Foreign Correspondent: Libya, The Forgotten War-- Though It Has Disappeared From Headlines, Libya’s Humanitarian Crisis Continues Unabated

-by Reese Erlich
@ReeseErlich

I arrived at the airport in Tripoli, Libya, on assignment for CBS Radio with my paperwork in order. I even had the phone numbers of local immigration officials in case anything went wrong.  It quickly did.

An airport official said my papers wouldn’t allow me into the country, even though the visit had been approved by the Libyan Embassy in Washington, D.C.

He put me on the next plane leaving Tripoli, and I ended up in Vienna, Austria. Turns out that the militia controlling the airport had a beef with the Washington Embassy and wasn’t recognizing its authority to issue visas.

It was 2012, not long after the US and other Western powers had overthrown Muammar Gaddafi and brought “democracy” to the country. But Libya was already on its way to becoming a failed state ruled by competing warlords, as my airport experience affirmed.

In 2011, President Barack Obama and his liberal interventionists justified yet another disastrous invasion by claiming they were protecting civilians from a murderous dictator. But very soon, the actions of Washington and its allies created chaos.

“Libya is a failed state,” Barah Mikail, associate professor at Saint Louis University in Madrid, tells me in a phone interview. “It is a country with spheres of influence, not a government.”

Today, a myriad of outside powers compete for dominance in Libya, none of which care much about the country’s people.

Turkey, Qatar, and the Arab League back the so-called internationally recognized government, which is actually an alliance of political Islamist and extremist groups in Tripoli. Russia, France, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates support military dictator Khalifa Haftar based in Benghazi.

The Trump Administration has no coherent policy towards Libya, which has given a free hand to the other intervening powers.

“It was a mess from the beginning,” Vijay Prashad, author of the 2016 book The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution, tells me. “This was not an uprising against Gaddafi. It was a regional war.”

Imperialist interests

Because of its rich reserves of oil and natural gas, outside powers have long sought to dominate Libya, a country of only 6.9 million people. More recently, with the collapse of the central government, terrorist groups have sprouted up, contributing to regional instability. Immigrant smugglers also use Libya as a jumping off point to Europe.

Libya was once in the anti-imperialist camp. In the early 1970s, Muammar Gaddafi, who had come to power in a military coup, allied with rising anti-imperialist movements to oppose US policy. But over time, he became just another corrupt dictator soliciting bribes from foreign powers.

By 2003, Gaddafi made a 180-degree turn and allied with Washington, giving up his nascent nuclear weapons program and opening his economy to additional exploitation by Western corporations.

“He was our partner,” Mark N. Katz, professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University, tells me by phone.

But Gaddafi was an expendable partner. In 2011, when Arab Spring protesters ousted dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, Libyans took to the streets as well. Western powers saw an opportunity to replace Gaddafi with an even more pliant ruler.

In March 2011, French, British, and US air forces bombed Libya, causing huge damage to the country’s infrastructure. Western powers supported efforts to write a new constitution and hold parliamentary elections. But real power stayed with local militias. The country began to fall apart.

“Other countries parachuted in Libyans who had been living in Arab countries and the US,” says Prashad. “The militias didn’t see them as leaders.”

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration saw Libya as a great success story for its policy of humanitarian intervention, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaiming, “We set into motion a policy that was on the right side of history, on the right side of our values, on the right side of our strategic interests in the region.”

History has judged the invasion far more harshly.

“How can you talk about the right side of history when you’ve just destroyed a country?” asks Prashad.

Recent fighting

General Khalifa Haftar, the leader of the powerful Libyan National Army, launched a major offensive against Tripoli in April 2019, promising quick victory. He relied on the backing of Russian mercenaries and arms from the United Arab Emirates. The former CIA asset claims to represent secular forces but allows extremists to control the mosques in areas under his control.

Haftar’s military offensive ran into fierce opposition in January of this year, when Turkey sent troops and sophisticated arms to back the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. For years, the GNA controlled little more than that capital city. It consists of various political Islamist parties and militias, including the Moslem Brotherhood and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, formerly affiliated with Al Qaeda.

The GNA also relies on extremist Syrians and Libyans who returned home after fighting Bashar al Assad’s government in Syria. These brigades, politically close to Al Qaeda, were the most experienced fighters, according to Wolfgang Pusztai, Austria’s former defense attaché to Libya.

“These guys are crazy,” Pusztai tells me in a phone interview from Vienna. “But they were the backbone of the anti-Haftar fight in the first months.”

The Pentagon supports the GNA in Tripoli and offers low-key military cooperation. But Washington has generally pulled back from Libya and allows Turkey to do the heavy lifting.

The nearly decade-long war and outside intervention has been disastrous for Libyans. According to the United Nations, 1.3 million Libyans need humanitarian assistance and 200,000 are internally displaced. Human Rights Watch notes that all sides are guilty of violating the laws of war and, in some cases, of committing crimes against humanity.

Peace prospects?

Since June, the GNA and Turkey have been on a military offensive towards Benghazi, Haftar’s stronghold in eastern Libya. Egypt, a Haftar ally, has threatened to intervene militarily.

Egypt and Haftar have called for a ceasefire and peace talks, reflecting Haftar’s weakened military position. So far Turkey and the GNA have rebuffed this peace effort.

In the past, Washington would have maintained occupation troops in Libya, or at least senta lot of arms  to a political faction. But both the Obama and Trump Administrations have backed away from Libya, a sign of a weakened empire.

Eventually there will need to be a political settlement in Libya, but not until the major players recognize they can’t win militarily.

“Foreign interference and delivery of weapons is the main problem,” analyst Mikail says. “If this stops, we’ll have a different landscape.”

Slavery In 2017 Exists In North Africa... Are Republican Party Policies Heading Us Back Towards That Institution Cherished By The Rich And Powerful?

Roland and I were wandering around south-central Mali a few years ago, taking it in, meeting the folks. Alan Grayson had recommended Bandiagara and Sangha as a couple of off-the-beaten-track places east of Mopti and north of the border with Burkina Faso. In one of those towns Roland found a goat and its kid. The mother goat was freaking out because they were separating her from the kid and it looked like she knew the kid was headed for the stew pot. Roland bought the kid and we walked around with it for a few days before giving it to the mother goat's owner-- along with some Impeach Cheney caps, t-shirts and assorted foodstuffs and ephemera to seal an agreement that they wouldn't eat the kid. They seemed like honorable people and I bet the kid is still thriving-- unless the rebels ate him. We never bought a slave to free him though.

