thread

[chump]

I haven't seen this here yet, and it deserves a mention. Here are a couple of snips:

Cynthia McKinney on Obama and Libya
http://mathaba.net/news/?x=626287

In 2005 in the basement of the United States Capitol at a meeting convened by Congressman John Conyers on the subject of the "Downing Street Memo," Ray McGovern uttered the following truth: he testified that "the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel, and military bases craved by administration neocons" so that "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." McGovern went on to testify truthfully that "Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation. The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

The routine condemnations of McGovern could be heard from all of the sources inside the U.S. political structure that has at its base finance from pro-Israel sources; that included from Dr. Howard Dean who was Chair of the Democratic National Committee at the time. This finance nexus has been thoroughly identified by Dr. James Petras, for those who want to do further reading.

Condemnations, however, do not disprove McGovern's statement, but point, instead, to the political untouchability of the topic. However, if one wants to truly understand the formulation of U.S. foreign and military policies, one must carefully consider McGovern's testimony...



... Today, the Obama Administration is responsible for its own war crimes, torture, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace and defends in U.S. Courts those from the Bush Administration who bear responsibility for having approved or justified them in the past. Yet, this Administration will not even agree to investigate the violation of Mumia Abu Jamal's civil rights in his first trial rife with racial innuendo, judicial misconduct, and a lack of evidence. Or in the case of Troy Davis where seven of nine witnesses recanted their testimonies and cited prosecutorial misconduct. But it did go to court to defend military commissions and insulted Native Americans in the process!

In addition, what the United States is responsible for in Afghanistan and Pakistan just since President Obama came to office is unthinkable and is despicable. And U.S. taxpayers continue to foot the financial and moral bill for the continued subjugation of Palestine, especially the people of Gaza who are still being bombarded by Israeli warplanes, all made possible by every one of us that pays taxes. And let us not forget this Administration's efforts to quash the Goldstone Report (the United Nations Report on Israel's Operation Cast Lead against Gaza) and criticism of Israel after nine Turkish citizens attempting to take humanitarian supplies to Gaza were brazenly murdered by Israeli forces attacking the humanitarian aid ship, Mavi Marmara.

But, amazingly, when the Obama Administration puts the U.S. war machine in action in a new front in Africa and characterizes it as a "humanitarian intervention," the peace community seemingly accepts the obfuscation and forgets the facts.

But the peace community knows full well that the Obama Administration is continuing the longterm U.S. policies of dismemberment, Balkanization, carefully crafted chaos, and death and destruction to achieve its unstated objectives. Every possibility of dissent is being obliterated--for a reason. The FBI raids in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and elsewhere targeting activists who support peace and the human rights of Palestinians is no accident. Politically-motivated prosecutions of politically active Palestinians came first, from Sami Al-Arian and his brother-in-law to the Holy Land Five. These raids, combined with the Administration's unstated military objectives, undergird the economic transformation to which this Administration is fully committed. That is why the average taxpayer pays more taxes than General Electric or Bank of America, but shouldn't expect any kind of bailout from this Administration.

Now, let's explore Libya with respect to McGovern's remark. Oil: well Libya's got lots of it: the most on the African Continent. Israel: Preparing Israel to make "a clean break" from the past and establish a new relationship with the U.S. based on "maturity," by "securing the realm" as written by the Project for a New American Century Study Group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000" with Richard Perle as its leader. This should be seen as the operative strategy defining events in the region: "Israel--proud, wealthy, solid, and strong" can "shape its strategic environment." France can be seen as an additional proxy for Israel in this action; France which announced that it was taking the lead in the anti-Qaddafi operation, is led by Nicholas Sarkozy whom the French media, Le Figaro newspaper, identified after his election as a Mossad asset. 99% of the population of Libya is Muslim. As long as Muslims are fighting each other they won't have time to focus on Israel or Palestine; And as for logistics, AFRICOM, the United States military's Africa Command, was not created for nothing: it was created to deepen the U.S. military presence and control over a Continent rich in land, water, strategic minerals, former preserve of U.S. allies and now facing aggressive penetration by China. Situated on the Mediterranean littoral, with oil money, and a revolutionary leader, I need not say much more about Libya and logistics useful for neocon objectives.

The reason Muammar Qaddafi is a target is because he has been a thorn in the side of anti-revolutionary forces since he took power in Libya, overthrowing the King and nationalizing the oil industry so that the people could benefit from their oil resources.

Libya's Revolution brought free health care and education to the people and subsidized housing. In fact, students in Libya can study there or abroad and the government gives them a monthly stipend while they are in school and they pay no tuition. If a Libyan needs a surgery that must be done overseas, then the government will pay for that surgery. That is more than the soldiers of the United States military can say. While Libyans enjoy subsidized housing, members of the U.S. military risk foreclosure while they serve their country abroad. Money from oil is directly deposited into the accounts of every Libyan based on oil income. As one Libyan told me recently, the idea is that if people have what they need, then they don't have to deny rights to or harm others and the Revolution believes that it is the responsibility of the government to provide the basic needs of its citizens.

Now, as for democracy, a country that has never practiced it is a poor trumpet for it. From genocide of indigenous Americans to enslavement of stolen Africans to disfranchisement of women, ours has been a less than perfect union. Now, it has turned the administration of its elections over to private voting machine companies and the finance of those elections to individuals and organizations that can mobilize vast sums of money; thus the United States is not in the best best position to dictate the terms of another country's democracy. But, Libyans govern themselves by The Green Book, a form of direct democracy based on the African Constitution concept that the people are the first and final source of all power. Clearly, the U.S. move is counter-Revolution...

[seemslikeadream]

Libya: dilemma over defector's 'electrifying' Lockerbie information
David Cameron was under pressure last night to ensure that the Libyan defector who arrived in Britain earlier this week co-operates with authorities investigating the Lockerbie bombing, the murder of Pc Yvonne Fletcher and potential war crimes.

By Robert Winnett, Andrew Porter and Damien McElroy in Tripoli 10:00PM BST 31 Mar 2011

Moussa Koussa, the Libyan foreign minister, who fled to Britain on Wednesday, is described as having "electrifying" information on Col Muammar Gaddafi's role in terrorist atrocities across Europe.
Yesterday the Prime Minister said he would not block any attempts by the police to question Mr Koussa.
Mr Cameron stressed that Mr Koussa had not been offered a deal in return for fleeing to Britain and had not been granted immunity from prosecution. But if the defector is arrested and charged with crimes, it may undermine attempts by Western governments to encourage others in Col Gaddafi's inner circle to flee from Libya, a key aim of current diplomatic efforts.
Mr Koussa may also be reluctant to co-operate fully with British officials if he is not given guarantees about his future.
Last night, the Scottish prosecuting authorities investigating the Lockerbie bombing formally requested access to Mr Koussa, a right-hand man to Col Gaddafi for more than 30 years.

