War Criminal Obama Killing Civilians
In Six Counties And Accuses Gadhafi of Same
By Jay Janson
01 April, 2011
Countercurrents.org
http://www.countercurrents.org/janson010411.htm
If Gadhafi is killer of civilians, "it takes one to know one.' Gadhafi ? Obama? Who is killing? "It's all in the eye of the [CNN] beholder.' Karzai, all Afghanis, plead Obama to stop killing them. Pakistani Senators take Obama to court, Pakistanis march against Obama killing their children with Predator and (Grim) Reaper drones. Libya civil war another CIA- al Qaeda orchestration? UN rates Libya living standard #1 in Africa The President, in his speech of March 28, intended to explain his ordering air strikes on Libyan government forces, made so many seemingly unnecessary untruthful statements?
Surprising was his falsely quoting Gadhafi.
If, as the president and media have charged, Gadhafi has been indeed targeting civilians and not heavily armed insurgents, why should Obama have felt the need to put words in Gadhafi's mouth, as if there a need to further enflame the hatred for Libya's leader already successfully aroused by long anti-Gadhafi Western media.
Obama: "Gadhafi declared he would show "no mercy" to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment."
Reuters News Agency, March 21, 2011 click here :
"Muammar Gaddafi told Libyan rebels on Thursday his armed forces were coming to their capital Benghazi tonight and would not show any mercy to fighters who resisted them.
In a radio address, he told Benghazi residents that soldiers would search every house in the city and people who had no arms had no reason to fear...
He also told his troops not to pursue any rebels who drop their guns and flee when government forces reach the city."
When something seems 'too bad to be true' our suspicions are aroused.
Obama:
"Gadhafi ...launching a military campaign against the Libyan people. Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Journalists were arrested, sexually assaulted, and killed. Supplies of food and fuel were choked off. Water for hundreds of thousands of people in Misrata was shut off. Cities and towns were shelled, mosques were destroyed, and apartment buildings reduced to rubble. Military jets and helicopter gun ships were unleashed upon people who had no means to defend themselves against assaults from the air."
"In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day. Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that if we wanted -- if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.".
Somehow this insidious portrait made some of us recall the horrific and ghastly stories Americans were fed about about the VietCong (heroic Vietnamese fighting a brutal U.S. Armed Forces occupation after earlier having fought the French and Japanese military.) Reminds one of other demonizing tall tales - Iraqi soldiers pulling out the life-support tubes of babies in a Kuwait hospital. Western media demonized the Vietnamese fighting for their independence, and made the world accept U.S. war on Iraq.
Gadhafi is the leader for African Unity against European economic neocolonialism and for ending colonial power control of the United Nations though the U.S. dominated UN Security Council, which Gadhafi called "the Terror Council." And no one is forgiven for nationalizing one's own nation's oil production profits.
We can take the President's words about Gadhafi as true, it is what all Western media has been reporting, but we really didn't see much of "unleashed' planes and tanks until truck loads of heavily armed rebels were on the roads toward Tripoli. One does remember two planes defecting to Malta, two others falling out of the sky, one shot down over the ocean, CNN repeating that Gadhafi planes were bombing cites, but showing for many days the same bomb crater outside of town and reporting no one killed.
President Obama left unmentioned in his description of Gadhafi's behavior, Gadhafi's almost daily having asked for negotiations, talks, communication, constantly pleading for the UN or any country to send investigators to Libya to see for themselves what was happening. Even after the U.S. bombing started, some networks reported the UN Secretariat ignoring his latest communication request.
And Reuters is among the few Western media to have reported rebel killings, even executions of more than fifty-five people, some by hanging, and a rape story as well.(*)
Obama seemed to pad a laundry list of nastiness that as it went on a included along with genocide, much smaller examples unneeded to further justify his ordered military attack. Even to the point of including a rape reported by a woman to Western journalists, who were then arrested and held temporarily for physically interfering with the police,(**) and accusing Gadhafi for the deaths of a couple of journalists in Benghazi who apparently died in crossfire from unidentified sources.(***)
The speech explaining why the U.S. again went to war devoted a lot of time to convince us that Gadhafi was insufferable. But CNN and all TV networks and press have made it abundantly clear that Gadhafi be some kind of evil monster heading a bloodthirsty Libyan dictatorship of thugs. Could it possibly be 'In the eye of the [CNN] beholder?'