After our adventures in Dogon country, we headed north to legendary Timbuktu. We had seen slaves before, in Mali and in southern Morocco beyond the Atlas. It's even worse in Mauritania, which we've avoided. But as we headed north into Tuareg country we realized that the dark-skinned people were slaves of the more Arab-looking Tuaregs. We were at a river crossing one day and it was a noisy, lively place with music and everyone babbling away and little children running around playing. Suddenly the place turned deadly quiet and the only thing you could hear were the birds screaming. The women and children had all disappeared in a second. The place looked like a ghost town with a few surly men selling their goods to no one. And just as suddenly a pick-up truck rolled up to the ferry landing. It was filled with Tuaregs, heavily armed, menacing-looking Tuaregs. Later in the trip, up in the deep Sahara north of Timbuktu, we got to know some Tuaregs and did some bartering with them. There were slaves in their encampment and it was very creepy but they were-- and this is weird to write-- nice to us and polite enough.

So we weren't surprised when CNN reported that there are slaves-- migrants on their way from deep Africa to Europe-- being bought and sold in Libya. I don't expect much from the Trump Regime but France is taking the matter up to the UN. President Emmanuel Macron, terming the practice "a crime against humanity," requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss this treatment of migrants in Libya.

The UN in Libya is "dismayed and sickened by the recent video" and is actively pursuing the matter with the Libyan authorities to set up transparent monitoring mechanisms that safeguard migrants against horrific human rights abuses, said Ghassan Salame, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya.

...Secretary-General António Guterres urged the international community to unite on the issue and called on all countries to adopt the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocol on human trafficking.

"I abhor these appalling acts and call upon all competent authorities to investigate these activities without delay and to bring the perpetrators to justice," Guterres said. "I have asked the relevant United Nations actors to actively pursue this matter."

Reuters reported that on Friday Pope Francis "excoriated politicians who foment fear of migrants, saying they were sowing violence and racism, and urged them to 'practise the virtue of prudence' to help them integrate. Pope Francis: "Those who, for what may be political reasons, foment fear of migrants instead of building peace are sowing violence, racial discrimination and xenophobia, which are matters of great worry for all those concerned about the safety of every human being." I hope no one accuses me of cultural appropriation for writing about it and condemning it. What's more un-PC, slavery or cultural appropriation? Who can keep up? Watch the CNN report:

Robert Scheer proposes "We know everything but learn nothing" as a slogan for our "intelligence" agencies

"As The New York Times stated, the Benghazi incident has been billed as "the most significant attack on United States property in 11 years, since Sept. 11, 2001," an event that launched the much-ballyhooed war on terror. But as with that attack 11 years earlier, the perps turned out to be people the U.S. secret agencies had once trusted. . . .

"We have left it to the secret state agents to determine the nature of our enemies, "the evil doers," and never dare to question how often their "evidence" gets it wrong. "

-- Robert Scheer, in his first 2014 column, "NSA,
Benghazi and the Monsters of Our Own Creation"

by Ken

"Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi" was one of Noah's cases in point last night in Part 2 of "A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy," his 2013 "Year in Review" (which began Monday, and continues tonight at 6pm PT/9pm ET).

In Republikook world, President Obama supposedly either let the storming of the embassy happen or encouraged it, maybe with his supersecret Muslim underground decoder ring, or something. One thing Republicans won't tell you is that it was they who voted in Congress to withdraw security funding for our embassies. Nice goin', a-holes. Since then we've had madman Rep. Darrell Issa, doing his best Joe McCarthy imitation, running hearing after hearing after hearing, wasting mountains of our taxpayer dollars on some insane attempt to build an impeachment-worthy case against the president.  Again, people died, so let's exploit it! Ain't that the Republican way?

Now one of our most prized BS detector-rejectors, Robert Scheer, looks at the extent to which the Benghazi disaster, like many others of modern times, was produced by products of our own creation. He begins by asking, "If we are so smart why are we so dumb?," explaining, "I am referring to the 'intelligence' that our spy agencies have gathered at great cost in both massive secret black box budgets and, much more important, the surrender of our personal freedom to the snooping eyes of our modern surveillance state."

Bob is one of those writers I hate the try to ellipsize or paraphrase, so here is his case as he himself makes it:

"We know everything but learn nothing" would be an honest slogan for the NSA, CIA and lesser-known spy agencies that specialize in leading us so dangerously astray. For all of their massive intrusion into the personal lives of individuals throughout the world, it is difficult to recall a time when the "intelligence" they collected provided such myopic policy insight.

Take the revelations in The New York Times’ exhaustive six-part investigation published Saturday demonstrating that the devastating 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, was an intelligence disaster. The Times "turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault" that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Instead, a local militia leader on the side of the U.S.-supported insurrection in Libya with no known affiliation with al-Qaida is a prime suspect, and he and others allegedly responsible were not on the radar screen of the 20-person CIA station in Benghazi because they were part of the insurgency the U.S. supported.

As for the vast collection of phone and email intercepts maintained by U.S. spy agencies, it turned up only one bit of information, a phone call from someone involved in the mob attacking the U.S. post. He called a friend elsewhere in Africa who allegedly knew some folks in al-Qaida, but the friend "sounded astonished" at the news from Libya, "suggesting he had no prior knowledge of the assault," according to U.S. officials. In short, the only evidence turned up by the vast spying apparatus was evidence that inconveniently contradicted the al-Qaida connection, so it was not made public.

As The New York Times stated, the Benghazi incident has been billed as "the most significant attack on United States property in 11 years, since Sept. 11, 2001," an event that launched the much-ballyhooed war on terror. But as with that attack 11 years earlier, the perps turned out to be people the U.S. secret agencies had once trusted. The enemy here was not al-Qaida, but rather a homegrown menace empowered by foreign intervention. "The attack was led," the Times reported, "by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistic support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi."

These monsters of our own creation continually haunt us. It was, after all, the United States under both Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan that recruited and armed the anti-Soviet Muslim fanatics who later morphed into Osama bin Laden’s gang. Reagan even embraced them as "freedom fighters" in official ceremonies. So too did the U.S. recently rally an army of fundamentalists to oppose the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Gadhafi, like Hussein in Iraq and Assad in Syria, was a defanged dictator and -- inconvenient to the U.S. anti-terrorism narrative -- like his fellow secular dictators, an avowed enemy of al-Qaida. But that did not stop the regime change ideologues in the U.S. government from meddling once again in a society that they could barely comprehend. As The New York Times summarized the origins of the Benghazi debacle:

The United States waded deeply into post-Qaddafi Libya, hoping to build a beachhead against extremists, especially Al Qaeda. It believed it could draw a bright line between friends and enemies in Libya. But it ultimately lost its ambassador in an attack that involved opponents of the West and fighters belonging to militias that the Americans had taken for allies.

We have left it to the secret state agents to determine the nature of our enemies, "the evil doers," and never dare to question how often their "evidence" gets it wrong. In the process, debates about foreign policy are hijacked by those with access to secret information, be it Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction or Iran’s threat to the stability of the Mideast. This last is the source of greatest irrationality in the war on terror that has committed the U.S. to the side of Sunni fanatics financed by Saudi Arabia in a war against anyone the Saudi theocracy holds in contempt.