[MinM]

Just one of those moments that cause me to exclaim: hmmm.

Voice recording included at the linked website.

http://www.parapolitical.com/
Mystery Wells Fargo Bank Flight to Libya

A Wells Fargo Bank corporate flight landed at Mitiga Airport, outside Tripoli, hours before the controversial United Nations No-Fly Zone was established on Thursday, according to a 3-minute audio recording of radio traffic between the aircraft - identified by tail number N799WW - and the Maltese Civil Aviation Directorate. The exchange was captured by Dutch-based radio scanner FMCNL. The Wells Fargo plane - a Bombardier BD-700 - spent several hours on the ground before departing Mitiga approximately 20 minutes before Resolution 1973 was enacted by the Security Council, after which Libyan airspace was closed.

According to SourceWatch, Wells Fargo is the trustee for at least one corporate aircraft alleged to have been used by the CIA in recent years. (The Federal Aviation Administration allows individuals and organizations to transfer the legal title of an aircraft to a trustee. The organization operates the aircraft but the trustee serves as legal registrant for recording purposes.)

Wells Fargo has a spiderweb of ties to both Libya and the energy sector. The bank’s Oil, Gas and Mineral Management division is one of the United States’ largest energy-sector asset management operations. As well, former CFO Howard Atkins serves on the Board of Directors of Occidental Petroleum, one of the eight largest oil companies active in Libya. The bank also served as distribution agent for the defunct Pan Am, responsible for settling outstanding debts from creditors. (Pan Am’s insurers continued seeking several billion dollars in compensation from Libya over that country’s role in the 1988 bombing of flight 103, finally agreeing to an undisclosed settlement in 2005, full details of which have never been made public.)

March 31, 2011
How do Gadhafi’s Bankers Avoid U.S. Sanctions?

WASHINGTON, March 31 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today questioned why the Federal Reserve provided more than $26 billion in credit to an Arab intermediary for the Central Bank of Libya.
The total includes at least $3.2 billion in loans that the Fed was forced to make public today in addition to earlier revelations under a Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law.
Sanders also asked why the Libyan-owned bank and two of its branches in New York, N.Y., were exempted from sanctions that the United States this month slapped on other Libyan businesses to pressure Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s government.
“It is incomprehensible to me that while creditworthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya,” Sanders said.
In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and others, Sanders asked why the central bank made at least 46 emergency, low-interest loans to the Arab Banking Corp., in which the Central Bank of Libya owns a 59 percent stake.
In the same letter, Sanders asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner why the Treasury Department on March 4 let the Libya-controlled bank skirt the economic sanctions against Libya.
The senator also questioned why the Bahrain-based Arab Banking Corp. is even allowed to operate branches inside United States. “Why would the U.S. government allow a bank that is predominantly owned by the Central Bank of Libya – an institution on which the U.S. has imposed strict economic sanctions –to operate two banking branches within our own borders?” Sanders asked.
The Fed transactions were made public earlier this year as a result of a Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law that forced the U.S. central bank to reveal which financial institutions it bailed out during the financial crisis from 2007 to 2010.
In another dubious twist, the Fed loans, at interest rates as low as 0.25 percent, relied on U.S. Treasury securities as collateral. In other words, at the same time that the Arab Banking Corp. was borrowing money at almost zero interest from one arm of the government, the Fed, it was lending money at a higher interest rate to another arm of the U.S. government, the Treasury Department.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/ ... ADA784C3F9

[justdrew]

U.S. Fed loaned Libya-backed bank billions
By Agence France-Presse | Friday, April 1st, 2011 -- 9:07 am

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve lent a Libyan state-backed bank billions of dollars during the financial crisis, documents made public on Thursday have revealed.

The Arab Bank Corporation, which is today 59.3 percent owned by the Libyan government, borrowed in slices as big as $1.175 billion from the US central bank.

At the time the bank was not majority owned by the Tripoli government; other shareholders included the Kuwait Investment Authority and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

The Bahrain-headquartered firm appears frequently in the Fed's records of its emergency short-term lending facilities between March 2009 and March 2010.

Since then the United States has slapped sanctions on the Libyan regime and sought to isolate Moamer Kadhafi and his top lieutenants.

The Arab Bank Corporation, which is chaired by the head of Libya's state investment fund, however is not subject to Libyan sanctions.

But some US lawmakers were incredulous about the Fed lending to the Libyan-government backed banks.

Democrat-allied Senator Bernie Sanders said the Fed made "46 emergency, low-interest loans" to the bank, providing a total of $26 billion in credit, though not at one time.

"It is incomprehensible to me that while creditworthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya."

The Fed records show huge numbers of short-term liquidity loans made to American banks and the US units of banks from all over the world at the peak of the financial crisis, many for far larger sums.

A New York unit of the French-Belgian bank Dexia, which had huge potential liabilities in guarantees on municipal bonds, garnered loans for as much as $33.5 billion.

[ninakat]

Libya, imperialism and the prostration of the “left” intellectuals:
The case of Professor Juan Cole
David North, World Socialist Web Site
1 April 2011

Among the most striking features of the US-NATO onslaught against Libya has been the widespread support that this “war of choice” has evoked among left-liberal parties and the affluent middle-class milieu that comprise an important part of their constituency. Waving the banner of “human rights”—the most hypocritical and deceitful of all justifications for imperialist war—the liberal left embraced this war as their own. One would imagine that this was the first time in history that imperialism had proclaimed the cause of “human rights” and democracy as a cloak for its predatory interests!

