NATO’s terror bombing of Libya
Bill Van Auken | 09.06.2011 14:13 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Terror War | World
The relentless bombardment of Tripoli over the past 48 hours represents a new stage in one of the most naked acts of imperialist aggression since the wars of conquest launched by Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s.
Warplanes struck the Libyan capital 62 times between Tuesday and early Wednesday morning. The daylight air strikes underscored that Libya, its air force and air defense system devastated by earlier attacks, remains virtually defenseless in the face of the US-NATO blitzkrieg.
At least 31 people were killed and dozens wounded. The bombings have demolished civilian government buildings, while damaging homes, hospitals and schools. Their intended collateral effect is to terrorize Tripoli’s population of 1.7 million.
The sharp escalation in the bombing campaign comes just days after the deployment of British and French attack helicopters, widely seen as the prelude to a direct ground invasion.
Meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, a summit of NATO foreign ministers agreed to continue the 10-week-old bombing campaign “as long as necessary,” while US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, pushed for other NATO member states, including Germany, Poland, Turkey and Spain, to join in the bombing of the oppressed African nation.
In an earlier period, such air attacks were described as “terror bombings.” They were carried out by Hitler’s Luftwaffe against defenseless populations—in Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, in Warsaw in 1939, in Rotterdam in 1940 and in Belgrade in 1941—with the aim of annihilating the targeted country’s armed forces, destroying its state and breaking the morale of all those opposed to foreign occupation.
In North Africa, similar campaigns of aggression and terror were waged by Mussolini’s fascist regime against Ethiopia and—then, as now—Libya.
There is little to distinguish these earlier acts of aggression—for which leaders of the Third Reich were prosecuted at Nuremberg—from the present US-NATO war. In both their aims and methods, they are largely similar.
The US-NATO war is being conducted under the pretense of enforcing a United Nations resolution authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect the country’s civilian population. The leaders of the US and the major European powers all acknowledge that this resolution is a joke.
The real aim of this war, like those waged in the 1930s, is imperialist conquest. The US, Britain, France and Italy are all openly pursuing “regime-change” in Libya, seeking to topple the existing government of Muammar Gaddafi and impose a new client state that will work as the puppet of the major powers and the Western energy conglomerates.
They have seized upon the popular upheavals sweeping the Middle East and North Africa to subjugate this sparsely populated country, which is strategically located between the two Arab nations where the most far-reaching uprisings have taken place—Egypt and Tunisia. Their purpose is not, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have cynically claimed, to safeguard the “Arab spring,” but rather to put themselves in a military position to strangle it.
Acting under the pretense of enforcing a UN resolution and protecting civilian life, the US and its allies have caused immense suffering among Libyan civilians. They have likewise jettisoned the essential contents of the UN’s founding charter, which outlawed wars of aggression and upheld the principle of national sovereignty, barring intervention in the domestic affairs of member states.
They have carried out acts of aggression with the patent aim of assassinating Libya’s head of state and destroying its armed forces and state infrastructure. In the process, they have bombed central Tripoli and parts of other cities to smithereens and have killed innocent men, women and children—not to mention untold numbers of soldiers, many of them conscripts as young as 17.
The NATO bombing has also turned thousands of Libyans and migrant workers into refugees, fleeing for their lives. Many hundreds have died in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean. There is growing fear that the war will trigger a humanitarian disaster, depriving the civilian population of food, water and medical care.
Those responsible for these acts--Barack Obama, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and others--are guilty of war crimes.
At their meeting in Brussels, the NATO foreign ministers were told that preparations must be made for a “post-Gaddafi Libya.” It can be predicted with certainty that, if achieved, this objective will take the form of a second military campaign—a reign of terror against the Libyan population, designed to crush any resistance to foreign domination.
What has Libya done to the countries—including Denmark, Norway and Sweden—that are now raining bombs down upon its cities and population? The answer is nothing. They are joining in the imperialist onslaught as the price of admission to the “post-Gaddafi” carve-up of the country’s assets, both its oil reserves and the tens of billions of dollars that have been “frozen” in Western banks.
