Tag Archives: Middle East Conflicts
Libya isn’t war, it’s a “kinetic military action.”
Explaining the Obama administration’s rationale for violating the War Powers Act by not asking Congress for authorization to attack Libya, the White House claims that what’s going on in Libya isn’t war, it’s a “kinetic military action.” This set off such a round of guffaws – even from Libya war supporters in the Democratic congressional caucus – that the administration felt compelled to send a government lawyer to Congress to elaborate on this exercise in Doublespeak. Harold Koh, the State Department’s lawyer-in-chief, explained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that since there was no back-and-forth firing between American and Libyan forces, the Libyan intervention isn’t a real war – and therefore the President is not in violation of the War Powers Act. (No word yet on whether he’s in violation of the Constitution, which gives Congress, and not the President, the power to make war.)
(Read more from original.antiwar.com)
NATO Says It Mistakenly Hit Libyan Rebels Again
TRIPOLI, Libya — NATO acknowledged Saturday that its aircraft had mistakenly hit a column of rebel military vehicles last week near the Libyan oil port of Brega, and early Sunday morning the Qaddafi government showed reporters a destroyed cinder-block house that neighbors and the government said was hit by an errant NATO airstrike in the capital. (Read more from nytimes.com)
John McCain Supports Al-Qaeda
General: U.S. may consider troops in Libya
Jack Hunter: “Wow, who could have predicted this? (Besides me, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Justin Amash, Andrew Napolitano, Mike Church, Tom Woods, Dan McCarthy, Pat Buchanan, George Will, George Washington, Charlie Sheen, my dog…). Next we can expect to hear liberals’ explanation of how Obama’s use of “boots on the ground” is very different from Bush’s.”
The United States may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, according to the general who led the military mission until NATO took over. (Read more from cbsnews.com)
Libya and the Obama Cult
If I try to excerpt this fantastic essay, I’ll end up pasting the whole thing. Please check it out:
(Read more from original.antiwar.com)
On second though, here are a couple highlights:
The clueless pawns who imagine themselves “leaders” of the conservative movement are so busy conjuring far-fetched visions of Sharia law taking over America, that they’re caught flat-footed when the real holier-than-thou warriors take up arms in the name of the “responsibility to protect.” Newt Gingrich is so focused selling his updated version of “Red Dawn,” where American women are forced to wear the chador and the President is replaced by a Caliph, that he and his ilk haven’t noticed the progress of our very own secular jihadists, who are conducting a holy war – on an international scale — of political and moral “uplift.” As Rand Paul so cleverly put it the other day:
“I was happy to see that Newt Gingrich has staked out a position on the war, a position, or two, or maybe three. I don’t know. I think he has more war positions than he’s had wives.
“There’s a big debate over there. Fox News can’t decide, what do they love more, bombing the Middle East or bashing the president? It’s like I was over there and there was an anchor going, they were pleading, can’t we do both? Can’t we bomb the Middle East and bash the president at the same time? How are we going to make this work?”
The Clintonian wing of the Democratic party is determined to regain power, and Hillary’s push for war is the spearhead of the Restoration.
Of course Libya is crawling with CIA, as well as British, French, and Italian spooks, and what they’re gathering is a lot more than “intelligence”: they’re out there collecting potential “leaders” among the rebels, choosing up sides, determining who will go on the payroll and who will be quietly sidelined or eliminated.
Libyan rebel leader spent much of past 20 years in suburban Virginia
Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C. Badr said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself, and that Hifter primarily focused on helping his large family. (Read more from mcclatchydc.com)
WTF!? Lybian Rebels form a central bank.
Here’s one for the Guinness Book of Records. The Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Qaddafi whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council and have formed a central bank!
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This continues to look like a major oil and money play, with the true disaffected rebels being used as puppets and cover, as the oil/money transfer takes place.. (Read more from economicpolicyjournal.com)
Psycopaths and Liars (i.e. politicians)
It doesn’t surprise me when the lying psychopaths who gravitate toward political power tell psychopathic lies. It’s important to remember these glimpses of their true nature. Remember, they are talking about war — lots of money and killing.
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Could Obama be Impeached over Libya? Let’s ask Biden?
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“Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Gadhafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more like they were to survive, provided help to the rebels to replace him. I mean, the idea that we’re confused about a man who has been an anti-American dictator since 1969 just tells you how inept this administration is.”
— Newt Gingrich on March 7 explaining what he would do in Libya.
“Let me draw the distinction. I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.”
— Newt Gingrich, earlier today [March 23]. (Read more from politicalwire.com)
Ron Paul: Libya and Unintended Consequences
Obama’s Libyan War
Ron Paul: Why Obama Is Wrong on Libya
What Tunisia and Wisconsin do NOT have in common
Many socialists, including Wisconsin’s Noddlez revolutionary are rejoicing that the people’s revolutionary masses are now on the march from Tunisia to Wisconsin.