The left-liberal justifications for the US-NATO bombing of Libya are thick with moral outrage against Colonel Gaddafi, but provide virtually nothing in the way of analysis of the motives and interests of the forces, within Libya and internationally, that are seeking his overthrow. The apologists argue and write as if they were members of a society of amnesiacs. There is no history. Nothing that occurred in the past is remembered. The morally-debased and genocidal record of imperialist colonialism is ignored. There is no reference in these writings to Italian colonialism’s extermination of nearly one half of the Libyan population during its occupation between 1911 and 1940. Nor do they note that the last major joint Anglo-French military action in North Africa, in October-November 1956, was the invasion of Egypt. That action, carried out in collusion with Israel, sought to overthrow the nationalist regime of another Arab colonel, Gamal Abdul Nasser, and reclaim control of the nationalized Suez Canal. Nasser was widely denounced in the British press as a “mad dog” and Prime Minister Anthony Eden plotted his assassination. The Anglo-French invasion failed because the United States, which had its own plans for the region, would not tolerate the attempt by the European imperialists to restore their colonial empires. President Eisenhower compelled the French, British and Israelis to beat a humiliating retreat.

Those who are hailing the attack on Libya as a triumph for the cause of human rights seem to have no recollection at all of the monstrous role played by the United States in attacking and subverting countries that interfered, in one way or another, with its strategic political and economic interests. It is not only the past that is forgotten (Vietnam, the savage war of the “Contras” in Nicaragua, the fomenting of civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, the overthrow and murder of Lumumba in the Congo, the longstanding support for the Apartheid regime in South Africa, the invasion of Iraq); the present is all but ignored. The pro-war “left” assigns to the United States the task of removing Gaddafi for firing on his people, even as Predator drones rain missiles down upon Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing people every day.

A significant example of the response of left-liberal intellectuals to the war is the statement posted March 27 by University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole on his widely-followed “Informed Comment” blog (http://www.juancole.com) and subsequently reproduced in the Nation. Entitled “An Open Letter to the Left,” Professor Cole, a well-known historian of the Middle East, vociferously defends his support for the attack on Libya.

“I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time,” he writes sarcastically. The problem with the Left, Cole argues, is that it does not know how to adapt its traditional anti-war principles to existing circumstances. He argues that the Left should determine its attitude to wars launched by the United States on “a case-by-case basis. …” It “should avoid making ‘foreign intervention’ an absolute taboo the way the Right makes abortion an absolute taboo if doing so makes us heartless (inflexible a priori positions often lead to heartlessness.)” In other words, Cole advocates a pragmatic accommodation with imperialism. “To make ‘anti-imperialism’ trump all other values in a mindless way,” he writes, “leads to frankly absurd positions.”

A significant degree of intellectual confusion, if not dishonesty, is revealed in this remark. “Anti-imperialism” is not a “value”—which must be juggled pragmatically with other values—but a political position that is theoretically grounded in an analysis of the objective economic, social and political structure of global capitalism. Cole seeks to evade such an analysis, which would reveal the essential interests of the capitalist ruling elite that underlie the attack on Libya.

Thus, Cole’s case for war consists entirely of a denunciation of the existing Libyan regime, with his main focus on its crimes, actual and anticipated. “I am unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on and glad that the UNSC [United Nations Security Council]-authorized intervention has saved them from being crushed.” He asserts that without intervention, “Gaddafi would have reestablished himself, with the liberation movement squashed like a bug and the country put back under secret police rule.”

Professor Cole provides no serious analysis of the composition of the “liberation movement,” and derides any reference to Al Qaeda involvement in the protests as “without foundation.” No one familiar with the recent history of Libya, let alone the ongoing conflicts within North Africa and the Middle East, would accept Professor Cole’s judgment on this matter. The activities of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Algeria and Libya play a significant role in the politics of the region. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), considered a branch of Al Qaeda, mounted a major challenge to the Gaddafi regime in the 1990s. The destabilizing impact of that challenge was a major factor in the decision of the Gaddafi regime to abandon its traditional anti-imperialist rhetoric and seek an accommodation with Europe and the United States. As recently as 2007, the Libyan government, according to reports, was bracing for terrorist attacks.

The issue of Al Qaeda’s involvement in the Libyan opposition is, within the context of the US-led “war against terror,” a significant issue—particularly in judging the reasons underlying the US-NATO intervention. It is well known that forces active in the LIFG struggle against Gaddafi in the 1990s who managed to escape Libya after the rebellion’s suppression “began to cooperate more closely with transnational networks outside Libya. Thus all the al-Qaeda field commanders in Afghanistan whose names are currently known are Libyans. Meanwhile, even in Libya itself a substantial recruitment potential for militant Islamists seems to exist.” [“Between the ‘Near’ and the ‘Far’ Enemy: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” by Guido Steinberg and Isabelle Werenfels, Mediterranean Politics, 12: 3, 407-413]

According to this same study, European security agencies “consider al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb the most serious terrorist threat to Western European countries, especially France and Spain where the organization commands a substantial logistical superstructure.” [Ibid] Why, then, are the US and NATO collaborating with these forces?

Professor Cole is certainly aware of these facts, but prefers to ignore them. However, the de facto alliance between the US and Al Qaeda in the struggle against Gaddafi not only exposes the mendacity of the global “War on Terror.” It also demands a deeper examination of the reasons for the assault on Libya.

Professor Cole is quick to dismiss suggestions that the US-NATO intervention may be inspired by anything less than the purest humanitarian motives. He is especially impatient with the idea that the US and NATO are conspiring to overthrow Gaddafi “not to protect his people from him but to open the way for US, British and French dominance of Libya. This argument is bizarre.”

Cole insists that oil plays no role whatever in American and European calculations. That is not all. The professor declares: “There is no prospect of Western companies being allowed to own Libyan petroleum fields, which were nationalized long ago.” One wonders from whom Professor Cole has received his assurances.

Professor Cole continues: “Finally, it is not always in the interests of Big Oil to have more petroleum on the market, since that reduces the price and, potentially, company profits. A war on Libya to get more and better contracts so as to lower the world price of petroleum makes no sense in a world where the bids were already freely let, and where high prices were producing record profits. I haven’t seen the war-for-oil argument made for Libya in a manner that makes any sense at all.”

Professor Cole is not only arguing, we presume, against “vulgar Marxist” critics who insist that there is a connection between imperialist militarism and the economic interests of the transnational corporations. He is also arguing, as a review of his own past writings reveal, against himself.

In an “Informed Comment” blog post dated on August 6, 2006, when he was opposing the “wholesale destruction of all of Lebanon by Israel and the US Pentagon,” Professor Cole presented a very cogent and, as events have shown, prescient analysis of the relationship between Middle Eastern oil and the military operations of the United States. He explained the events in Lebanon as part of a broader, long-term strategy of the United States to acquire control of the major sources of oil and natural gas. The United States, Cole explained, was determined to achieve this objective not only because it needed the oil and natural gas. The United States wanted to restrict the access of potential competitors, such as China and India, to these resources.