In carrying out this criminal imperialist adventure, the US and NATO have been able to exploit the near total absence of an antiwar movement in either America or Europe.
In the four decades since the Vietnam War, organized antiwar sentiment has played a political role on both continents. On the eve of the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq in 2003, millions took to the streets across the globe in an unprecedented international demonstration against war and imperialism.
Yet now, with US imperialism waging three wars of aggression simultaneously, and with the major powers in Europe joining in, the continuing opposition to war felt by broad masses of the population finds no significant public expression.
This political phenomenon is to be explained in large measure by the evolution of an entire middle-class ex-left layer which comprised the leadership of the antiwar protests of a previous period. While taking different political forms—in the US, an ever-deepening integration into the Democratic Party, and in Europe, the trajectory of the Greens and other so-called “left” political formations—this evolution has common social and political roots: the increased wealth of this layer and its accommodation to imperialism under the thoroughly hypocritical slogan of “human rights.”
Prominent among this layer is a coterie of formerly “leftist” academics—personified by the University of Michigan Middle East historian Juan Cole—who virtually salivate over every new NATO bombardment, proclaiming each attack a blow for a “Free Libya.” In the shameless pro-war propaganda of some of these professorial scoundrels, there is an unmistakable echo of the positions taken by a similar middle-class layer in Germany during the rise of Nazism.
A new antiwar movement, based on the working class and a socialist perspective, must emerge in response to the assault on Libya, the continuing crimes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and new acts of militarism yet to come.
These wars are being carried out by a ruling financial elite in an attempt to offset the catastrophic consequences of the economic crisis gripping global, and above all US, capitalism. Militarism abroad is combined with a relentless war against the living standards and basic social rights of working people in every country. While the ex-left erstwhile leadership of the middle-class protest movement is moving to the right, this crisis is pushing workers to the left.
The struggle against war—for an end to the imperialist aggression against Libya, the withdrawal of all US and other foreign troops from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and a halt to the threat of new and even bloodier imperialist conflagrations—can be waged only as part of the fight to mobilize the working class politically against the profit system, the source of militarism.
To succeed, this movement must be based upon a new perspective and strategy of socialist internationalism, to unite the working class in every country in a common struggle to put an end to capitalism and begin the socialist reorganization of the world economy to meet social needs, rather than private profit.
At least 31 people were killed and dozens wounded. The bombings have demolished civilian government buildings, while damaging homes, hospitals and schools. Their intended collateral effect is to terrorize Tripoli’s population of 1.7 million.
The sharp escalation in the bombing campaign comes just days after the deployment of British and French attack helicopters, widely seen as the prelude to a direct ground invasion.
Meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, a summit of NATO foreign ministers agreed to continue the 10-week-old bombing campaign “as long as necessary,” while US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, pushed for other NATO member states, including Germany, Poland, Turkey and Spain, to join in the bombing of the oppressed African nation.
In an earlier period, such air attacks were described as “terror bombings.” They were carried out by Hitler’s Luftwaffe against defenseless populations—in Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, in Warsaw in 1939, in Rotterdam in 1940 and in Belgrade in 1941—with the aim of annihilating the targeted country’s armed forces, destroying its state and breaking the morale of all those opposed to foreign occupation.
In North Africa, similar campaigns of aggression and terror were waged by Mussolini’s fascist regime against Ethiopia and—then, as now—Libya.
There is little to distinguish these earlier acts of aggression—for which leaders of the Third Reich were prosecuted at Nuremberg—from the present US-NATO war. In both their aims and methods, they are largely similar.
The US-NATO war is being conducted under the pretense of enforcing a United Nations resolution authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect the country’s civilian population. The leaders of the US and the major European powers all acknowledge that this resolution is a joke.
The real aim of this war, like those waged in the 1930s, is imperialist conquest. The US, Britain, France and Italy are all openly pursuing “regime-change” in Libya, seeking to topple the existing government of Muammar Gaddafi and impose a new client state that will work as the puppet of the major powers and the Western energy conglomerates.
