Iron_Captain wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
At the end of the day it doesn't matter anyways, since there can't be any kind of real change & actual advancement in the Middle East, until Islam pulls itself out of 1200AD and smells the 21st century.

I think it more has to do with the western world continually bombing their stability and governments back to 1200 AD than anything else.

That one is great. Exalted.
There is truth in it too. Hadn't the West and Israel bombed the old Arab nationalists into oblivion, islamic extremism would never have gotten a chance. Libya is a perfect example.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
At the end of the day it doesn't matter anyways, since there can't be any kind of real change & actual advancement in the Middle East, until Islam pulls itself out of 1200AD and smells the 21st century.

I think it more has to do with the western world continually bombing their stability and governments back to 1200 AD than anything else.

That one is great. Exalted.
There is truth in it too. Hadn't the West and Israel bombed the old Arab nationalists into oblivion, islamic extremism would never have gotten a chance. Libya is a perfect example.

Islamic extremism has existed for centuries, it's not something that's suddenly been created by the supposedly evil western world ruthlessly bombing poor Arab children...

Shira & Wahhabi was acceptable back when witch burning & "God Wills It!" was a good enough excuse to explain away man's barbarism.

Unfortunately, most of the Middle East hasn't yet gotten the memo that being born with a penis doesn't make you superior to all other forms of life.
Nor can you effectively rule a country through backwater religious ideals & laws in a globalised world.

 carlos13th wrote:
I

Bombs did work in Libya. The government was overthrown and replaced with a more west friendly regime. There were two main reasons for this; first, the government forces worked more like conventional military than guerillas, second, because we had a local militia spotting targets and following up successful attacks.

The problem is that the country and neighbours were and are so fragmented that the new regime was immediately under attack from various militia groups, some of them being Islamist extremist, supported ultimately by the Wahhabi paymasters who are behind ISIL and Al Quaeda.

jhe90 wrote:Maybe if someone of the Islamic groups advanced past point of 1200ad barbarians with guns we might not have to bomb the gak out of them.

Some of those, you cannot negoiate, there wild savage dogs. Need putting down. IS for example. Human rabid animals.

NinthMusketeer wrote:And then we get a new pack of "rabid animals" in their place. We've been trying that strategy for a while now and things have only gotten worse. Fact is that the extremism won't stop until the general populace of the area decides to take action to stop it, but our actions have helped create a situation where the people prefer violent dictatorships to western intervention (see: Syria). That alone should speak to the effectiveness of the "put them down" strategy.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
At the end of the day it doesn't matter anyways, since there can't be any kind of real change & actual advancement in the Middle East, until Islam pulls itself out of 1200AD and smells the 21st century.

I think it more has to do with the western world continually bombing their stability and governments back to 1200 AD than anything else.

That one is great. Exalted.
There is truth in it too. Hadn't the West and Israel bombed the old Arab nationalists into oblivion, islamic extremism would never have gotten a chance. Libya is a perfect example.

Islamic extremism has existed for centuries, it's not something that's suddenly been created by the supposedly evil western world ruthlessly bombing poor Arab children...

Shira & Wahhabi was acceptable back when witch burning & "God Wills It!" was a good enough excuse to explain away man's barbarism.

Unfortunately, most of the Middle East hasn't yet gotten the memo that being born with a penis doesn't make you superior to all other forms of life.
Nor can you effectively rule a country through backwater religious ideals & laws in a globalised world.

 jhe90 wrote:
Maybe if someone of the Islamic groups advanced past point of 1200ad barbarians with guns we might not have to bomb the gak out of them.

Some of those, you cannot negoiate, there wild savage dogs. Need putting down. IS for example. Human rabid animals.

 Stormrider wrote:
PS - I don't call them ISIS or ISIL, it lends too much credence to their cause, I call them "Daesh" because the Kurds do and it's an insult to them.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Stormrider wrote:
PS - I don't call them ISIS or ISIL, it lends too much credence to their cause, I call them "Daesh" because the Kurds do and it's an insult to them.

That's a misconception; ISIS does not care whatsoever what we call them. To ISIS, anyone in the west is a crusader and anything we say is BS anyways, so no amount of insults hurled their way will have any impact. Better to use whatever the common term is so that everyone in the discussion is on the same page.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Maybe if someone of the Islamic groups advanced past point of 1200ad barbarians with guns we might not have to bomb the gak out of them.

Some of those, you cannot negoiate, there wild savage dogs. Need putting down. IS for example. Human rabid animals.

That is just dumb. You can't just put IS away as savages or animals, because they aren't. They are people. People who do horrible things, but people nonetheless. And people always do the things they do for a reason. Treating them like animals that must be put down will not solve the problems that created IS, it will only perpetuate them and eventually spawn something even worse. Like how Al-Qaeda spawned IS or the German Empire spawned Nazi Germany. It also has the nasty ethical side effect of lowering you down to their level.