Other Speech Highlights and Commentary:
"Libya sits directly between Tunisia and Egypt - two nations that inspired the world when their people rose up to take control of their own destiny."
"Inspired the world" by overthrowing long U.S. supported tyrants? President Obama was "inspired" ? He told Mubarak to hold on, while protesters were dying - make some reforms?
"For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant - Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth,"
How so? if by nationalizing Libya's oil, Gadhafi brought Libya the highest standard of living of any nation in Africa - UN Human Development Index, 2010
" ... murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world - including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents."
"Americans who were killed by Libyan agents." Who? Where? Is new evidence, or is this the same accusation of double homicide in a cafe in Germany that President Reagan used to make himself judge, jury and executioner, sending U.S. warplanes to bomb Gadhafi's home killing the accused' daughter and one hundred other Libyans?
And the proof that Gadhafi murdered people? No conviction needed? And was Gadhafi himself not the target of numerous assassination attempts like Fidel Castro had to endure for nationalizing his country.
"Last month, ... Libyans took to the streets to claim their basic human rights. "As one Libyan said, "For the first time we finally have hope that our nightmare of 40 years will soon be over."
Quoting one unidentified Libyan in agreement with you? Does that strengthen your case or cause us to be be skeptical?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0 ,1518,752580,00.html
Der Spiegel Online International , quotes a pro Gadhafi cab driver in Benghazi in Libyan Rebel Stronghold - Frustration Mounts on the Streets of Benghazi By Jonathan Stock in Benghazi 3/30/11, "Benghazi isn't a pure rebel stronghold, there are Gadhafi supporters here too. They're keeping a low profile and waiting for better days. Some still see Gadhafi as the strong leader he claims to be, as the man who promised to build half a million new houses, which haven't been finished yet.
"Gadhafi Good!"
A driver waiting in front of a hotel who overheard that I was German said: "Gadhafi good! Gadhafi - Germany - good!". Whenever he came to rebel checkpoints, he gave their "V for Victory" sign, but when he had driven past them, he raised his fist the way Gadhafi does at
"I made it clear that Gaddafi had lost the confidence of his people and the legitimacy to lead, and I said that he needed to step down from power."
Well, okay, but strictly speaking, you, as the president of foreign nation, should, after all not be the one who should have the say.
"the Arab League, appealed to the world to save lives in Libya."
Yes, but Arab countries that have not been under the heel of U.S. supported dictators, Algeria and Syria, voted against the Arab League's asking for a no-fly-zone.
"At my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass an historic Resolution that authorized a No Fly Zone to stop the regime's attacks from the air, and further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people."
President Karzai of Afghanistan has been pleading for you and to President Bush before you, to stop killing his citizens from the air to no avail - seven children a few days ago - nine last week. Pakistani Senators have tried to take you to court and Pakistanis from all walks have been marching against your killing their brothers and sisters and children with Predator and Reaper [named after the grim reaper] drones by Hellfire Missiles. If Gadhafi is a cruel war criminal guilty of crimes against humanity - how does that saying go? "it takes one to know one.'
"I authorized military action to stop the killing. ... We hit Gaddafi's troops in neighboring Ajdabiya, allowing the opposition to drive them out."
Meaning, you bombed inside a city to protect civilians from their government? (CNN depreciates as a mere claim, the Libyan government reporting civilian death tolls, passing on the suspicion that Gadhafi's men are just trying to make America look bad.)
"Gaddafi has not yet stepped down from power, and until he does, Libya will remain dangerous. Moreover, even after Gaddafi does leave power, forty years of tyranny has left Libya fractured and without strong civil institutions."
UN Human Development Report for 2010 awarded Libya #1 in Africa far above most all the U.S. backed African dictator's nations. Lowest infant mortality, best hospitals, free education and investment in higher education, highest living standards. Libya has an Arab Socialist constitution.