One easily overlooked difference is the fact that the North African uprising AGAINST the government, while the Wisconsin protests are FOR continued government spending.
From mises.org:
In Tunisia, “free” university education is guaranteed to anyone who passes the government’s exams at the end of high school. Largely as a result of this, the number of Tunisians who graduated college more than tripled in the last ten years. This may sound like a good thing, but it has produced a glut of graduates.
Fifty-Seven percent of young Tunisians entering the labor market are college educated. This is while only 30 percent of Americans earn a college degree by the time they are 27. Recent Tunisian college grads have an unemployment rate approximately three times higher than the national average of 15 percent. This is up ninefold from 1994.
. . . .
In fact, the Tunisian protests began after a recent graduate killed himself because government authorities confiscated his fruit stand when they discovered he did not have an “official” permit. The BBC reported that most of the early protesters were unemployed recent graduates.
From the Daily Bell:
originally published in The Times/N.I. Syndication:
“[Mohamed Bouazizi, the] young [street] trader had been in trouble with the authorities before….Under the dictatorship of President Ben Ali, permits were required for every form of business activity, often accompanied by a bribe. Bouazizi’s family would later claim that he had refused to pay the bribe demanded by the officials….According to other fruit and vegetable pedlars, vendors have a choice when faced with a municipal inspector: they can flee, and leave behind both borrow and merchandise; pay a fine equivalent to several days’ earnings, or fork out a bribe. Bouazizi, it seems, was not inclined to do any of these. When [a 45 year old female inspector] Hamdi began seizing his applies, he tried to grab them back, and she slapped him in the face….”
After this event all hell broke loose and escalated and ended, eventually, in the ouster of President Ben Ali’s government. So, by any reasonable account what brought about the Tunisian upheaval is the government’s intervention with freedom of trade, exactly the kind of conduct by government officials that a good many American jurists, political thinkers and politicians claim is constitutional and certainly not dictatorial.
The Muslim Cry for Justice: Will the US Be Able to Stifle It Again?
No candidate opposed to the US occupation is permitted to run in Iraqi or Afghan elections. It will be the same in Egypt and Libya if the US gets its way. Soviet-style rigged elections make a mockery of the occupied peoples’ desire for self-determination, for honest courts, for social mobility, and for an end to the wealth-stealing dictators and monarchs who have forced servitude on the Arab world, thanks to the US empire. Radio Show from Lew Rockwell
Egyptian Protest Highlights
Pay attention the protester at 0:45 and his wholly secular message, contrary to CNN’s Muslim Brotherhood spin.
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Great photo collections here and here. Also, this video of protesters crossing a bridge and cops giving way before them demonstrates the scope of these protests.
There’s a good protest timeline on Al Jazeera, which is usually better than CNN.
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What do the protesters want? Don’t ask Biden.
The White House may stand behind the protesters in Tunisia, but demonstrators in Egypt haven’t gotten the presidential blessing. Appearing on PBS NewHour last night, gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden remarked that he doesn’t consider Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak a dictator—despite his 29-year rule—and isn’t sure what exactly protesters want.
(source)
I wonder how much of the US’s luke warm view of the protests has to do with the Israel Lobby. I can imagine them wanting a tyrant whom the US more or less controls over a popular movement.
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Obviously, government repression doesn’t like internet freedom of information. By the way:
Internet ‘kill switch’ bill will return
A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency,” and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year. . . . Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. The full Senate did not act on the measure. (Read more from news.cnet.com)
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Riot control agents used against the Egyptian protests seem to be Made in the USA. Are you proud, chest-thumbing neo-cons? Wait, don’t answer that.
See Also:
The US government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to equip the Egyptian security forces with high-tech military hardware.
But unless things get really, really bad there, it’s unlikely that any big-ticket American military hardware will be used directly against the Egyptian demonstrators. A selection of Defense Department contracts dating to the mid-1990s reveals weapons sales to Egypt that include a Black Hawk helicopters (Sikorsky), a dizzying variety of missiles (Raytheon), Abrams tanks (General Dynamics), Humvees (AM General Corp.) and all manner of ammunition. . . .
Now, if through some incredible circumstance Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak decides to flee the country, Ã la Ben Ali, there’s a good chance his first-class flight would come courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Pentagon contracts show that the US government has spent at least $111,160,328 to purchase and maintain Mubarak’s fleet of nine Gulfstream business jets. (For those keeping score, Gulfstream is a subsidiary of General Dynamics.) (Read more from warisbusiness.com)
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