Just this week, the Saudi government pledged $3 billion to support the government of Lebanon in its confrontation with Hezbollah. That follows a $5 billion gift to the military dictators of Egypt who overthrew a democratically elected government whose Sunni leadership did not sufficiently cater to Saudi dictates. Then there are this year’s foreign aid bribes of $1 billion to Jordan, $3.25 billion to Yemen, $1.25 billion to Morocco and $750 million to Tunisia to docilely follow the decrees of the Saudi theocracy.

The idiocy of anti-terrorism as a substitute for foreign policy is that Saudi Arabia, the one nation most accurately described as a breeding ground for terrorism, gets to play an outsized role, along with outlier Israel, in deciding U.S. policy for the entire region. If people dare dissent, say any Americans who loathe having their taxes committed in this way, they can be branded as soft on terror. If they go online and express such a view, will they too be picked up in the NSA’s catch-a-spy network?

The excuse is that this sacrifice of our freedom will make us more secure, as in the misnamed "National Security Agency," by knowing more about our "enemies." But the record is unmistakably the opposite, that this relinquishing of privacy and transparency has stifled genuine public debate about the goals of our policy and left us both stupid and weak.

Ironically, the Republikooks are sort of right when they point a finger at President Obama, but not for any of the "reasons" they impute. No, the problem is that this president has continued a nightmarish tradition of misguided "security policy."

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Ooh, that Hillary makes the doody-brainers so-o-o mad!!!

-- Christopher Weyant's New Yorker Daily Cartoon today

by Ken

"Whistleblower's yarn fails to tie Benghazi lapses to politics" is the head on the column the Washington Post's Dana Milbank offered regarding the much-ballyhooed "oversight" hearing promoted by House Republican master criminal Darrell Issa, starring Gregory Hicks, then our no. 2 diplomat in Libya, who who was going to blow the lid off the Obama White House's politicization of the awful night in Benghazi when Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

But despite Issa's incautious promise that the hearing's revelations would be "damaging" to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hicks didn't lay a glove on the former secretary of state Wednesday. Rather, he held lawmakers from both parties rapt as he recounted the events of that terrifying night -- revealing a made-for-Hollywood plot with a slow, theatrical delivery and genuine emotion.

In Dana's retelling, Hicks's emerges as storytelling prowess was exceeded only by his apparently uncontrollable self-promotion.

Hicks, bald and with a white chin beard, said his "jaw dropped" when he heard U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice falsely claim on TV that there had been a protest at the Benghazi consulate, but he declined an invitation to challenge the veracity of the director of national intelligence, who said the statement reflected "our collective best judgment at the time."

Hicks said he thought a flyover by U.S. jets could have deterred the second of the two attacks that night, but he declined to question the judgment of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has said there was no way to get the fighters there in time.

Hicks was of little use to Republicans in their efforts to connect the lapses in the Benghazi response to Clinton or to the Obama White House. He said that he spoke to Clinton by phone at 2 a.m. that night and that she supported his actions. He undermined one of Issa's claims -- that Clinton had rejected an increase in security for the Libya facilities -- when he agreed that the secretary of state's name appears on all cables, even if she doesn't write them.

Hicks did have some damning things to say about the State Department trying to block him from cooperating with Issa's committee. But that wasn't quite the evidence Issa had promised: that politics drove the administration's response to Benghazi.

Never mind that there probably isn't a Republican in the House who could find Libya on a map, or who has any idea who in the country believed in what or whom or what effect any of it had on U.S. interests. And never mind that the Republican chumps intent on proving the Obama administration's dastardly "politicizing" of events in Libya spent eight years as silent as rocks while the Chimpy Bush regime devoted every second of every day to doing precisely this. Never mind anything. Let's just jump ugly on the effing Hillary. Didn't Hillary-hating used to be a crowd-pleasing political platform?

This is what happens when you have a political movement built on ideological hysteria without any actual ideology or real beliefs, just blinding hate informed by Tales Blown Out of Rush Limbaugh's Rectum of Darkness.

Republicans Hold Hearings About Hillary Clinton's Poll Numbers

Posted by Andy Borowitz


WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- Republican lawmakers asked increasingly tough questions today as they held another day of hearings to investigate, in the words of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), "Hillary Clinton's suspiciously high poll numbers and what can be done to make them lower."

"With the help of Fox News, we have brutally attacked Hillary Clinton for months, and yet she remains more popular than ever," Rep. Issa said. "This committee needs to know how that happened, and how we can keep it from happening in the future."

Rep. Issa pointed to recent polls showing the former Secretary of State trouncing every potential G.O.P. Presidential candidate, "even a skinnier version of Chris Christie."

"We demand an answer to one simple question," he said. "What does Secretary Clinton know that none of us knows?"

In his boldest allegation of the day, Rep. Issa accused Secretary Clinton of "cynically using her post as Secretary of State to become wildly popular with the American people."

"I invite her to these hearings to answer those charges," he said.

Wrapping up for the day, Rep. Issa warned the former Secretary of State that he was just getting started: "Once we Republicans decide to investigate someone, we don't stop. If Secretary Clinton doesn't believe me, she should ask her husband."

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Poor "Flimsy Lindsey" Graham! The Teabag-mad GOP faithful back home suspect him of closet reasonableness!

It's not enough to be a credentialed nitwit and pathological liar. With the Teabag Nation, you have to prove that you're really crazy.

"Graham made a fist. 'Am I supposed to sit on the sidelines and be a good compliant Republican and just let this administration not account for what I think is a national security breakdown of monumental proportions?' He added that 'I guaran-damn-tee you' that Democrats would treat a Republican president even worse."

-- WaPo's Dana Milbank, about "Lightweight Lindsey" Graham's
Wednesday TV appearance with Fox Noise's Chad Pergram

by Ken

At this point the evidence seems to me to be piling up that "Flimsy Lindsey," although he has a certain measure of political street smarts and a certain flair for the PR moment to go with his more-than-certain puffed-up ego, really and truly is a dope, and quite possibly too stupid to have any tools for figuring out what might or might not be significant about the events at the Benghazi. But it seems pretty clear that none of that is what is driving him now as he runs around the District of Columbia clucking like a crazed chicken.

BOne thing is for sure about the Flimsyman's pretend concern about Benghazi: He doesn't give a flying fig about this supposed "security breakdown of monumental proportions." Because if he had any real concern, he would be screaming bloody murder about congressional Republicans' adamant refusal to provide the funds the State Department needed for security. So, rather obviously, the Flimsyman is lying.