Cole precisely answered the claim that the normal operations of the market reduce the need for physical control of oil resources. “I should note that the ‘fungibility’ (easy exchange) of oil is less important in the new environment than it used to be. US petroleum companies would like to go back to actually owning fields in the Middle East, since there are big profits to be made if you get to decide when you take it out of the ground. … In our new environment, oil is becoming a commodity over which it does make sense to fight for control.” [Emphasis added]

Professor Cole warned that the struggle to obtain control over oil resources was a major factor in the American preparations for war against Iran. “In a worst case scenario,” he warned, “Washington would like to retain the option of military action against Iran, so as to gain access to its resources and deny them to its rivals.”

Linking US-backed Israeli operations in Lebanon to broader geostrategic conceptions, Cole offered this perceptive summary of America’s long-term plans:

“It may be that hawks are thinking this way: Destroy Lebanon and destroy Hizbullah, and you reduce Iran’s strategic depth. Destroy the Iranian nuclear program and you leave it helpless and vulnerable to having done to it what the Israelis did to Lebanon. You leave it vulnerable to regime change, and a dragooning of Iran back into the US sphere of influence, denying it to China and assuring its 500 tcf of natural gas to US corporations. You also politically reorient the entire Gulf, with both Saddam and Khamenei gone, toward the United States. Voila, you avoid peak oil problems in the US until a technological fix can be found, and you avoid a situation where China and India have special access to Iran and the Gulf.

“The second American Century ensues. The ‘New Middle East’ means the ‘American Middle East.’

“And it all starts with the destruction of Lebanon.

“More wars to come, in this scenario, since hitting Lebanon was like hitting a politician’s bodyguard. You don’t kill a bodyguard just to kill the bodyguard. It is phase I of a bigger operation.”

Without explaining why, Professor Cole, it appears, has rejected his own analysis. But even though Professor Cole has changed his mind, his writings in 2006 are an effective refutation of his present pro-war position.

If Cole were proceeding as a historian, he would call to his readers’ attention that the enmity between Libya and the United States dates from Gaddafi’s decision—shortly after leading the September 1969 coup that overthrew the US-backed regime of King Idris—to substantially increase the price of oil. Until Gaddafi’s radical nationalist regime came to power, OPEC pricing was effectively controlled by the United States through the medium of its Saudi Arabian puppets. The action taken by Gaddafi’s new regime signified that the price of oil had passed out of American control and would be influenced by the political calculations of radical nationalists.

Among the first to recognize the danger posed by this new relation of forces was the CIA’s Dr. Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor (and later secretary of state) in the Nixon administration. As Kissinger recalled in his memoirs, Gaddafi was “an avowed radical” who “set out to extirpate Western influence. He did not care if in the process he weakened the global economy.” [Years of Upheaval (Boston: 1982), p. 859] Kissinger moved into action at once. “In a meeting of November 24, 1969,” he recalled, “I raised the question whether to have the 40 Committee canvass the possibility of covert action.” [Ibid, pp. 859-86] To Kissinger’s chagrin, he was unable to obtain approval at that time. A decade later, however, the Reagan administration, using a terrorist incident in Berlin as a pretext, ordered an air assault on Tripoli in which Gaddafi himself was targeted.

Cole passes over the history of the last 40 years in silence. He says nothing of the crucial role that Libyan oil plays in the strategic calculations of Europe and the United States, although this has been the subject of extensive analysis in scholarly journals devoted to contemporary geo-politics. He neither mentions, nor explains why, “mad dog” Gaddafi was feted by the European Union in Brussels in 2004, Paris in 2007 and Rome in 2009. Or, for that matter, why Gaddafi’s son Seif el Islam was welcomed by Hillary Clinton to the State Department in 2009.

One explanation has been given by Professor Derek Lutterbeck and Professor Georgij Engelbrecht, experts on the geo-politics of North Africa. Writing in November 2009, they noted that Libya “now finds itself at the intersection between Western and Russian energy interests…” In an analysis that substantiates the arguments advanced by Cole in 2006, they call attention to Western concerns about Libya’s intentions in relation to efforts by Russia to secure access to its vast oil and natural gas reserves. [“The West and Russia in the Mediterranean: Towards a Renewed Rivalry,” Mediterranean Politics, 14: 3, 385-406]

States have long memories and operate with extended time lines. For the United States and Europe, the disturbances in Libya that broke out in February provided an opportunity to rid themselves of a political and economic irritant that had undermined their control of the global oil market over the last 40 years. Under the cover of popular movements for democracy and social transformation in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia, the United States and Europe moved to overthrow Gaddafi. Despite the fact that Gaddafi had desperately curried favor with the imperialist powers for the past decade, and entered into close economic and security relations, Washington, London and Paris decided that they would replace him with a full-fledged puppet colonial-style regime in Tripoli, and turn the clock 42 years. Thus, whatever the aims of the initial waves of popular protest in Benghazi, the movement was quickly taken under the wing of the imperialist powers. Its agents sought to encourage military-style confrontations with the regime that would provide a “human rights” pretext for the US-NATO intervention. This is a scenario that has been used by imperialism to great effect many times in the past.

Forgetting history, repudiating what he wrote yesterday and ignoring contemporary geo-strategic and class issues, Professor Cole’s writing gives the impression of a man who has completely lost his bearings. In a subsequent blog, posted on March 30, he writes: “If NATO needs me, I’m there.”

It is a shame that Professor Cole, a distinguished scholar, cannot think of a more worthy cause to which to devote his life.

David North

[Jeff]

Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal

By Pepe Escobar
Apr 2, 2011

You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes" vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."

...

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.

Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.

...

A curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the "rebels". There have been no surgical air strikes for quite a while.

The objective is possibly to extract political and economic concessions from the defector and Libyan exile-infested Interim National Council (INC) - a dodgy cast of characters including former Justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, US-educated former secretary of planning Mahmoud Jibril, and former Virginia resident, new "military commander" and CIA asset Khalifa Hifter. The laudable, indigenous February 17 Youth movement - which was in the forefront of the Benghazi uprising - has been completely sidelined.

This is NATO's first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO's first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN's weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its "strategic concept" approved at the Lisbon summit last November....