They have seized upon the popular upheavals sweeping the Middle East and North Africa to subjugate this sparsely populated country, which is strategically located between the two Arab nations where the most far-reaching uprisings have taken place—Egypt and Tunisia. Their purpose is not, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have cynically claimed, to safeguard the “Arab spring,” but rather to put themselves in a military position to strangle it.
Acting under the pretense of enforcing a UN resolution and protecting civilian life, the US and its allies have caused immense suffering among Libyan civilians. They have likewise jettisoned the essential contents of the UN’s founding charter, which outlawed wars of aggression and upheld the principle of national sovereignty, barring intervention in the domestic affairs of member states.
They have carried out acts of aggression with the patent aim of assassinating Libya’s head of state and destroying its armed forces and state infrastructure. In the process, they have bombed central Tripoli and parts of other cities to smithereens and have killed innocent men, women and children—not to mention untold numbers of soldiers, many of them conscripts as young as 17.
The NATO bombing has also turned thousands of Libyans and migrant workers into refugees, fleeing for their lives. Many hundreds have died in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean. There is growing fear that the war will trigger a humanitarian disaster, depriving the civilian population of food, water and medical care.
Those responsible for these acts--Barack Obama, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and others--are guilty of war crimes.
At their meeting in Brussels, the NATO foreign ministers were told that preparations must be made for a “post-Gaddafi Libya.” It can be predicted with certainty that, if achieved, this objective will take the form of a second military campaign—a reign of terror against the Libyan population, designed to crush any resistance to foreign domination.
What has Libya done to the countries—including Denmark, Norway and Sweden—that are now raining bombs down upon its cities and population? The answer is nothing. They are joining in the imperialist onslaught as the price of admission to the “post-Gaddafi” carve-up of the country’s assets, both its oil reserves and the tens of billions of dollars that have been “frozen” in Western banks.
In carrying out this criminal imperialist adventure, the US and NATO have been able to exploit the near total absence of an antiwar movement in either America or Europe.
In the four decades since the Vietnam War, organized antiwar sentiment has played a political role on both continents. On the eve of the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq in 2003, millions took to the streets across the globe in an unprecedented international demonstration against war and imperialism.
Yet now, with US imperialism waging three wars of aggression simultaneously, and with the major powers in Europe joining in, the continuing opposition to war felt by broad masses of the population finds no significant public expression.
This political phenomenon is to be explained in large measure by the evolution of an entire middle-class ex-left layer which comprised the leadership of the antiwar protests of a previous period. While taking different political forms—in the US, an ever-deepening integration into the Democratic Party, and in Europe, the trajectory of the Greens and other so-called “left” political formations—this evolution has common social and political roots: the increased wealth of this layer and its accommodation to imperialism under the thoroughly hypocritical slogan of “human rights.”
Prominent among this layer is a coterie of formerly “leftist” academics—personified by the University of Michigan Middle East historian Juan Cole—who virtually salivate over every new NATO bombardment, proclaiming each attack a blow for a “Free Libya.” In the shameless pro-war propaganda of some of these professorial scoundrels, there is an unmistakable echo of the positions taken by a similar middle-class layer in Germany during the rise of Nazism.
A new antiwar movement, based on the working class and a socialist perspective, must emerge in response to the assault on Libya, the continuing crimes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and new acts of militarism yet to come.
These wars are being carried out by a ruling financial elite in an attempt to offset the catastrophic consequences of the economic crisis gripping global, and above all US, capitalism. Militarism abroad is combined with a relentless war against the living standards and basic social rights of working people in every country. While the ex-left erstwhile leadership of the middle-class protest movement is moving to the right, this crisis is pushing workers to the left.
The struggle against war—for an end to the imperialist aggression against Libya, the withdrawal of all US and other foreign troops from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and a halt to the threat of new and even bloodier imperialist conflagrations—can be waged only as part of the fight to mobilize the working class politically against the profit system, the source of militarism.