"a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries"
Obama failed to share with us the fact that Russia and China are denouncing bombing beyond the "no-fly-zone and along with the Arab league and African Union are calling for an immediate halt.
"a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves."
Correction: At least from some of the Libyan people.
"Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different."
Really? Does the USA look at American atrocities in Vietnam straight in the eye?
"I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."
Like the bulldozed mass graves for the bodies of many of the 100,000 Iraqi soldiers shot in the back while retreating from Kuwait?
"there are those ... who have suggested that we broaden our military mission beyond the task of protecting the Libyan people, and do whatever it takes to bring down Gaddafi and usher in a new government.'
This is just what is being done, no? Air power blasting away at the Libyan army so insurgents can successfully attack.
"there is no question that Libya - and the world - will be better off with Gaddafi out of power."
Because Gadhafi like Nkruma before him, leads a movement for African unity against European economic exploitation? Because he calls the U.S dominated UN Security Council "a Council of Terror for the 65 wars it has failed to prevent."
"broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake."
Did listeners and viewers not feel they were being jerked around with double talk?
"If we tried to overthrow Gaddafi by force, "
Isn't that what is being done by air power cover for the insurgents?
"... our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground, or risk killing many civilians from the air."
Why, if you say we mustn't "use force" for regime change?
"we are hopeful about Iraq's future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars."
No, more than a million Iraqi lives. Too bad about the money. "That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya."
"We will ... work with other nations to hasten the day when Gaddafi leaves power."
Doesn't that go against Libyans choosing their own destiny?
"But it should be clear to those around Gaddafi, and to every Libyan, that history is not on his side."
Because President Obama said he must go.
" I will never hesitate to use our military defend our people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests. That is why we are going after al Qaeda wherever they seek a foothold."
But it has been admitted that al Qaeda elements are within the ranks of the insurgents in Libya whose cause we a helping? And if so, it wouldn't be the first time CIA used al Qaeda. [Three articles. two with West Point and Embassy documents are appended in the footnotes](****)
"That is why we continue to fight in Afghanistan,"
... where CIA once funded Saudi Arabian al Qaeda before they went on to 9/11
"even as we have ended our combat mission in Iraq and removed more than 100,000 troops from that country."
But have left 47,000 plus thousands of armed contractors and the CIA, which New Yorker Magazine investigator reporter Seymour Hersh expected was involved in the sectarian violence for many years.
"when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and values are."
Sure, the interests of private U.S. investment capital, but values? Which values?
"As we have in Libya, our task is instead to mobilize the international community for collective action."
What if some day an international community mobilized for collective action to protect Americans in the U.S.?
" when one of our airmen parachuted to the ground, in a country whose leader has so often demonized the United States - in a region that has such a difficult history with our country - this American did not find enemies. Instead, he was met by people who embraced him. One young Libyan who came to his aid said, "We are your friends. We are so grateful to these men who are protecting the skies."
Propaganda Minister Goebells always reeled out such endorsements from people in nations the Nazis invaded.
"There are places, like Egypt, where this change will inspire us and raise our hopes."
Oops! So people many people were murdered by U.S. thirty-year supported dictator Mubarak. Some after you sent envoy Weisner to tell Mubarak to hang in there.
"And there will be places, like Iran, where change is fiercely suppressed."
Oops! CIA overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953 for the oil, backed and aided Saddam Hussein's eight year invasion of Iran to the cost of a million lives, backs a reform movement led by a former eight-year prime minister who oversaw execution of socialists and union leaders and a former president who is the richest man in Iran.
Maybe decades from now, when another batch of CIA files is declassified, Obama will be found to have known nothing about the plan that took advantage of the thousands of years of cultural and political independence of Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya) from Tripoli to covertly manipulate sincere differences into violent disorder through murderous provocations with the aim of creating a civil war in Libya - as CIA and its wide network of organizations have successfully accomplished in so many other vulnerable countries.
Footnotes - Search Results:
(*)
In Deaths caused by Anti-Gaddafi forces, Wikipedia has this entry.