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html

[23]

Remaining parts of his speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... f8xPy6-C18

[seemslikeadream]

Libya & ‘The War You Don’t See’, wake up Cole

[Stephen Morgan]

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2011/ ... ibyas.html

2011
'Koussa told me Lockerbie wasn't Libya's fault' – Dalyell
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]

Former MP and veteran campaigner Tam Dalyell says the high-level Libyan defector who arrived in the UK this week told him the Gaddafi regime had not been responsible for the Lockerbie bomb and pointed the finger at Palestinian terrorists.

Mr Dalyell also claimed that Scottish authorities could not be trusted to question former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa, who has been a key figure in the Gaddafi regime for most of its 42 years. (...)

He is being kept in a safe house and has been questioned by MI6 officers and diplomats, but the Crown Office in Scotland is still pressing its claim to interview him about Lockerbie.

Mr Dalyell, who has long campaigned to find the truth behind the murder of 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie on 21 December, 1988, held a one-and-a-half-hour meeting Mr Koussa at an Inter Parliamentary Union conference in Syria in March 2001.

The former MP said: "He asked to see me and we met along with John Cummings, who was then the MP for Easington. He wanted to discuss how to bring Libya back into the international community.

Obviously, Lockerbie played a large part in our discussions, but when I asked him about it, he said ‘that was none of my doing'."

Mr Dalyell maintains the real perpetrator of the crime was the Iranian-funded Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, headed by Ahmed Jibril, although the main suspect, Abu Nidal, was probably tortured to death by Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in 2002.

The organisation has been linked in a conspiracy theory involving a tacit agreement between the US authorities and the Iranian regime to allow a tit-for-tat revenge attack following the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in July 1988 by the USS Vincennes, with the loss of 290 lives .

Mr Dalyell told The Scotsman: "When I asked him [Koussa] about Nidal and Jabril, he said ‘you may not be wrong'.

"I do believe he knew a lot more about what happened than he was willing to tell me."

Despite the former spymaster's formidable reputation, Mr Dalyell said he found him "extremely friendly and frank".

"Other people have described him as scary, but I saw none of that," he said. (...)

But Mr Dalyell did not believe the Scottish authorities should be allowed to speak to Koussa. He said: "I think that two generations on, the officers at Dumfries and Galloway police force will be under terrible pressure to justify the investigation carried out by their predecessors."

He was more scathing about the Crown Office, which he has criticised for its handling of the case of Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi, the only man found guilty of the attack, a conviction Mr Dalyell has claimed was wrong. "As I have said before, I believe that at times the Crown Office has been duplicitous about this," he said. "So they would be the wrong people to question him."

He said British diplomat Sir Richard Dalton was best-qualified to lead the questioning of Gaddafi's former close aide.

The Crown Office said it did not wish to comment on an "individual's comments" but that it was still in discussions with the Foreign Office regarding interviewing Mr Koussa over the Lockerbie bombing.

A spokesman said: "We are liaising with the Foreign Office regarding an interview with Mr Koussa. As with any ongoing investigation, we will not go into the details of our inquiries which includes the dates of interviews with any individuals."

[Moussa Koussa has also in conversation with me denied that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie. The response to this from those still blindly convinced of the truth of the official version of events will, of course, be "He would say that, wouldn't he?"

The following are excerpts from a report in today's edition of The Herald:]

A friend of Moussa Koussa, who claims he helped to co-ordinate his defection to the UK, has said the former Libyan foreign minister will be very co-operative in giving key evidence about the Lockerbie bombing.

Noman Benotman, who now works as an analyst with the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-terrorism think-tank, made it clear that Koussa would be willing to open up to the British authorities about Libya’s past involvement in international terrorism, including the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which claimed 270 lives. (...)

Mr Benotman, who said he helped Koussa escape from Tripoli, said it would “not be an issue” for the UK Government to get information about Libyan-sponsored terrorism, including the bombing of a UTA flight in Niger in 1989.

He said: “It’s going to be very easy to handle all these issues regarding Lockerbie, UTA and the IRA as well. It’s not a problem, I’m sure about this.”

He said Koussa “is the regime – everybody knows that” and that he was one of only five people during the last 30 years who was close to Gaddafi.

“I want to emphasise ... why he chose London. It’s very important. He believes in the system of justice regardless of the outcomes. He is very co-operative regarding crucial intelligence,” added Mr Benotman, who was the leader of the jihadist and anti-Gaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group before he worked for the Quilliam Foundation.

First Minister Alex Salmond said police want to talk to Koussa “on the basis of information that might be provided” and that there was no suggestion at this stage that he was being treated as a suspect.

“Nonetheless, there is every reason to believe that this individual can shed light on the Lockerbie atrocity and the circumstances that led up to it,” Mr Salmond said.

[The Herald has an editorial on the Moussa Koussa "defection" issue which can be read here.

I find it more than a little surprising that a person who was "the leader of the jihadist and anti-Gaddafi Islamic Fighting Group" should be a friend of decades-long Gaddafi loyalist and henchman Moussa Koussa. As for helping him "to escape from Tripoli", Moussa travelled to Djerba in Tunisia in an official Libyan Government car, accompanied by Abdel Ati al-Obeidi, one of Gaddafi's most trusted counsellors.]

[23]

The irony here is, someone like Chomsky basically agrees with the thrust of this article from The New Republic.

http://www.tnr.com/article/against-the- ... nservative
Just Like Bush
What’s the difference between Obama’s Libyan war and neoconservatism?

Well, that was quick! It usually takes some time for the gap between how a White House justifies a military adventure to the public, and the reality of what is really going on to be revealed. It took the fall of Saddam Hussein for the Bush administration’s pretext for war—the threat of weapons of mass destruction—to be shown up as a fabrication. But from President Obama’s televised address on the evening of March 29, in which he claimed that the intervention in Libya was not about regime change, to the Reuters story revealing that he had signed an order allowing covert U.S. operations in Libya at least a week before the speech, and possibly longer, took—what?—24 hours. And so in we go to Libya, as both neoconservatives and liberal interventionists have been pressing for all along.

In his speech, the president insisted that there was no comparison between Iraq and Libya, and that broadening the U.S. military mission “to include regime change would be a mistake.” In reality, of course, that is exactly what Washington has done. President Obama made much of U.N. sanction and the multinational nature of the no-fly zone, and boasted that the United States had now handed over the lead role to our “allies and partners in NATO.” But this is disingenuous nonsense. From a military perspective, NATO without U.S. military assets is not a particularly redoubtable force. It is true that, politically, the French government pressed hard for more aggressive military moves to support the Libyan insurgency. But despite President Obama’s assertions to the contrary, the overwhelming preponderance of bombs, missiles, and bullets fired at Colonel Qaddafi’s forces have been from U.S. ships and aircraft.