To succeed, this movement must be based upon a new perspective and strategy of socialist internationalism, to unite the working class in every country in a common struggle to put an end to capitalism and begin the socialist reorganization of the world economy to meet social needs, rather than private profit.
Bill Van Auken
Homepage:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jun2011/pers-j09.shtml
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Intense NATO Bombings of Tripoli
09.06.2011 14:26
Cynthia McKinney
Homepage:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25178
Black Panther on Libya
09.06.2011 21:32
fuckNATO
Going Rogue: NATO War Crimes in Libya
09.06.2011 23:22
Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. Joanna Moriarty, who’s part of a global fact-finding delegation visiting Tripoli this week, also reports that NATO rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot. If families say they want to stay out of the fighting, NATO rebels take a different approach to scare other families. The doors of “neutral homes” are welded shut, Moriarty says, trapping families inside. In Libyan homes, windows are typically barred. So when the doors to a family compound get welded shut, Libyans are entombed in their own houses, where NATO forces can be sure large families will slowly starve to death.
These are daily occurrences, not isolated events. And Gaddafi’s soldiers are not responsible. In fact, pro-Gaddafi and “neutral” families are targeted as the victims of the attacks. Some of the NATO tactics may have occurred in hopes of laying blame on Gaddafi’s door. However the attacks are back firing.
Flashback to Serbia
The events are eerily reminiscent of Serbia’s conflict in the Balkans with its notorious rape camps — except today NATO itself is perpetrating these War Crimes — as if they have learned the worst terror tactics from their enemies.
Their actions would be categorized as War Crimes, just like Serb leader, Slobadon Milosevic—except that NATO won’t allow itself to face prosecution. According to NATO, International Law is for the other guy.
NATO is wrong. So long as NATO governments provide the funding, assault rifles, military training, ground advisers, support vehicles and air power, they are fully responsible for the actions of their soldiers in the war zone. Libya’s rebels are not a rag tag fighting force, either. Thanks to NATO’s largesse, financed by U.S. and British taxpayers, they’re fully decked out in military uniforms, parading through the streets with military vehicles for all the people to see.
And they do see. In Washington, Congress likes to pretend that America has not become involved in the day to day actualities of military planning. However refugees have observed U.S, British, French and Israeli soldiers standing by as rebel soldiers attack civilians.
“Rape parties” are the most graphic examples of NATO’s loss of moral control. One weeping father told the fact-finding delegation how a couple of weeks ago NATO rebels targeted seven separate households, kidnapping a virgin daughter from each pro-Gaddafi family. The rebels were paid for each kidnapped girl, just as they are paid for each Libyan soldier they kill — like mercenary soldiers. They hustled the girls into trucks, and took them to a building where the girls were locked in separate rooms.
NATO soldiers proceeded to drink alcohol, until they got very drunk. Then the leader told them to rape the virgin daughters in gang bang style. When they’d finished raping the girls, the NATO leader told them to cut the breasts off the living girls and bring the breasts to him. They did this while the girls were alive and screaming. All the girls died hideous deaths. Then their severed breasts were taken to a local square and arranged to spell the word “whore.”
The grieving father spoke to a convention of workers, attended by the global fact-finding delegation. He was openly weeping, as all of us should. NATO’s offenses in Libya are as terrible and unforgivable as Syria’s castration and mutilation of the 13 year old boy that shocked the world. Yet so long as NATO’s the guilty party, the western media has looked the other way in distaste.
Some of us are paying attention. We can see that NATO has gone rogue in Libya. And the Libyan people themselves consider it unforgivable. Last week, 2000 Tribal Leaders gathered in Tripoli to draft a Constitution for the country, as demanded by the British government. Notoriously, British warships and U.S. drones pounded the streets of Tripoli with bunker bombs and missiles for days and nights close to where the Tribal Leaders were meeting. From Tripoli, it felt awfully like the British were trying to stop the Libyan people from bringing this Constitution to life.