And what else is new? "Lightweight Lindsey" has by now established utterly unimpeachable credentials as an intellectual flyweight, an ego-besotted grandstander, and of course a pathological liar. But once again, it comes down to this: There is no price to pay for right-wingers to lie their putrid guts out. I've referred to this as a "license to lie," and that still seems to me an accurate description. So he doesn't need anything to back up the preposterous claim that Democrats would treat a Republican president even worse, because of course he either doesn't want to understand or genuinely doesn't understand the simple truth of the accusations leveled against recent Republican presidents. And in any case, truth just doesn't enter into the Lightweighter's calculations.

Dana Milbank gives him the benefit of the doubt on his supposed convictions but thinks that's not really what's going on here. He thinks the problem is that the Flimsy One is finding himself lacking in credential for Teh Crazy among his party's faithful back home in South Carolina.

I guaran-damn-tee you this: Graham's antics have as much to do with events in Columbia, S.C., as with events in Washington. His sentiments are no doubt genuine, but the ferocity with which he has been attacking the Obama administration -- taking a high-profile role on Benghazi, Susan Rice, Hagel and gun control -- are helping him to repel a tea party primary challenge at home.

Graham acknowledged the pressure when I asked him about the influence of home-state politics on his recent actions. "You know, I'm in a red state. I know I'm always exposed in a Republican primary," he said. But he argued, correctly, that he continues to take a leading role on immigration, which infuriates many conservatives.

"I think it's positive for me to one day beat the hell out of them and the next day see if we can do a deal," he said. He described his role in the opposition as a balance between saying "yes for the common good of the country where you can" and saying "no because you need to."

The problem is Graham, to get through the 2014 primary, needs to say "no" more often now. And Congress can hardly afford for one of its few remaining dealmakers to take an obstreperous turn. But perhaps Graham should be given some slack. The Republican primary system has gone haywire, and this may be the only way a sensible lawmaker can survive it.

Not too long ago, Graham had been in deep trouble with South Carolina conservatives because of his talk about climate-change legislation, his votes for both of Obama's Supreme Court nominees, his criticism of the Bush administration's wiretapping and interrogation programs, and his championing of "Grahamnesty" immigration reforms.

But the gradual repositioning has apparently worked. A survey by Public Policy Polling in December found that the percentage of Republicans saying they would vote for him in a primary has climbed to 51 percent from 37 percent in January 2011.

And Graham isn't letting up. At a hearing on gun control, he unnerved a witness, a U.S. attorney, by beginning his questions with a blunt inquiry: "Do you own a gun?" At a Benghazi hearing, he got the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to admit he was "surprised" about Hillary Clinton's ignorance of the ambassador to Libya's request for more security shortly before he was killed.

And Graham delivered a memorable hectoring of Hagel for the nominee's prior claim that lawmakers are "intimidated" by the Israel lobby. "Name one," Graham challenged. Hagel couldn't.

Graham, who has voted the conservative line 90 percent of the time over his career, argues that his new positions are consistent with his previous ones -- and they are. But the difference is in the emphasis. In order to survive the Republicans' backward primary system, Graham needs to de-emphasize anything that might make him appear to be reasonable.

Considering how little there is in the Flimsyman's record to support a claim of closet reasonableness, in Teabag world, the bar for Teh Crazy has been raised sky-high.

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Gloriosky! Now the administration is supposed to tiptoe around the imagined "goodwill" of congressional Republicans who don't have any?

"What they saw through those yellow-gold lenses, they never forgot. And neither will you, my friends." After all these decades since I last saw this episode of Boris Karloff's Thriller, "The Cheaters," from 1960, I find that the whole darned thing is on YouTube! We learn from Boris K that the old-time Dutch scientist who created the Cheaters and then boldly looked into a mirror "hanged himself before dawn."


"The choice of a successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state has turned into an unexpectedly nasty political fight that could cost the White House valuable goodwill with Republicans."

-- from "Fight over Susan Rice holds political risks for White House," by the Washington Post's Anne Gearan and Steven Mufson

by Ken

The quotation above from Anne Gearan and Steven Mufson's WaPo piece is in fact the story's lead, and it's about as far as I got -- running into that astonishing phrase "valuable goodwill" as applied to congressional Republicans.

"Valuable goodwill"? From these pestilential vermin? I'm tempted to say that there isn't a neuron's worth of goodwill, not to mention honesty or decency, residing anywhere inside the carcases of life forms like Young Johnny McCranky, Lindsey Graham, or Susan Collins, but that probably isn't so. It would probably be more correct that these life forms have mastered the skill of suppressing any impulse to goodwill, honesty, or decency that happens to pop into their consciousness.

The other day when Susasn Rice bearded the lions as it were, sashaying into the den of the right-wing foreign-policy sociopaths, I understood the logic, and even had a certain admiration for it. The vilification they were performing on her, after all, was almost wholly irrational and counterfactual, so why not step right up and try to set the record straight?

Ambassador Rice found out why not, and I'm afraid that came as no surprise whatsoever to me, because she wasn't dealing with people with either functioning ethics or reason. They're savage beasts driven solely by the dark screeching of their deep-seated loathsomeness. And so, instead of clearing the air, their session seems to have breathed even more toxic fumes into the miasma of their America-loathing psychosis and their compulsion to turn the country into a mirror of their fundmental evil.

Now I hold no brief for Rice, but as yet no one has shown any significant offense committed by anyone in the U.S. government in connection with the lethal assault on the consulate in Benghazi. Personally, the thread I would most like to see pursued, is the possible culpability of mentally defective congressional Republicans in denying the State Dept. adequate funds to protect its people around the world. But that won't happen, because Republicans consider that they have carte blanche to commit any form of criminal behavior as long as it's in the service of their murderous ideological psychosis.

So primitive monsters like the McCranky, Graham, and Collins demons should feel free to pursue their witch hunt just as soon as they deal, finally, with the years-long history of indisputable raging monstrous criminality of the foreign-policy of the Bush regime. They will truly have performed a public service when we get to see justice done to everyone involved in those many years' worth of that lethal combination of mass-murderous war crimes and the Great Wall of Lies the conspirators threw up to try to conceal their malefaction from public view. I'm thinking of an assembly line of the murdering hoodlums filing up to a dais, commencement-style, for the administering of their lethal injections. With Chimpy the Then-Prez and "Big Dick" Cheney either leading the way or bringing up the rear -- I'm open to discussion on the point.

At that point it will become appropriate for congresscreeps -- any of them still alive and kicking, that is -- to consider the appropriateness of a slap on the wrist for Ambassador Rice for passing on the intelligence talking points about the Benghazi raid as they were given to her.

A more worthwhile use of the congresscreeps' time, however, would be to pursue the quest of that old Dutch scientist who created the Cheaters. As Boris K explains in the intro to the episode, it's only through the final custodian of those mysterious glasses, which enable the viewer to see the truth, that we learn what they were actually created for. They were created to enable the beholder to look into a mirror and see the truth about himself -- with unanticipatedly fatal consequences.