The figures tell the story: As of March 28, that is, the day before the president’s speech, the United States had fired 199 Tomahawk missiles at Libyan targets in Operation Odyssey Dawn. The sum total launched by the armed forces of all other countries participating in what President Obama is pleased to call “the coalition” is seven. And, according to the Department of Defense, out of 600 precision-guided bombs dropped up through that same date, 455 were from American warplanes. At a press conference given at the Pentagon by Vice-Admiral Bill Gortney of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, a reporter pointed out to the admiral that the AC-130 gunships and the A-10 “tank busting” aircraft he had announced American forces were using in the operations were usually described as “combat support aircraft.” Gortney’s response was a priceless piece of Pentagon obfuscation. “I don’t call them combat support,” he said. “They’re combat aircraft and they deliver a precision effect.”

To blame the admiral for this bit of Jesuitical newspeak would be a mistake. If what the United States is doing in Libya today is, effectively, providing air support for the insurgents while pretending to be conducting what President Obama described in his speech as one “narrowly focused on saving lives,” that is the White House’s fault, not the Pentagon’s, whose senior officials are simply deferring, as soldiers in democratic armies are supposed to do, to the policies of their civilian commander-in-chief. As it has turned out, even this close air support has not actually been enough to allow the insurgents to win on the ground, as the recent counterattack by Qaddafi’s troops has demonstrated. Presumably, this is why there is now talk of weapons shipments to the insurgents, and even some suggestion that what NATO commanders refer to with a straight face as peacekeepers might be deployed in Libya, even though, without U.N. sanction, these soldiers would have no more right call themselves peacekeepers than Russian troops did in Tajikistan in the 1990s or in South Ossetia or Abkhazia today.

In a sense, what some are hailing as the Obama Doctrine on so-called humanitarian intervention seems like nothing so much as fusion of the liberal interventionism of the 1990s, during the period that stretched from Bosnia through Kosovo to Sierra Leone, and the neoconservative interventionism of the Bush era. Indeed, despite what liberal interventionist supporters of President Obama and of the Libyan war have claimed, there was little in the president’s speech that, stripped of some of its religious cloaking, could not have come out of the mouth of George W. Bush, above all the Bush of the “democracy exporting/wars fought in the name of values” Second Inaugural in 2005. Liberal interventionists indignantly deny this of course, claiming that they believe in multilateralism whereas neoconservatives do not, and that they believe in soft power, or, in Secretary of State Clinton’s formulation, smart power, whereas neoconservatives are fixated on hard power.

The problem with this is that the liberal interventionists’ idea of multilateralism is one in which other nations join America’s efforts. “The world works best when America leads” is the way the late Richard Holbrooke liked to put it, which neatly encapsulates the liberal hawks’ view that they can have U.S. hegemony and multilateralism, which a more skeptical observer might be tempted to call hegemony without tears. But most of this is institutional sleight of hand. These interventions happen if the United States will provide the muscle and don’t if it will not. That is how defenders of the Libyan war—up to an including the president—can pretend that the fact that formally there is indeed a coalition, and that the United States has technically ceded the lead role in the operation to NATO (again, as if NATO was not a U.S.-dominated institution), makes such an intervention a horse of an entirely different color from those initiated by the horrid neocons, and never mind that, on this logic, in strictly institutional terms, the Soviets could have called the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 a Warsaw Pact operation.

In reality, what separates the liberal interventionist and neoconservative approaches to so-called humanitarian military interventions are perfect illustrations of Freud’s idea of the narcissism of small differences. Both sides think it is America’s duty to reshape the world into a more democratic place. And no matter which side’s narrative is in the ascendant, the results somehow always turn out to be war.

[Nordic]

Veddy interestink!

Susan Lindauer, a journalist and author specializing on American interventions, has never believed the allied forces intervened in Libya out of humanitarian reasons. It is a war for oil which was prepared long ago, Lindauer argues - anyone who cared about the Libyan people would stop immediately.

[JackRiddler]

.

Ah, it must be that Susan Lindauer.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23140&p=383990

.

[seemslikeadream]

Scott Horton Interviews Doug Weir
Scott Horton, April 03, 2011


Dour Weir of the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium discusses the likelihood that depleted uranium weapons are being used in Libya; the DU rounds commonly used by A-10 and Harrier jets against armored targets; the long lasting health risks from dust and chemical toxicity; and why the military seems to be slowly shifting away from DU weapons.

MP3 here. (19:04)

Doug Weir is a Development Worker for the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium and the International Coordinator for the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). He holds a degree in Geology and a post-graduate degree in Journalism.

Concern grows over possible use of depleted uranium in Libya

The likelihood of DU use in Libya has now increased following the deployment and use of A-10 and Harrier AV-8B aircraft. ICBUW calls for pressure to be brought on the US to clarify the situation, and to put DU ammunition beyond use.
30 March 2011
A-10s are known to have been active in Libya on the 26th and 27th of March, and are likely to have been used in operations since those dates. The 30mm PGU-14 Armour Piercing Incendiary DU round is fired from the GAU-8 heavy rotary cannon fitted beneath the cockpit of the A-10. It was designed for attacking armoured vehicles from the air, the kind of mission currently being undertaken by the A-10s.

At a Department of Defence briefing on the 25th March Vice Admiral Gortney suggested that only precision guided ammunition (i.e. bombs and missiles) was being fired and stated that: “At this time, [he was] not aware of any use of depleted uranium”.

While in some areas the threat of ground attack may mean that the GAU-8 cannon is not being used over land, and A-10s are only dropping explosive munitions, it seems unlikely that A-10s would have been brought into theatre for this purpose alone, as this is a role that can be played by other aircraft currently in use. It is known for certain that the cannon was used against two small boats on the evening of 28th March, which were alongside the Libyan Coast Guard vessel Vittoria. This means that Gortney's assurance that only precision guided weapons were being used no longer stands, and that his comments about the use of DU munitions are no longer applicable.


A-10s at Aviano Air Force Base, Itally. Still from a Video on Russia Today


It is possible that the GAU-8 is being loaded only with PGU-13 High Explosive rounds, which do not contain DU. This is known to be the case with at least some A-10s in Afghanistan. While it is not therefore possible to categorically state that DU has already been fired, the use of DU in Libya by the A-10 now seems likely.