Tribal Leaders Condemn British Aggression
Here’s what those 2,000 Tribal Leaders had to say about British aggression, in a statement approved unanimously on June 3. Sheikh Ali, head of the Tribal Leaders, delivered it to Joanna Moriarty and other members of the global fact finding mission:
The Libyan people have the right to govern themselves. Constant attacks from the skies, at all hours of the day have completely disrupted the lives of the families of Libya. There has never been any fighting in Tripoli, yet we are bombed every day. We are civilians and we are being killed by the British and NATO. Civilians are people without guns, yet the British and NATO protect only the armed crusaders from the East by acting as their attack army. We have read the UN resolutions and there is no mention of bombing innocent civilians. There is no mention of assassinating the legitimate authorities in all of Libya.
The Libyan People have the right to select their own leaders. We have suffered occupation by foreign countries for thousands of years. Only in the last 41 years have we Libyans enjoyed property ownership. Only in the last 41 years have we seen our country develop. Only in the last 41 years have we seen all of the Libyans enjoy a better life, and know that our children will have a better life then we have had. But now with the British and NATO bombings of our country, we see the destruction of our new and developed infrastructure.
We leaders see the destruction of our culture. We leaders see tears in the eyes of our children because of the constant fear from the “rain of terror” in the skies of Libya from the British and NATO bombings. Our old people suffer from heart problems, increased diabetes and loss of vigor. Our young mothers are losing their babies every day because of the stress of the British and NATO bombings. These lost babies are the future of Libya. They can never be replaced. Our armies have been destroyed by the British and NATO bombings. We cannot defend ourselves from attacks from anyone.
As Tribal Leaders of Libya, we must ask why have the British and NATO decided to wage this war against the Libyan people? There are a small percentage of dissidents in the east of Libya that started an armed insurrection against our legitimate authority. Every country has the right to defend itself against armed insurrection. So why cannot Libya defend itself?
The Tribal Leaders of Libya demand that all acts of aggression, by the British and NATO, against the Libyan People stop immediately.
June 3, 2011
Does that sound like NATO’s got a winning strategy? If so, they should think again. Even if Gaddafi falls, NATO has no hope of eliminating the entire tribal structure of the Libya, which embraces all families and clans. Instead NATO is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the people with every missile that smashes into another building.
Tribal Backlash
The Libyan people are fighting back. This report arrived from Tripoli today. It is not edited, and describes a backlash in tribal warfare from the City of Darna in the East, where the rebellion is supposed to be strongest:
People found the body of Martyr Hamdi Jumaa Al-Shalwi in Darna city eastern Libya. His head was cut off and then placed in front of the headquarters of the Internal Security Dernah. That was after being kidnapped from a checkpoint complex Herich. In response to this Al-Shalwi family erected a funeral tent to receive condolences in which the green flag [of Libya] was raised. After the funeral the whole city of Darna rose up with all its tribes which include:- the Abu Jazia family, Al-Shalwi family, The Quba families, Ain Marra families. After that, Al-Shalwi family and Bojazia tribe attacked the headquarters of the Transitional Council and shot all the rats (rebels) and green flags were raised. Furthermore, the son of Sofian Qamom was killed, also two members of Al- Qaeda got killed by residents of the city of Darna. The flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya was raised above Darna after the clashes.
CNN has reported none of this. The corporate media continues to lull Americans into false confidence in the progress of the Libyan War. Americans are way out of the loop as to the failures of the War effort. As a result, Libyans are losing trust in the potential for friendships with the West. An unlikely champion might restore that faith. Right now a team of international attorneys is preparing an emergency grievance on behalf of the Tribal Leaders and the Libyan people. The International Peace Community could contribute substantially to restoring Libya’s faith in the West by supporting this human rights action. Indeed, the Libyan people and Tribal Leaders deserve our support. Together we must demand that NATO face prosecution for War Crimes, citing these examples and others.
NATO governments must be required to pay financial damages to Libyan families, on par with what the U.S. and Britain would demand for their own citizens under identical circumstances. The world cannot tolerate double standards, whereby powerful nations abuse helpless citizens. The International Geneva Conventions of War must be enforced, and equal force of the law must be applied.