No doubt there are many Democrats who would benefit from this same exercise. But I'm hard put to think of any Republicans who would survive it. Certainly none of the Senate Republican Psychos.

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McCain's Benghazi Fail-- Was A Vainglorious Old U.S. Senator Responsible For The Tragedy In Benghazi?

-by Juan Adams

A few weeks back, I was lounging around catching up with the Sunday morning talk shows and happened upon Face The Nation where Senator John McCain was furiously spinning a conspiracy theory about the attack on the Benghazi consulate. His takeaway message was that there had either been gross incompetence or worse, a cover up. McCain's accusatory tone struck me as rather nasty conduct for a senator but I allowed that there might have been an element of grief. I too had questioned the rather lax security given the location and timing of the attack. McCain shook his head and seemed truly angry about the "repeated warnings." I was sympathetic to the anger that a former prisoner of war might feel at having lost a friend in a hostile attack. McCain has always been a huge advocate for protecting those who serve abroad. This was his issue and Stevens was his friend.

I went online to McCain's website and read the statement he issued upon hearing about the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens. But what I read neither reflected nor logically prefaced the vitriol I had just witnessed on TV. Suddenly, McCain's "outrage" began to take on a very foul aroma. McCain was practically calling out the president on covering up for these savages! But his memories of his time in Libya with Stevens painted a picture of a country on the fast track to being one of our greatest allies. McCain did not speak of terrorism but of first-time voters and of having been moved by the Libyan people's gratitude for America's support. Had McCain actually gone on TV to politicized the death of his friend?

"The last time I saw Chris was shortly after he had taken up his post, during my most recent visit to Tripoli. I especially remember the lighter moments we spent together, including when Chris insisted on personally making me a cappuccino, a task that he carried out with as much pride and proficiency as his diplomatic mission.

"That was on the morning of July 7-- the day Libyans voted in their first election in half a century. Chris and I spent the day together again, traveling around Tripoli, visiting polling places, and speaking with Libyan voters. We met a man whose father had been murdered by Qaddafi's henchmen. We met a woman whose brothers had recently given their lives fighting for their country's liberation. We met countless others, including many older Libyans, who were voting for the first time in their lives. And everywhere we went, we were greeted by crowds of cheering Libyans, bursting with pride and eager to shake our hands and express their gratitude for America's support. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life, and it was only made better by the fact that I got to share it with Chris.

"What we saw together on that day was the real Libya-- the peaceful desire of millions of people to live in freedom and democracy, the immense gratitude they felt for America's support for them, and their strong desire to build a new partnership between our nations. That is why I am not surprised that senior Libyan leaders were among the first to condemn the horrific attack that killed Chris and his colleagues. And that is why I was not surprised to learn from our Secretary of State that many Libyans fought to defend our people and our consulate in Benghazi when they came under attack, that some were wounded while doing so, and that it was Libyans who sought to get Chris and his colleagues to the hospital. This is the spirit of the Libyan people that I have come to know and admire. And that is why we cannot afford to view the despicable acts of violence perpetrated yesterday by a small group of fanatics as in any way representative of the country and the people of Libya. They are not the real Libya-- the Libya that Chris Stevens knew so well."

-From John McCain's Sept 12, 2012 statement on Chris Steven's death.

This "morning after" statement just did not square up with McCain's Face The Nation appearance six weeks later. "Terrorist attack" was not immediately on McCain's lips. Though he had suggested some kind of masterfully concealed coordinated attack when being interviewed by Bob Schieffer in late October, clearly on September 12, McCain believed the attack to have been carried out by "a small group of fanatics."

McCain's grotesque attempt to exploit the death of our Ambassador was not the only thing that troubled me. It was not his press release nor was it the fact that he himself had failed initially to characterized the attack as an act of terrorism. But I could not put my finger on it. I re-watched the segment and just got caught up in how a once honorable war hero had become a nasty little troll. Eventually, I just let it go but something would not let go of me.

That was two weeks ago. But this afternoon I watched as McCain sought to pin the whole of Benghazi on the back of Susan Rice. Calling her "not very bright." Again, it was that nasty tone of a man who could just not accept having lost his bid for the White House in 2008. But it rang a bell. Guilt? I went online trying to find the clip but the transcript was even better.

SCHIEFFER: What about-- what about what you just said about Libya? Are you saying now that this was a deliberate cover-up coming out of the Libya, that in fact this was not what the administration said it was, but something else entirely. And that, I guess, if it was a cover-up, are you saying they did it for political reasons?

MCCAIN: I don't know if it's either cover-up or gross-- the worst kind of incompetence, which doesn't allow-- doesn't qualify the president as commander in chief. You've got to-- the buildup to it. We knew of two attacks on our consulate. The British ambassador assassination attempt. Repeated warnings. Repeated warnings. The last message our beloved ambassador sent to us concerns about security in Benghazi. He had even voiced them to me when I was in Tripoli. Nothing was done.

HE HAD EVEN VOICED THEM TO ME WHEN I WAS IN TRIPOLI. NOTHING WAS DONE.

I do not know how this got lost in the news cycle but on October 28th, John McCain clearly stated-- on national television-- that Ambassador Chris Stevens had directly voiced security concerns and McCain chose to do nothing. To this day, McCain has never been asked to explain what he did with the direct information from Stevens about these concerns but in light of the tragedy, perhaps we now have the perfect point from which to launch a Watergate-like investigation. After all, what was McCain's stated recollection the day after Stevens was brutally murdered? Proficiently crafted cappuccino. Gross incompetence, indeed...

Yesterday McCain was on the Today Show and McCain suggested he knew immediately that the Bengahzi attack was a pre-planned event. He also has removed his direct conversations with Stevens from his list of ignored warnings. It's a cover-up alright!

The Loop looks at fat-cat congressional spouses (of both sexes), and Al Kamen announces the Loop's 2012 "Pick the President" contest

It's time (or possibly past time) for putative prognosticators to get their predictions down for this year's presidential election.

by Ken

Our pal Al Kamen, of the Washington Post "In the Loop" franchise, has been studying Roll Call's annual list, published Thursday, of the 50 richest members of Congress, and is intrigued to find ("The lawmakers' richer halves") that a fair number "got their money the old-fashioned way -- by marrying into it." (Al prefaces his reporting of the Roll Call numbers, by the way, with the caution that "most of the lawmakers in question are far wealthier even than listed, since disclosure forms may not reveal the extent of their holdings and since Roll Call uses the minimums of the ranges they report.) Links onsite.

Take the very flushest, Rep. Mike McCaul. Most of the Texas Republican's vast fortune -- a minimum of $305.96 million -- comes from his wife, Linda McCaul, whose family's business is a little establishment called Clear Channel Communications. In fact, according to number-crunching Roll Call reporter Amanda Becker, the congressman's net worth "jumped from at least $73.75 million in 2009 to at least $294 million in 2010" thanks to a generous "gift" from his in-laws.