Six A-10s are thought to have been deployed from the 81st Fighter Squadron, 52nd Figher Wing, based at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, and are currently operating out of Aviano Air Force Base in Italy. They arrived in Aviano on Friday March 25th.

Another platform of concern is the AV-8B Harrier, which is equipped with a GAU-12/U rotary cannon, mounted in a twin pod on the underside of the aircraft. As stated in ICBUW’s earlier statement on this matter, the Harrier has historically been armed with the 20 mm PGU-20/U Armour Piercing Incendiary round, and fired 11 tons of DU during the 1991 Gulf War. While there have been some reports that the PGU-20/U has been taken out of service, recent US federal procurement documents describe it as being in the Department of Defence’s inventory. As such, the use of DU by the AV-8B remains a possibility.

The use of the AV-8B has been confirmed on at least two occasions – during the rescue of a downed F-15 pilot on the 21st March, and against targets south of Benghazi. While accounts of the first incident do not indicate any use of the cannon mounted on the AV-8B, in the second case a Department of Defence briefing on the 20th March described the Harrier being used against several targets including armoured targets.

Again, the threat of ground attack from Libyan forces may mean that only explosive munitions were used, but the use of DU cannot be ruled out. Cockpit images displayed by the Pentagon appear to show the use of explosive munitions against at least two of the targets. The AV-8B Harriers are part of the 26th Marine Expeditionary unit, based on USS Kearsarge.

It should be noted that another US ground attack aircraft, the AC-130 is also equipped with the GAU-12/U cannon. However ICBUW has not seen any strong evidence that the AC-130 fires DU, despite it having been employed in Iraq in both 1991 and 2003.

As the conflict continues, the threat to aircraft is reduced, and planes are increasingly targeting armoured vehicles, rather than air defence infrastructure, the likelihood of DU weapons being employed will increase. It is also likely that targets in urban areas will increasingly be engaged. This trend will make civilian exposure to DU more likely.

ICBUW calls on the US to immediately clarify whether any of the current aircraft being used in Libya are equipped with DU, and give a categorical assurance, similar to that given by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, that weapons containing DU have no place in this conflict. In the event that they have already been used, immediate steps to warn people in affected areas should be taken, and decontamination work should be undertaken at the earliest possible opportunity.

The US needs to take steps in a clear and transparent manner to assure the world that no US aircraft will go into the air equipped with DU ammunition, and that pilots will not be cleared to fire it. Any DU ammunition currently in theatre should be separated and left un-used and information concerning any locations where the weapons have been used should be made available. ICBUW calls on the global media, international organisations and governments around the world to press the US for these measures to be taken.

[23]

[JackRiddler]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa- ... print=true

Africa

25 March 2011 Last updated at 21:03 ET

The Muammar Gaddafi story

By Martin Asser
BBC News

How can you adequately describe someone like Muammar Gaddafi? During a period that has spanned six decades, the Libyan leader has paraded on the world stage with a style so unique and unpredictable that the words "maverick" or "eccentric" scarcely do him justice.

His rule has seen him go from revolutionary hero to international pariah, to valued strategic partner and back to pariah again.

He has developed his own political philosophy, writing a book that is - in the eyes of its author, at least - so influential that it eclipses anything dreamt up by Plato, Locke or Marx.

He has made countless show-stopping appearances at Arab and international gatherings, standing out not just with his outlandish clothing, but also his blunt speeches and unconventional behaviour.

One Arab commentator recently called him the "Picasso of Middle East politics", although instead of Blue, Rose or Cubist periods, he has had his pan-Arab period, his Islamist period, his pan-African period, and so on.
Early promise

In the heady days of 1969 - when he seized power in a bloodless military coup - and the early 1970s, Muammar Gaddafi was a handsome and charismatic young army officer.

An eager disciple of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt (he even adopted the same military rank, promoting himself from captain to colonel after the coup), Gaddafi first set about tackling the unfair economic legacy of foreign domination.

For Nasser, it was the Suez Canal. For Gaddafi, it was oil.

Significant reserves had been discovered in Libya in the late 1950s, but the extraction was controlled by foreign petroleum companies, which set prices to the advantage of their own domestic consumers and benefited from a half share in the revenue.

Col Gaddafi demanded renegotiation of the contracts, threatening to shut off production if the oil companies refused.

He memorably challenged foreign oil executives by telling them "people who have lived without oil for 5,000 years can live without it again for a few years in order to attain their legitimate rights".

The gambit succeeded and Libya became the first developing country to secure a majority share of the revenues from its own oil production. Other nations soon followed this precedent and the 1970s Arab petro-boom began.

Libya was in a prime position to reap the benefits. With production levels matching the Gulf states, and one of the smallest populations in Africa (less than 3m at the time), the black gold made it rich quickly.
Political theorist

Rather than persevering with the doctrines of Arab Nationalism, or following the glittering excesses of Gulf consumerism, Col Gaddafi's innately mercurial character led him and Libya on a new path.

Born to nomadic Bedouin parents in 1942, Muammar Gaddafi was certainly an intelligent, resourceful man, but he did not receive a thorough education, apart from learning to read the Koran and his military training.

Nevertheless, in the early 1970s he set out to prove himself a leading political philosopher, developing something called the third universal theory, outlined in his famous Green Book.

The theory claims to solve the contradictions inherent in capitalism and communism (the first and second theories), in order to put the world on a path of political, economic and social revolution and set oppressed peoples free everywhere.

In fact, it is little more than a series of fatuous diatribes, and it is bitterly ironic that a text whose professed objective is to break the shackles imposed by the vested interests dominating political systems has been used instead to subjugate an entire population.

The result of Col Gaddafi's theory, underlined with absolute intolerance of dissent or alternative voices, has been the hollowing out of Libyan society, with all vestiges of constitutionality, civil society and authentic political participation eradicated.

The solution to society's woes, the book maintains, is not electoral representation - described by Gaddafi as "dictatorship" by the biggest party - or any other existing political system, but the establishment of people's committees to run all aspects of existence.

This new system is presented diagrammatically in the Green Book as an elegant wagon wheel, with basic popular congresses around the rim electing people's committees that send influence along the spokes to a responsive and truly democratic people's general secretariat at the centre.

The model that was created in reality was an ultra-hierarchical pyramid - with the Gaddafi family and close allies at the top wielding power unchecked, protected by a brutal security apparatus.

In the parallel world of the Green Book, the system is called a Jamahiriyya - a neologism that plays on the Arabic word for a republic, Jumhuriyya, implying "rule by the masses".