Seaward wrote:
I think the bigger mess that Libya brought to light is that the United States is the only country in NATO with enough munitions to sustain a moderate air campaign against a third world country with a deliberately weak AD network.

Seriously, Europe, what the feth.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

Seaward wrote:
I think the bigger mess that Libya brought to light is that the United States is the only country in NATO with enough munitions to sustain a moderate air campaign against a third world country with a deliberately weak AD network.

Seriously, Europe, what the feth.

We have better things to spend our money on, although apparently that is bailing out banks so 'better' is a relative term.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Stormrider wrote:
PS - I don't call them ISIS or ISIL, it lends too much credence to their cause, I call them "Daesh" because the Kurds do and it's an insult to them.

That's a misconception; ISIS does not care whatsoever what we call them. To ISIS, anyone in the west is a crusader and anything we say is BS anyways, so no amount of insults hurled their way will have any impact. Better to use whatever the common term is so that everyone in the discussion is on the same page.

Also, Daesh is simply the Arabic-language acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, so ISIL and Daesh just mean the same thing but in a different language.

DutchWinsAll wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Stormrider wrote:
PS - I don't call them ISIS or ISIL, it lends too much credence to their cause, I call them "Daesh" because the Kurds do and it's an insult to them.

That's a misconception; ISIS does not care whatsoever what we call them. To ISIS, anyone in the west is a crusader and anything we say is BS anyways, so no amount of insults hurled their way will have any impact. Better to use whatever the common term is so that everyone in the discussion is on the same page.

Also, Daesh is simply the Arabic-language acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, so ISIL and Daesh just mean the same thing but in a different language.

Yeah but how else are you gonna show the internet you're "tough on terrorists"? Add in a few references to pig's blood and turning sand into glass and you're a regular Trump supporter!

 Jihadin wrote:


I have come close to this. Same as a few others. Toss bacon on the sand/dirt in the Middle East, called for fire from either artillery or aircraft's so might have been a few shard glass made from sudden extreme heat. I'm voting for Trump because he entertains the Hell out of me. Wait.....does that make me a Hater....Racist....and/or.....extremists? All the above? Or maybe I am extremely tired of career politicians? I like Bernie over Hillary to. Does that mean I'm a red pinko commie lover?

 Jihadin wrote:

But to the subject at hand. Its way to damn late to point the finger and lay out the "Who F'ed it up" mat. Question now is do we interfere, leave alone and hope the best, or get really jumpy and prop up a dictator/leader

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Maybe if someone of the Islamic groups advanced past point of 1200ad barbarians with guns we might not have to bomb the gak out of them.

Some of those, you cannot negoiate, there wild savage dogs. Need putting down. IS for example. Human rabid animals.

That is just dumb. You can't just put IS away as savages or animals, because they aren't. They are people. People who do horrible things, but people nonetheless. And people always do the things they do for a reason. Treating them like animals that must be put down will not solve the problems that created IS, it will only perpetuate them and eventually spawn something even worse. Like how Al-Qaeda spawned IS or the German Empire spawned Nazi Germany. It also has the nasty ethical side effect of lowering you down to their level.

"If you kill him, you'll be just like him" is deluded bs. ISIL stands for nothing but the persecution of the innocent: the rape of women, the murder of religious minorities and the torture of children who desire anything more than to be cannon fodder. To kill someone willing to make these things their life's work is not ethically the same as killing an innocent person for being a Shia, a homosexual or a museum curator.

ISIL is a symptom of a problem, but the problem is that there are too many people in the world who like what ISIL does. There is no mechanism by which they can convert a decent person into a sympathiser, so in the short term they are limited to the preexisting pool of donkey-caves like Arial Castro and Elliot Rodger, and in the long term they can only supplement that pool if they are still alive to indoctrinate ignorant children.

 jhe90 wrote:

As a threat, there not going away any time soon.

 jhe90 wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Maybe if someone of the Islamic groups advanced past point of 1200ad barbarians with guns we might not have to bomb the gak out of them.

Some of those, you cannot negoiate, there wild savage dogs. Need putting down. IS for example. Human rabid animals.

That is just dumb. You can't just put IS away as savages or animals, because they aren't. They are people. People who do horrible things, but people nonetheless. And people always do the things they do for a reason. Treating them like animals that must be put down will not solve the problems that created IS, it will only perpetuate them and eventually spawn something even worse. Like how Al-Qaeda spawned IS or the German Empire spawned Nazi Germany. It also has the nasty ethical side effect of lowering you down to their level.