Or Sen. John F. Kerry , the second most affluent, who has ketchup and a spouse to thank for his wealth, estimated to be at least $231.23 million. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is the "widow of the late Sen. H. John Heinz III of the Heinz ketchup fortune," Roll Call notes. Sen. Richard Blumenthal 's wife is the source of most of his $79.61 million, which puts him at No. 6 on the list. Cynthia Blumenthal is the daughter of a New York real estate mogul.

Some women on the list, too, enjoy the financial perks of marriage. Two prominent California Democrats, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (No. 9) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (No. 13), have wealthy husbands. And a newcomer to the top 50, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), gained admittance into the elite club (she's No. 12) with her marriage to financier Donald Sussman.

Seems there might be something to that retro-sounding advice about it being just as easy to marry rich as it is to marry poor. Pass the chardonnay.

SPEAKING OF THE LOOP, IT'S TIME (MAYBE PAST
TIME) TO PREDICT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Our pal Al has also been waxing nostalgic over election crises past, citing the comparison made by his paper's Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, between the Incorporated Willard's mangling of the violence in Libya and "statements from a past Republican presidential ticket -- Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush -- after President Jimmy Carter's disastrous effort to free the hostages being held in Iran during the 1980 campaign."

"This is a difficult day for all of us Americans," Reagan said. "It is time for us . . . to stand united. It is a day for quiet reflection . . . when words should be few and confined essentially to our prayers."

Bush said: "I unequivocally support the president -- no ifs, ands or buts. . . . He made a difficult, courageous decision."

But that's so very, very old-school, back in a time before winning the daily news cycle became the only important thing.

Which brings Al to his important announcement: It's time for the Loop's "Pick the President" contest.

Simply predict:

* The winning candidate.
* The number of electoral votes he'll receive.
* His percentage of the popular vote.

Up to 20 entries choosing the correct candidate will win -- the 10 closest to the electoral-vote total and the 10 closest to the popular-vote percentage (specify to the tenth of a point). Ties go to entries received first.

As usual with Loop contests, each winner will get a "highly coveted" Loop T-shirts. (I've made no secret of the fact that I for one covet one.) Now we come to a bit of a speed bump:

Send entries -- only one set of predictions per person -- to intheloop@washpost.com. Be sure to provide your name, profession, mailing address and T-shirt size (M, L or XL), in case you're a winner.

(Congressional and Obama administration aides may enter "on background.")

You must include a phone number -- home, work or cell -- to be eligible. Deadline for entries is midnight Friday.

Since this column only went up online Thursday, and I'm guessing in the paper yesterday, I can't help feeling that a date has been left off after "midnight Friday," which would thus not mean that the deadline was midnight Friday as in last night.

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That's our Willard!

by Ken

I have more to say about the increasingly unspeakable Willard Inc. in the wake of his adventure in foreign-policy adventuring, but I thought I'd give it a rest today, thanks partly from a subway trip-from-hell getting home this evening, which has left me in poor condition to reflect.

I might note, however, that earlier today AmericaBlog's John Aravosis caught our Willard making essentially the same "apology" to Muslims offended by that dreadful film which Willard so savagelyl excoriated, and continues to excoriate, the U.S. embassy in Cairo for making on Tuesday. "Mitt Romney apologizes to terrorists who killed US ambassador.") He sees no contradiction, of course, because -- as I keep trying to explain to you -- he has essentially no idea what's coming out of his mouth. It's all just stuff, words, designed to produce feelings in some category or other of voters, or donors, or fluffers, or somebody.

After offering detailed versions of both statements, John writes:

So let's compare:

US embassy: "The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims... We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."

Romney: "I think people should have the common courtesy and judgment -– the good judgment– not to be -– not to offend other peoples’ faiths."

Romney just said exactly the same thing that the embassy did, but Romney went one more step. He said that you should abuse the First Amendment. Remember, Republicans were upset that the embassy didn't DEFEND the First Amendment. Romney, went one step further and accused the filmmaker of abusing it. So there are moral limits on the First Amendment, Romney says. So is Romney saying the violence was justified? Well, he's certainly suggesting that the filmmaker doesn't have clean hands here.

This is beyond belief. If anything, Romney's statement is "worse" than the US embassy statement, because Romney made clear that there are moral limits to the First Amendment.

Under Romney's definition, and Fox's and GOP Chair Reince Priebus, Mitt Romney just apologized to the folks who killed our ambassador.

"Just wait a few hours," John suggests, "Romney is going to be backtracking on this entire thing."

Meanwhile, at The American Prospect, Steve Erickson has a terrific piece about "Mitt Romney's Character Problem." Here's a sample:

Romney’s current troubles don’t stem from miscalculation or even a duff convention in Tampa but are manifestations of his own political character as heard and witnessed over the past half-decade. This is a man who has altered his positions—not modified, not tailored, not hedged, but utterly transformed—on every single issue from abortion to climate change to the health-care reform that he signed as governor in Massachusetts. Now he runs a campaign that doesn’t want to talk about his record as governor or as a financier and that refuses to put forth an economic alternative of any detail beyond building the Alaska pipeline and lowering taxes for people like himself, even as at the same time he won’t show us what he pays in taxes now or whether he pays taxes at all. His adamant hostility to revealing anything that resembles an authentic belief or credible strategy for accelerating the recovery is not only losing Romney the choice part of the election but the referendum part as well, as the Democrats succeed in making this a referendum on Romney, not Obama. Romney’s selection of Ryan was meant both to reassure the party’s base and bathe the presidential candidate in the glow of the vice-presidential candidate’s reputation as a man of integrity and candor. As evinced by the ticket’s appearances on this past Sunday morning’s news programs and Ryan’s speech at the Republican Convention, when he blamed Obama for a plant that closed during his predecessor’s term and for a Medicare cut that Ryan himself supports and for not embracing a debt-commission report that Ryan himself opposed and for the country’s credit downgrading that Ryan himself brought about as much as any single individual, it is truth-teller Ryan who bathes in the glow of Romney’s irrefutable standing as the phoniest nominee of our lifetime.

#

No Republicans Running For Election Are Supporting Romney's Anti-American Statements-- Except Fellow Mormon Warmonger Buck McKeon

Yesterday, TPM reported that not all Republican officials fled for their political lives from Romney's insane statements about Obama being on the side of the terrorists in Libya. And they weren't just talking about a hack like Reince Priebus who was scripted by the Romney team. Romney tried to get Republicans to rally around him. Not many did; exceptions being Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and radical crackpot Jim DeMint (R-SC). Kevin Drum has a report at Mother Jones showing that the Romney smear was a premeditated-- if ill-conceived and badly botched-- team effort

This was no late-night, one-person screwup that Romney then felt he had to stand behind. It was a carefully calculated statement drafted by Romney's entire team and then signed off on by Romney himself. Even with his whole staff beavering away on this, apparently not a single person pointed out that (a) they didn't have their facts straight, (b) it might be appropriate to wait a little while before scoring cheap political points, and (c) accusing the president of the United States of "sympathizing" with embassy attackers was beyond the pale.