"Among the security forces there had been more than 450 dead, including civilians in support of the government, mercenaries and government soldiers. There have been many reports that members of the security forces have been killed by both the government and the opposition. On February 18, two policemen were hanged by protesters in Benghazi. Also, on the same day, 50 African mercenaries, mostly from Chad, were executed by the protesters in al-Baida. Some of them were killed when protesters burned down the police station in which they locked them up and at least 15 were lynched in front of the courthouse in al-Baida. The bodies of some of them were put on display and caught on video. By February 23, the government confirmed that 111 soldiers had been killed."
Reuters was among those reporting that rebels had killed many government soldiers, executing fifty Africans.
Only by scanning the Internet, can one come across:
Libya: Seconds from a bullet in the head , by Mohammed Abbas, 3/4/11, Scotsman "this alleged African mercenary was captured by furious Libyan opposition fighters yesterday and was about to be shot before a foreign reporter persuaded them not to execute him,
click here
(**)
Coverage of incident in which woman (not a journalist as mistakenly referred to in speech:
Dragged away after rape claims
Sydney Morning Herald , 3/28/11
TRIPOLI: A distraught Libyan woman burst into a hotel housing foreign journalists in Tripoli and accused security forces of torturing and raping her.
Iman al-Obeidi was dragged away by plain-clothes officials and driven off to an uncertain fate after she breached security at the government-run Rixos Hotel.
''Look at what Gaddafi's militias did to me,'' she told reporters, crying and upset as she described her ordeal. ''They swore at me and they filmed me. I was alone. There was whisky. I was tied up. They violated my honour.''
[Article includes action photo of scene]
click here
-----------------------
Rape claim woman charged with defamation
Sydney Morning Herald, 3/28/11
A woman who stormed into a Tripoli hotel where foreign journalists were staying and accused Libyan soldiers of raping her will be charged with defamation, although inquiries are continuing, a government official spokesman confirmed today.
"Accusing someone of a sex crime in a conservative society like ours is a very serious matter," government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said about the woman, Iman al-Obeidi.
"She gave the names of the people she accused of raping her and they have lodged a complaint for defamation and calumny against her."
-----------------------------------
click here
Libya says woman claiming rape is now free , AP, 3/27/11
(***)
Der Spiegel, Germany, 3/22/11 has reported shots from unidentified gunmen killed the two journalists, and cameraman during the violence in Benghazi.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0 ,1518,752580,00.html
Der Spiegel Online International , 3/30/11
Benghazi isn't a pure rebel stronghold, there are Gadhafi supporters here too. They're keeping a low profile and waiting for better days. Some still see Gadhafi as the strong leader he claims to be, as the man who promised to build half a million new houses, which haven't been finished yet.
"Gadhafi Good!"
A driver waiting in front of a hotel who overheard that I was German said: "Gadhafi good! Gadhafi - Germany - good!". Whenever he came to rebel checkpoints, he gave their "V for Victory" sign, but when he had driven past them, he raised his fist the way Gadhafi does a n
Only by scanning the Internet, can one come across:
(****)
click here
Libyan Rebel Commander Admits his Fighters Have Al-Qaeda Links - Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. by Praveen Swami, Nick Squires and Duncan Gardham, The Telegraph 3/26/11
n an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".
Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.
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click here
Libya Rebels: Gaddafi Could be Right About al-Qaeda -
Two documents suggest northeast Libya, centre of rebellion, is an al-Qaeda hotspot. By Alexander Cockburn, First Post, 3/24/11
" a secret cable to the State Department from the US embassy in Tripoli in 2008, part of the WikiLeaks trove, entitled "Extremism in Eastern Libya", which revealed that this area is rife with anti-American, pro-jihad sentiment.
According to the 2008 cable, the most troubling aspect "... is the pride that many eastern Libyans, particularly those in and around Dernah, appear to take in the role their native sons have played in the insurgency in Iraq " [and the] ability of radical imams to propagate messages urging support for and participation in jihad."
The second document, or rather set of documents, are the so-called Sinjar Records, captured al-Qaeda documents that fell into American hands in 2007. They were duly analyzed by the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point. Al-Qaeda is a bureaucratic outfit and the records contain precise details on personnel, including those who came to Iraq to fight American and coalition forces and, when necessary, commit suicide.