"If you kill him, you'll be just like him" is deluded bs. ISIL stands for nothing but the persecution of the innocent: the rape of women, the murder of religious minorities and the torture of children who desire anything more than to be cannon fodder. To kill someone willing to make these things their life's work is not ethically the same as killing an innocent person for being a Shia, a homosexual or a museum curator.

ISIL is a symptom of a problem, but the problem is that there are too many people in the world who like what ISIL does. There is no mechanism by which they can convert a decent person into a sympathiser, so in the short term they are limited to the preexisting pool of donkey-caves like Arial Castro and Elliot Rodger, and in the long term they can only supplement that pool if they are still alive to indoctrinate ignorant children.

There a problem, but a problem we have to end. Simple as that. They destroy man kinds history, rape, murder, burn people alive and engage in all manner of brutal practices banned in west for centuries. There a dark shadow on the world. They will do no good for mankind in life. What will they create, grow or build but more hate and death?

Adding it up, there monsters, look what they did to the yazidi people, the Kurds, women, dictators and despots we tolerate, but these monsters....its no lie they have engaged in barbaric practices and are sworn enemies of pretty much anyone. They hardly showed any mercy in Paris, if not stopped, that may come again. Our cities on the frontline. No one wants that.

As a threat, there not going away any time soon.

 Frazzled wrote:
Britain, France, and potentially Italy were active, but it turned out they didn't have much of a bomb inventory, or capacity to coordinate, well anything.

French are moderately tough on the ground, but rely on the US to get them there if by plane.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Spoiler:

 jhe90 wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Maybe if someone of the Islamic groups advanced past point of 1200ad barbarians with guns we might not have to bomb the gak out of them.

Some of those, you cannot negoiate, there wild savage dogs. Need putting down. IS for example. Human rabid animals.

That is just dumb. You can't just put IS away as savages or animals, because they aren't. They are people. People who do horrible things, but people nonetheless. And people always do the things they do for a reason. Treating them like animals that must be put down will not solve the problems that created IS, it will only perpetuate them and eventually spawn something even worse. Like how Al-Qaeda spawned IS or the German Empire spawned Nazi Germany. It also has the nasty ethical side effect of lowering you down to their level.

"If you kill him, you'll be just like him" is deluded bs. ISIL stands for nothing but the persecution of the innocent: the rape of women, the murder of religious minorities and the torture of children who desire anything more than to be cannon fodder. To kill someone willing to make these things their life's work is not ethically the same as killing an innocent person for being a Shia, a homosexual or a museum curator.

ISIL is a symptom of a problem, but the problem is that there are too many people in the world who like what ISIL does. There is no mechanism by which they can convert a decent person into a sympathiser, so in the short term they are limited to the preexisting pool of donkey-caves like Arial Castro and Elliot Rodger, and in the long term they can only supplement that pool if they are still alive to indoctrinate ignorant children.

There a problem, but a problem we have to end. Simple as that. They destroy man kinds history, rape, murder, burn people alive and engage in all manner of brutal practices banned in west for centuries. There a dark shadow on the world. They will do no good for mankind in life. What will they create, grow or build but more hate and death?

Adding it up, there monsters, look what they did to the yazidi people, the Kurds, women, dictators and despots we tolerate, but these monsters....its no lie they have engaged in barbaric practices and are sworn enemies of pretty much anyone. They hardly showed any mercy in Paris, if not stopped, that may come again. Our cities on the frontline. No one wants that.

As a threat, there not going away any time soon.

You can't end this problem. You can kill people, but you can't kill ideas. If you destroy ISIL, a new organisation that is probably even worse is going to spring up real quickly. The West can't do anything about this problem except making it worse. It is up to the people of Syria, Iraq etc. to stop this. Only they can end it.

The French planes did look pretty though.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:

As a threat, there not going away any time soon.

No, but they certainly aren't going to be killed of either. That has been tried now for well over a decade and it has arguably made things worse, a lot worse.The 'colonial wars' of the last couple of decades show just how inadequate the use of force is against an entrenched ideology with a degree of popular support.

Daesh are a scourge but the soil of their spread was fertilised by unwise military intervention and then inadequate diplomacy and nation building by the west. More of the same is not going to help matters.

 master of ordinance wrote:
If I recall this entire Lybian/extremist ISIS group thingy grew out the mess created when America chose to bomb Iraq which was in vengance for the 9/11 attacks which in turn where performed by an extremist group who where essentially given life when America invaded that area in the first place....

So mister Obama, Pot calling the Kettle much?

That pretty much sums up his foreign policy legacy.

Defining President Obama’s legacy isn’t hard. All you need to do is define the world’s situation before and after his presidency. One of the best examples is what used to be the nation of Libya, which Obama has reportedly called a “gak show.”