Alternatively, someone did point this stuff out and got voted down. I'm not sure which is worse.

And if most Republicans actually running for office-- unlike Gingrich, Palin and DeMint-- are making believe they never heard of Mitt Romney, one crazy Republican hardliner is backing Romney to the hilt, fellow Mormon fanatic and warmongering head of the House Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon. Even the Republican L.A. Times, which normally doesn't pay much attention to McKeon's serial transgressions and scandals, seemed surprised.

While many GOP leaders on Capitol Hill distanced themselves from Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's criticism of President Obama after U.S. diplomatic compounds were attacked in Egypt and Libya, a top House Republican said it was no surprise American lives were lost given Obama's approach to foreign policy.

"Again and again under President Obama we have met threats and thugs with apologies and concessions," Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

"Unsurprisingly, these mobs aren't satisfied with apologies anymore, they have clearly been escalating the offensive in the war of ideas for some time,” the Santa Clarita Republican added. "Is it any wonder that events spun out of control and that American lives were lost?"

...[Other than McKeon] top GOP defense hawks in Congress took a decidedly softer public tone than their party's nominee, largely declining to echo the political criticism Romney used in responding to the tragedy.

From Capitol Hill to the congressional campaign trail, Republican officials responded with sadness and calls for justice, but hardly the criticism of Obama that Romney had leveled in the aftermath of the deadly attacks.

The despicable and childish video itself was made by Romney supporting extremists in McKeon's own district, though so far no proof has turned up that McKeon was personally involved.

An inflammatory anti-Muslim film that has been blamed in this week's deadly attack on U.S. diplomats in Libya was produced by a Duarte-based Christian non-profit, officials said.

Media for Christ, which has its administrative offices south of the 210 Freeway in Duarte, took out a film permit for the production, according to City Manager Darrell George.

The producers also used Blue Cloud studios in Santa Clarita, also known as Blue Cloud Movie Ranch, as the film's location, George said.

"It was filmed in Santa Clarita," George said. He said he obtained the information from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

The film negatively portrays the prophet Muhammad as a sex-obsessed, bisexual who thrives on acts of sadistic violence. Several scenes are fairly pornographic including one which appears to depict Mohammed engaged in oral sex.

This is where owning hundreds of thousands of dollars in McKeon's Venetian gambling debts comes in very handy for Sheldon Adelson, who is Romney's biggest financial supporter and who is eager to gin up a war in the Middle East. The biggest newspaper in McKeon's district, The Signal made note of the L.A. Times report and quoted Democrat Lee Rogers' response to McKeon's bizarre comments: "To blame the President for these terrorist attacks is akin to blaming President Bush for 9/11. His statement didn’t condemn the terrorist act or show our resolve in bring those that killed our ambassador to justice. Instead, he attacked the President who just lost a member of his administration, a diplomat of the United States... The United States has only lost five ambassadors in its history. This is a time to mourn the loss of a good American and to find out how this happened, punish those responsible, and determine how we can prevent similar incidents in the future. McKeon responded in hast, without all the facts, and while Americans were still in danger. McKeon’s opportunistic attack was unjustified, undignified, and Un-American. It’s just disgraceful.”


UPDATE: Guess The Zombies Are Falling In Line

And... 24 hours later, Republicans circle the wagons around their "cheap news cycle hit."

Traditions Determine Why Fascism In Switzerland And Libya Are Handled Differently

Alexander Müller. In the U.S. his name might be Paul Broun or Steve King

Most people who lived through Kristallnacht are dead. No, they weren't all killed by Nazis. It took place on November 9 and 10, 1938 and most people born before then are no longer with us to talk about the horror of those two days. Kristallnacht itself, though, is part of the historical record. Even beyond historical tomes and films, Wikipedia has a long entry that puts this eruption of state-sponsored right-wing, racist violence in Germany and Austria into historical context. There's even a heavy metal song about it:



And then for right-wingers... it's part of their pedigree. The Swiss People's Party (SVP)-- analogous to the Tea Party end of the Republican Party here-- pressured one of their political leaders in Zurich, Alexander Müller, to resign from the Zuriberg school board and the right-wing party after he was exposed last week for a tweet suggesting “Maybe we need another Kristallnacht… this time for mosques.” That meant burning them down. The Zurich prosecutor's office is investigating whether he was inciting people to violence. They've seized his computer and searched his home. He was also fired by the insurance company he worked for. He had also tweeted “I would like to stand certain people up against the wall and shoot them. Less dirt on the earth would be good.”

Abdel Azziz Qaasem Illi, spokesman for the Islamic Central Switzerland (ICCS) said “His Holocaust reference is rare nowadays. Though unfortunately statements against Jews are avoided (in Switzerland) it is more common to hear anti-Muslim hate speech.” Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League said, “Holocaust analogies are never acceptable, but Alexander Müller’s call for a Kristallnacht against mosques is more than bigotry-- it is incitement to violence. We must never forget that Kristallnacht marked the beginning of Nazi violence against the Jews of Germany that led to the extermination of millions of Jews solely because of their religion. The world should never, ever again witness another Kristallnacht against any group of people. Calling for another Kristallnacht is simply beyond the pale."

In post-Qadaffi Libya what's beyond the pale is judged differently-- and dealt with differently as well. Very differently according to a report from our old friend Reese Erlich in The Progressive. There the fascism is full-blown, rampant and completely out of control. Erlich points out that the nations that overthrew Qadaffi don't care about the violence and anarchy making Libya unlivable, "France, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States are getting their crude," he writes, "while near chaos reigns in the rest of the country."

The Western-backed National Transition Council (NTC) operates a weak and ineffective government. Some sixty militias are the real power centers. Unable to suppress the militias, the council uses some as auxiliary forces to be called out in time of emergency. Others are signing up among the various political parties, a dangerous trend.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration sees Libya as a great success for its policy of “humanitarian intervention.” NATO removed a dictator hostile to the United States, the argument goes, without the death of any U.S. soldiers and with the cost to the Pentagon of a mere $1.1 billion. (The costs incurred by the CIA, State Department, and other government agencies have never been made public.)

I asked a State Department spokesman in Washington about the invasion’s political aftermath. He minimized the problems, arguing that the American colonists who expelled the British also fought among themselves after the Revolutionary War.

“In 1787, there was major conflict between the groups that fought,” he told me.

But Libya’s situation is far more unstable. I don’t believe there are any recorded cases of disgruntled American revolutionaries engaging in cannon and musket battles in front of the American government headquarters with George Washington trapped inside. That’s the equivalent of what happened in May when one militia used anti-aircraft cannons and rocket-propelled grenades to fight a two-hour gun battle outside the prime minister’s office in Tripoli.