So the long-suffering Libyan masses were dragooned into attending popular congresses vested with no power, authority or budgets, with the knowledge that anyone who spoke out of turn and criticised the regime could be carted off to prison.

For a system that was designed to end oppression and dictatorship, a set of draconian laws was enacted in the name of upholding security.

They include laws allowing collective punishment, death for anyone who spreads theories aiming to change the constitution and life imprisonment for disseminating information that tarnishes the country's reputation.

Tales abounded of torture, lengthy jail terms without a fair trial, executions and disappearances.

Many of Libya's most educated and qualified citizens chose exile, rather than pay lip service to the lunacy.
Adventures abroad

Unchecked by any of the normal restraints of governance, Col Gaddafi was able to take his anti-imperialist campaign around the world, funding and supporting militant groups and resistance movements wherever he found them.

He also targeted Libyan exiles, dozens of whom were killed by assassins believed to belong to a global Libyan intelligence network.

If more conventional governments were prepared to shrug off his human rights violations at home and persecution of dissidents abroad, supporting groups that used terrorism on their own patches was a different matter.

A bombing of a nightclub used by US soldiers in Berlin in 1986, blamed on Libyan agents, proved a decisive moment.

US President Ronald Reagan ordered air strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for the two soldiers and one civilian killed and the dozens of wounded, although there was no conclusive proof beyond intelligence "chatter" that Libya had ordered the attack.

The US retaliation was intended to kill the "mad dog of the Middle East", as Mr Reagan branded him, but although there was extensive damage and an unknown number of Libyan fatalities - including, it was claimed, Gaddafi's adopted daughter - the colonel emerged unscathed.

His reputation may even have been enhanced among opponents of Washington's heavy-handed foreign policy.

The bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 was the next significant escalation, causing the deaths of 270 people in the air and on the ground, the worst single act of terrorism ever witnessed in the UK.

Gaddafi's initial refusal to hand over the two Libyan suspects to Scottish jurisdiction resulted in a protracted period of negotiations and UN sanctions, finally ending in 1999 with their surrender and trial. One of the men, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, was jailed for life, but the other was found not guilty.
A new detente?

The resolution of the Lockerbie case, along with Col Gaddafi's subsequent admission and renunciation of a covert nuclear and chemical weapons programme, paved the way for a significant warming of relations between Tripoli and western powers in the 21st century.

The domestication of the erstwhile "mad dog" was held up as one of the few positive results of US President George W Bush's military invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The argument went that Col Gaddafi had watched the fate of fellow miscreant Saddam Hussein, hanged by Iraqis after a US-instigated legal process, and had learnt a sobering lesson.

It is perhaps more plausible to argue that the Libyan leader played his WMD card when he saw the benefits of forging strategic partnerships with the US and European powers.

He certainly paid little heed to Mr Bush's so-called "freedom agenda", which held that the US no longer held common cause with dictators and despots and that democracy and human rights were just around the corner.

It was after all more or less business as usual between Washington and the other authoritarian Arab rulers whom the US called friends and allies.

With international sanctions lifted, Tripoli was back on the international political itinerary, allowing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, among other luminaries, to drop in at Col Gaddafi's famously luxurious Bedouin tent erected in his palace grounds.

In true nomadic style, the tent also went with the colonel on trips to Europe and the US, although in New York state it fell foul of stringent zoning regulations on the estate of tycoon Donald Trump and had to be hastily dismantled.

Distaste about the alleged architect of Lockerbie's readmission into the world leaders' club lingered in many circles, not least among the US victims' families and their supporters.

But that did not stop business deals being struck with a succession of western defence manufacturers and oil firms.

Ironically, it was on the Arab front that Col Gaddafi kept his black sheep status alive.

Throughout the 2000s, the normally staid proceedings of annual summits of the Arab League were almost guaranteed to be disrupted by the Libyan leader's antics, whether it was lighting up a cigarette and blowing smoke into the face of his neighbour, or tossing insults at Gulf rulers and the Palestinians, or declaring himself "king of kings of Africa".

The UN has also witnessed the colonel's eccentricity. At the 2010 General Assembly, he gave a rambling speech more than an hour-and-a-quarter longer than his allocated 10-minute time slot, tearing out and screwing up pages from the UN Charter as he spoke.
Rebellion

When the winds of revolt started to blow through the Arab world from Tunisia in December 2010, Libya was not at the top of most people's list of "who's next".

Colonel Gaddafi fitted the bill as an authoritarian ruler who had endured for more years than the vast majority of his citizens could remember. But he was not so widely perceived as a western lackey as some Arab leaders accused of putting outside interests before those of his people.

He had redistributed wealth - although the enrichment of his own family from oil revenues and other deals was hard to ignore and redistribution was undertaken more in the spirit of buying loyalty than promoting equality.

He sponsored grand public works, such as the improbable Great Man-Made River project, a massive endeavour inspired, perhaps, by ancient Bedouin water procurement techniques, that brought sweet, fresh water from aquifers in the south to the arid north of his country.

There was even something of a Tripoli Spring, with long-term exiles given to understand that they could return without facing persecution or jail.

When the first calls for a Libyan "day of rage" were circulated, Col Gaddafi pledged - apparently in all seriousness - to protest with the people, in keeping with his myth of being the "brother leader of the revolution" who had long ago relinquished power to the people.

As it turned out, the scent of freedom and the draw of possibly toppling the colonel, just as Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali had been toppled, was too strong to resist among parts of the Libyan population, especially in the east.

Some of the first footage of rebellion to come out of Benghazi showed incensed young Libyans smashing up a green monolith outside an official building representing the spurious liberation doctrine that had kept them enslaved since the 1970s, the Green Book.

It was probably inevitable that Col Gaddafi would fight back with everything in his armoury in order to hold on to power. There is nothing in his past to suggest he would do otherwise.

But his days of flamboyant appearances in New York, the capitals of Europe and the Arab world, are now behind him. So too the spell which he once cast over Libyans with his "universal theory".



More Africa stories
Key site 'taken' in Ivorian city
[/news/world-africa-12967610]

Fighting in Ivory Coast's main city, Abidjan, takes a new turn with reports that entrenched ruler Laurent Gbagbo's residence has been captured.
Libya 'needs Gaddafi as leader'
[/news/world-africa-12967570]
Fatal UN plane crash in DR Congo
[/news/world-africa-12962210]





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