The Fight for Misurata
Though attacks are widespread, some of the worst abuses are occurring in Misurata. The City has the only mega port in Libya, and handles transportation for the country, including the largest oil and gas depots. NATO will stop at nothing to take the City.
Refugees report that the Israeli Star of David flag was draped over the largest Mosque in Misurata on the second day of fighting, actions guaranteed to humiliate and antagonize the local population.
NATO forces have cut off food and medical supplies throughout Libya. But the seas are plentiful with fish in Mediterranean waters. Brave fishermen have taken their boats out of port, trying to harvest fish for the hungry population. To break their perseverance, American drones and British war planes steadily fire missiles on the fishing boats, deliberately targeting non-military vessels to chase them out of the waters.
Yet for all of its superior fire power and tactical advantages, NATO still appears to be losing. According to the fact-finding delegation, reporting today, many rebels have left Misurata and have taken boats back to Benghazi. The big central part of Misurata is now free and under central military control. The Libyan people shot down two helicopter gunships near the town of Zlitan. And although Al Jazeera played a grand story about a major uprising against Gaddafi in Tripoli, one of the Tribal leaders’ wives lives on the street that claims to be the center of the demonstration, and declared that she saw no crowds out of her window. Buses pictured in Al Jazeera video do not run in Tripoli.
One has to ask: What kind of society does NATO think it’s creating, if in fact Gaddafi can be deposed — which looks very unlikely? Have Washington and London learned nothing from their failure in Iraq? The cruelty and debasement of NATO’s forces is already fueling profound hatreds that will continue for the next generation.
Who could be proud of such “allies?” Not the Libyan people, surely.
NATO soldiers are no better than thugs. Anyone else would be labeled terrorists. Most worrisome, NATO’s actions are guaranteed to have serious consequences for long term political stability in Libya. Vendettas are forming between tribes and family clans that will carry over for decades. It is extremely short-sighted and self destructive.
NATO should take this warning to heart: Its soldiers are not legal-proof. The International Peace Community is already taking action to uphold Libya’s natural rights at the United Nations. Many of us in the International Peace Community shall defend Libya’s women. And we shall demand War Crimes prosecution and major financial damages against NATO governments, on behalf of the people.
Nobody’s fooled by NATO’s story that Gaddafi’s the guilty party. We know that Washington, Britain, France, Italy — and Israel are the real culprits.
The murdered women of Misurata shall have justice. NATO can count on it.
UPDATE from Joanna Moriarty in Tripoli today (9 June):
We have so much documentation that it make your head spin. We spoke with 250 rebels who were released by the Tribal Leaders with the blessings of Ghadafi, the stories they tell of the atrocities that they did are horrifying we have them on tape. We also have many rebels that are documented admitting all the atrocities that they themselves committed. But, here is one truth that is irrefutable – the 2000 tribes of Libya are the actual government here, if anyone does not know this then they do not know Libya. These tribal leaders released 150 rebel prisoners 3 weeks ago, 10 days later another 250 were released. There were about 20 foreigners that witnessed this magnificent show of forgiveness, we have this on tape. There is another release of 200 prisoners in these coming days.
Go to Benghazi and you will not find one single prisoner because they have all been killed. This is a hard fact. Anyone that says they interviewed prisoners in Misurata is a liar. The Misurata prisoners that were released said that they were paid 2500 dinar for every soldier they killed and another 1000 dinar for burning the bodies. This is why there are no prisoners, so who is believable 250 prisoners on tape or someone who will not even give his name and makes statements that are unbelievable and unverifiable.
Here in Tripoli, the people say, please tell them to come to Tripoli and speak to us but they will not come because they don’t want the truth. They would like to ask these liars to PROVE what they say, they say none of their lies can be proved. Yesterday was Ghadafi’s birthday, they bombed the H*** out of this place yesterday, many many people crying and big damage, but they are not breaking the back of these people. They had parties and shot off fireworks for 3 hours, we were invited to a wedding because they wanted to show us how life continues here and they celebrate life every day.