...Washington sought allies among the ex-Qaddafi military leadership and the newly minted militia leaders. The Obama Administration first backed Major General Khalifa Haftar, who reportedly had CIA ties while living in the United States for many years. He became commander-in-chief of the National Army until he was ambushed and wounded by the Zintan militia. Shortly thereafter he was demoted. The United States also backs Osama Al-Juwali, current minister of defense and former leader of the Zintan militia.

Libyan revolutionaries fear that such men will become U.S.-backed autocrats, similar to those who rose in Afghanistan.

“Some leaders here in Libya are trying to get Western backing to become the next Hamid Karzai,” says Elhabib Alamin, a famous poet and official with the Ministry of Culture. “We don’t want another Iraq or Afghanistan here in Libya. Those wars didn’t result in improvements for the people.”

The United States and the International Monetary Fund also are imposing cookie-cutter solutions for Libya’s economic future, leaning on the council to privatize state-owned companies and eliminate state subsidies.

Under their tutelage, for example, the Ministry of Economy studied how to eliminate food subsidies and other state-sponsored services that protect poor Libyans from the impact of inflation and unemployment. Economy Minister Ahmed Alkoshli acknowledged that complying with western dictates won’t be easy. “It’s very difficult to suddenly cut the subsidies,” he told me. “People will complain.”

The IMF will also face strong opposition from Libya’s nascent trade union movement, which has organized dozens of strikes so far this year. Workers at the Sirte Oil Company struck last October and forced the removal of the company president.

Mabrouk Othman, vice president of the Sirte union, tells me workers would never allow privatization of government oil fields and refineries. Profits from oil and gas should help pay for health care, education, and other public services as they do now, he says, adding that privatization of the oil industry is “a redline that can’t be crossed.”

Libya’s future economic policies are supposed to be determined through free elections for a national assembly, which will appoint a new government and oversee writing a new constitution. The elections will take place July 7.

But as experience in Afghanistan and Iraq shows, one or two elections do not a democracy make. In a particularly dangerous development, political parties are now allying with the strongest of the militias. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Development Party has a militia. Jihadist leader Abd al-Hakim Belhadj ran for the assembly while maintaining his Tripoli militia.

The alliances of parties and militias can quickly develop into a system of warlords, with politicians illegally siphoning off government funds to pay for the salaries and arms of their allied forces. Libya seems destined for a prolonged period of instability.

The Qaddafi Regime And The Bush Regime-- Together Forever In Crimes Against Humanity

Lately we've been covering the overthrow of Libya's government by the CIA from the perspective of how they overthrew governments they deemed "unfriendly" in Iran, Guatemala, Ecuador, Chile, etc. Before Bush left office, however, the CIA had a very good reason to keep Qaddafi in power: rendition and torture, the kind of rendition and torture that Cheney was on TV celebrating last weekend.

Very embarrassing documents have been discovered by Human Rights Watch and the British Independent newspaper's journalists that reveal close intelligence relationship between the United States, the UK and Libya during the so-called War on Terror.

The secret files reveal that the secret services of the UK, MI6 and the United States, the CIA had a regular dialogue with their counterparts in Libyan Intelligence, in particular with the former Libyan foreign minister and head of Libya's intelligence service, Mussa Kussa who defected days after the outbreak of the uprising that ousted the Libyan dictator Muammar Al Qathafi from power.

Mussa Kussa, who have long been accused by Rights groups of involvement in atrocities, had called on the UK to arrest him at the time, but after first defecting to the UK, he later flew on to Qatar.

Short story-- in return for Qaddafi's thugs torturing people the CIA decided needed rough treatment, the CIA handed over information on anti-Qaddafi dissidents. "In its report about the Human Rights Watch's discovery, the BBC goes on to say that the papers outline the rendition of several suspects, including one that Human Rights Watch has identified as Abdel Hakim Belhaj, known in the documents as Abdullah al-Sadiq, who is now the military commander of the rebel forces in Tripoli." Oops!

Although this isn't getting much coverage in the U.S., the NY Times mentioned it over the sleepy Labor Day Weekend. It wasn't information that came totally out of the blue and a CIA propagandist excused the whole thing as legitimate. “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats.” See? What's a little crimes against humanity between ruling elite types?

Although it has been known that Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after it abandoned its program to build unconventional weapons in 2004, the files left behind as Tripoli fell to rebels show that the cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and its British equivalent, MI-6.

Some documents indicate that the British agency was even willing to trace phone numbers for the Libyans, and another appears to be a proposed speech written by the Americans for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi about renouncing unconventional weapons.

...One document in the C.I.A. binder said operatives were “in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody, similar to what we have done with other senior L.I.F.G. members in the recent past.” The reference was to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was dedicated to the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi, and which American officials believed had ties to Al Qaeda.

When Libyans asked to be sent Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, another member of the group, a case officer wrote back on March 4, 2004, that “we are committed to developing this relationship for the benefit of both our services,” and promised to do their best to locate him, according to a document in the C.I.A. binder.

Two days later, an officer faxed the Libyans to say that Mr. Sadiq and his pregnant wife were planning to fly into Malaysia, and the authorities there agreed to put them on a British Airways flight to London that would stop in Bangkok. “We are planning to take control of the pair in Bangkok and place them on our aircraft for a flight to your country,” the case officer wrote.

That's the guy who's now running the show for the "rebels" in Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who says a couple of CIA thugs also tortured him while he was in Bangkok before they sent him off to Qaddafi. No wonder McCain was sucking up to Qaddafi. This crap is right up his alley. One has to wonder if, when he brought his gay little South Carolina sidekick with him to meet Muammar if they let Lindsay have his way with any of the hapless captives. Plenty more papers yet to be translated.


Predictably enough, Saturday's Wall Street Journal just loved In My Time, Dick Cheney's entirely self-serving memoir. If you don't even get beyond the title of Paul Gigot's grotesque and entirely ideological apologia, you find out that "Cheney was relentless and unapologetic in pursuit of his policy goals-- and Americans are safer for it." What more would anyone need to know?

On Guantánamo, interrogations, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wiretapping without a warrant, and the rest of the Bush antiterror architecture, he marshals familiar arguments and claims vindication.

He has a strong case, aided in no small part by the Obama administration. One virtue of Barack Obama's victory in 2008 is that it has put a Democratic stamp on the war on terror. In every particular except for interrogations, Mr. Obama has either embraced or been forced to accept substantially the policies that the Bush administration devised... Mr. Obama may not want to admit it, but his success against al Qaeda owes more to Dick Cheney than it does to his own campaign agenda.

Hard to understand why Gigot and his cronies hate Obama so much. He is, after all, just keeping Cheney's flame alive throughout the world.