The West Point analysts' statistical study of the al-Qaeda personnel records concludes that one country provided "far more" foreign fighters in per capita terms than any other: namely, Libya.
The records show that the "vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their home town in the Sinjar Records resided in the country's northeast". Benghazi provided many volunteers. So did Dernah, a town about 200 kms east of Benghazi, in which an Islamic emirate was declared when the rebellion against Gaddafi started.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
click here
The CIA's Libya Rebels: 2007 West Point Study Shows Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk Area was a World Leader in Al Qaeda Suicide Bomber Recruitment , By Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D., Tarpley, Washington D.C., 3/24/11
"The rebels are clearly not civilians, but an armed force. What kind of an armed force?"
Afterword :
As the days go by, those wild faces against Gadhafi are strikingly dissimilar to the beautiful, noble, charming, earnest, simpatico look of the faces of Arabs in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain demanding better living conditions, jobs, decent wages, schools and health facilities. Libya has the highest life expectancy rate on the continent. Education and health receive special state attention. The cultural level of the population is without a doubt higher. Its problems are of another nature. The population is not in need of food or basic social services. The country requires many foreign workers to implement its ambitious production and social development plans. Libya therefore offers employment to hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other nations, especially African nations.
For American led private finance investment capital's magnates, controlling all commercial media since end of WW II and fielding a powerful CIA, able to orchestrate, foster, arrange, participate and benefit from civil wars all around the world, Libya was perhaps especially easy.
Cyrenaica (Benghazi) and Tripoli had been separate entities until 1934 when Mussolini invented Libya (ancient Greek name for all N. Africa). From 1911 the Italians had governed them separately, as had the Turks, Arab Caliphates, Byzantine and Romans. In the 7th century BC Phoenicians founded what would be Tripoli and the Greeks Cyrenaica to its East. King Idris I of Libya, put in by the withdrawing British in 1951 and overthrown by Gadhafi was from Cyrenaica.
Apparently the decentralized Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya underwrote this cultural ethnicity, and made perhaps fertile ground for what surely was not merely an internal affair since February 19, 2011.
Also helpful for any purposefully planned civil disturbance is the fact that Libya recently loosened its strict control over foreign media. CNN has been able to imbed itself and cheerlead the armed rebellion against the long established pariah of the powerful nations. Quite quickly, it seems, defecting politicians and army officers in Benghazi form a government recognized first by CNN and then by French President Sarkozy. (After WW II, France had wanted to keep Fezzan, or S. Libya, which adjioned French Algeria.)
Will history books credit all this bloodshed to Gadhafi having targeted protesters demonstrating mid February, or was there a lot of orchestrated firing and killing meant to provoke confusion and violence while heavily armed elements were ready to be activated - it is known that CIA agents are everywhere.
One wonders who might be writing Obama's speeches? Who might be reviewing before approving them? CIA, Pentagon, the trusted of the military industrial complex of private investment capital's jungle kingpins? Won't awareness of the mediocrity of the product surely arise pretty soon.
For a lot of us, the charming young former Harvard Law School graduate of high in his class distinction is coming across like a boy pretending maturity. Perhaps Barack is beginning to feel the strain of being stuck in something he will continue to have no input, just acting out his constantly predescribed role.
There must be moments in which the bright-eyed young man who enjoyed and was inspired by the beautiful, musical, humorous but soul bracing ethically revolutionary sermons of his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright still lives. If so, what a crushing feeling it must bring when Obama turns back to his Presidential desk prison, and shame for the perfidious acts, especially the murderous orders he has felt it necessary to go along with, all the slinky pats on the back from deep pockets and their hatchet men and media notwithstanding.
Feel sorry him, we should. We know not his anguish in pretending to been be allowed some personal fine tuning in what media reports as the president's decision. To not have been permitted real participation in at least some of what those playboys of private investment capital planned so approximately, but strictly, for him to say and do, and conveyed to him though their tough guy intermediaries.
Take action -- contact your local newspaper or congress people:
No invasions, bombings of other countries. Simple! Nice Superpower!
Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, India, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.