NATO is not bombing the rebels in the East. NATO is working for the rebels. People don’t dare complain about the rebels. They are scared for their lives and their family lives. We have met many people who have escaped these place with their lives, but most don’t want their names out because they have family left there and if they show their face or publicly speak about the rebel atrocities then the members of their families that are left will be killed. We know this from first hand, one of our group had this exact problem and could not be filmed, his father called him and said the rebels saw him on TV and if he spoke out one more time against them they would kill his brother one by one and then begin with his other family members.
Today we went to the Roxis hotel. There was a large group of women and children holding signs up that said “tell the TRUTH”, “thank you Qatar for killing our people”, “thank you NATO for destroying our country”. WE love the leader of our revolution, M. Ghadafi. I stopped and took photos and the women came up to me instantly, they thought I was a reporter as all the reporters stay in the Roxis Hotel. They were quite angry and said, TELL THE TRUTH, we want to see the TRUTH outside of Libya we are sick of the lies. One lady had a very small boy with her (maybe 3 years old) he was dressed in a military outfit, he was black, she said you see my son, even our children will fight against this terror, we will never accept NATO or the rebel RATs. [Note: the Libyan people call the rebels "rats."]
This is literally everywhere in Tripoli, tonight thousands were on First of September street in support of their revolutionary leader.
In all the time (5.5 years) we have come here we have never heard of oppression by Ghadafi, the people have great respect and love for him. They all wear green and wear photos of him around their necks, believe me the Western news is so far from the truth they are on another planet. We have never seen anybody beaten, harassed, in prison, in fact we have been days and never even seen a policeman unlike our trips to Cairo where armed guards are on every corner, with tanks around Mosques on Fridays. Believe us, before this mess, it was safer in Tripoli than in Houston.
This is not the Libyan way, they don’t pass out Viagra, this is from the Western mind – I may explode before long, cannot suffer fools lightly and these people have mouths that are not connected to souls.
The final two verifiable truths about the atrocities committed by NATO and the Rebels and the US and UK are:
1. The leader of a tribe of 1 million Libyans living in Benghazi was brutally murdered in his home by the rebels after a kangaroo court which was broadcast in the news on TV here in Libya by Dr. Shakeer. The million people tribe wanted to retaliate against all the rebels, the other tribal leaders and Ghadafi told them please do not kill all these people as there has already been too much bloodshed in Libya. Does this sound like a tyrant?
2. Two days later another pro Ghadafi person was murdered, his head was cut off and placed at the door step of the security office in Dharna (he was a tribal leader) the outrage by most of the population in Dharna was expressed in demonstrations of disgust against the rebels and at the end of the day, the green flag of the legitimate government of Libya was flying. The three major tribes in Dharna proclaimed that they had had enough of the death at the hands of these rats and the Council of Shame as they call the revolution council in Benghazi.
All of these facts are true and verifiable by video and by affidavit of those present, this liar cannot prove one thing that he is saying.
The word of some paid CIA mercenary is not worth ****.
Susan believe us when we say, we have huge amounts of documentation, we are collecting it every day. We must file war crime charges against Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron, and NATO.
Question the Libyans constantly ask is: “Who are these countries to dictate who our leader should or should not be, we will pick our own leader, we ask for a vote, let us vote and then you will see who should be our leader.” NATO will never dictate to us, if they impose their puppet leader upon us, we will have another revolution and throw him out, he will not last one week.
The biggest population is Libya as you know, is in the west, the more NATO rains down destruction upon them the more they back Ghadafi. These are a strong and resilient people, they have an ancient culture and they are an endangered species. Misinformation is the tool of the West not Libya. We have nothing to gain by helping these people (except our souls). One cannot stand by and witness this type of tyranny without doing everything possible to stop it.
God Bless them, I pray they will survive this siege that is upon them.
Susan Lindauer
Homepage:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/06/going-rogue-nato-war-crimes-in-libya/