Editor's Corner
It is obvious to many now (although most of us had said it) that NATO's sole motive for being at the helm of the so-called "humanitarian mission to protect civilians" in the Libyan conflict, was to eliminate Muammar Gaddafi, the late Libyan dictator. Dan Glazebrook recently wrote that the NATO mission had been turned on its head as French and British leaders with the acquiescence of Washington, sought to use the opportunity to pursue their own personal agenda.
There is no questioning the fact that Gaddafi needed to go, but that should have been up to the Libyan people and not a band of thugs and marauders, who have in fact raped and pillaged, while also summarily executing thousands of innocent African immigrants in Libya.
What is befuddling is that neither NATO or Washington know exactly who these Libyan "liberators" are, or do they....
Several credible reports have emerged since the war began that there is in fact a strong Al-Qaeda presence in the National Transitional Council.
That France, Britain and the United States, the first two in particular could be seen as hypocrites in all of this, is not even debatable. After all, this was the same Gaddafi that the likes of Nicolas Sarkozy (the new Napoleon), Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and Silvio Berlusconi, welcomed as a friend at the G8 Summit in Italy, just two years ago.
The irony of all ironies is that most of the same weapons allegedly used by Gaddafi to "murder his own people" were supplied to him by, you guessed it, his "old friends" in Britain and the United States.
Here are some cold facts to ponder:
- Many of the weapons used by Libyan dictator’s regime were in fact purchased from Britain. According to the AP: “Britain sold Libya about $55 million worth of military and paramilitary equipment in the year ending Sept. 30, 2010, according to Foreign Office statistics. Among the items: sniper rifles, bulletproof vehicles, crowd control ammunition, and tear gas”
- The notorious Khamis brigade troops (Libya’s elite forces under the direct command of one of Gaddafi son’s) contracted an $170 million command and control system from General Dynamics UK – one of the deals cut with the personal backing of the then British PM Tony Blair.
- Not only did the British arm the forces of the Gaddafi regime, they also trained them. The Khamis brigade troops were also trained by the SAS as well as being armed by British companies.
- The British government was complicit in the rendition and torture of several Libyans and one of the victims Sami al Saadi is currently suing the British government, for its active organization and participation, as revealed in documents unearthed, after Gaddafi's fall.
- Documents also show that the CIA kidnapped the Libyan rebel commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj in 2004, along with his pregnant wife and he was delivered to Gaddafi's regime for rendition.
- According to a BBC report, from the files unearthed at Gaddafi's compound after his overthrow, CIA agents were indeed present at some of those interrogations at the notorious Abu Selim prison.
- Ironically, it was Saif al Islam, Gaddafi's son who is still at large, who freed Belhaj in 2010, under the "de-radicalization" drive, championed by the former.
While the CIA had obviously begun their relationship with the regime earlier, by 2008, former president George W. Bush sent his top diplomat Condoleezza Rice to Libya for talks with the regime, and in the same year, Texas-based Exxon Mobil signed an exploration agreement with the Libyan National Oil Corp. to explore for hydrocarbons off the Libyan coast.
According to the same AP Report, the White House approved the sale of military items to Libya in recent years, giving private arms firms licenses to sell everything from explosives and incendiary agents to aircraft parts and targeting equipment.
Furthermore, the Bush administration approved the sale of $3 million of materials to Libya in 2006 and $5.3 million in 2007.
In 2008, Libya was allowed to import $46 million in armaments from the US. The approved goods included nearly 400 shipments of explosive and incendiary materials, 25,000 aircraft parts, 56,000 military electronics components, and nearly 1,000 items of optical targeting and other guidance equipment.
One can conclude that the West, with Britain, France and the United States leading, armed and supported Gaddafi and his legion of doom, in the torture and sometimes murder of Libyan opposition figures and other citizens, opposed to his tyrannical rule.
They supported Gaddafi politically by opening up diplomatic channels and meetings, while also working hard to open the regime up to Western commercial interests.The United Nations, for all its chattercrawl, was itself complicit in all this, albeit, mostly by default.
Gaddafi's fate should be an eye-opener for all to see that not all that glitters is gold. African and non-Western leaders, whose countries possess untold resources, germane to the sustenance of Western economic interests, need be aware, that the latter will go to any length, to get what they need and want.
That the United Nations and its "first cousin" the ICC have become a tool for the various machinations of Western imperialists, is even more reason for leaders of African and other developing nations, to reconsider their membership of those failed institutions.
Video of Gaddafi's capture and subsequent execution below (Warning! - Graphic Material):
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