Before Obama’s military intervention, Libya was governed by Muammar Qaddafi, a dedicated terrorist. Ronald Reagan ordered a night attack by U.S. Air Force F-111s that nearly killed Qaddafi in response to a Berlin nightclub attack in 1986, but that didn’t stop Qaddafi. Qaddafi ordered the bombing of a U.S. airliner over Scotland in 1988 that killed 270.

Qaddafi was vulnerable and he was smart enough to know it. After President George W. Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative led to the interception by U.S. and British forces of two ships in an Italian port carrying nuclear materials to Libya, and fearing the same fate as Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi surrendered his nuclear weapons development program.

All was relatively quiet in Libya. Qaddafi posed no danger to U.S. national security after that. And then came President Obama’s military intervention in Libya at the behest of France and other NATO allies that overthrew Qaddafi and led to his death in 2011.

The reason for the military action, Obama then claimed, was the danger of a humanitarian catastrophe caused by Qaddafi’s forces attacking civilians. The real reason was that France’s access to Libyan sweet crude was blocked by Qaddafi. Neither France nor England had the ability to undertake the airstrikes necessary to overthrow Qaddafi’s government, so U.S. forces were necessary despite the fact that no U.S. national security interest was at stake.

Obama, saying that U.S. military intervention was “necessary, unique and limited,” added that there was a “moral imperative” to prevent Qaddafi from massacring his own people. His redefinition of our national security interests to suit his actions was central to his case: “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. It was not in our national interest to let that happen,” Obama said. “I refused to let that happen.”

With Qaddafi gone, there was no Libyan government. The vacuum was filled, quickly, by terrorist groups seeking control over what had been a nation.

Since then, Libya has devolved into warring terrorist factions. It has two rival “governments” claiming to rule it. In fact, Libya is now a safe haven for terrorist networks including ISIS, which is probably the fastest-growing and most dangerous to U.S. national security. ISIS controls significant parts of that nation.

On September 10, 2012, one day before the terrorist attacks in Benghazi left four Americans dead, there were at least ten terrorist groups that had active operational terror cells within Benghazi’s city limits, according to a report on the attacks published by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

A little more than two weeks ago, the assessment of our top commander in Africa, Gen. Don Bolduc, was that the spread of ISIS across Libya was so strong that further U.S. military involvement would be essential even if there were to be an agreement between the two rival factions claiming to govern Libya (though neither does).

Obama, of course, denies any responsibility for the massive policy failure after he chose to intervene militarily in behalf of the rebels seeking Qaddafi’s overthrow. This past week he blamed what he called the Libya “gak show” on our NATO allies, particularly British PM David Cameron, who he said was distracted and didn’t keep an eye on Libya.

It’s almost fair to blame our allies for sucking us into an unnecessary war, but that’s not what Obama did. Obama blamed Cameron for the aftermath as if Cameron, not Obama, had any responsibility for the current state of Libya.

ISIS, we must remember, is a product of the Syrian civil war that began in 2011. It now dominates large parts of Iraq, Syria, and Libya. We can’t blame Obama for not intervening in the Syrian civil war because there were no good guys in the fight, and there still aren’t. There wasn’t then, and isn’t now, anyone with whom we should ally ourselves. Russia and Iran now dominate the field to protect Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite (a sect of Shiite Islam) terrorist regime. But Obama should be blamed for turning Libya into ISIS’s — and other terrorist networks’ — safe haven.

We have to remember the massive cover-up that Obama and Clinton led after the Benghazi attacks. In the hours of the attack and for days after, the Obama administration was peddling its talking points which claimed that there was no organized terrorist attack, that the “demonstrations” which preceded the attacks in Benghazi were the result of an obscure anti-Muslim video.

We also must remember that those talking points — which were the foundation for National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s infamous lies on five Sunday political talk shows right after the attacks — were tightly controlled by the White House. In an email before Rice’s appearances, deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes (brother of CBS News president David Rhodes) wrote, the goals were: “To convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad; To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy; To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests; To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

But the attacks were, obviously, the result of a broad policy failure. If we had not intervened to overthrow Qaddafi, the attacks would never have happened. If Obama hadn’t chosen to redefine our national security interests incorrectly to fit his actions, no Americans would have been in Benghazi.

If Hillary Clinton’s State Department had paid any attention to the CIA and its own intelligence, it would have known that the ten terrorist cells were active and operational within Benghazi before the attacks and Clinton would have either withdrawn Americans from Benghazi or acted on the many requests for reinforced security at the diplomatic compound and the CIA annex.

Obama’s legacy in the Middle East is plain for all to see and for history to record. He didn’t create ISIS but his actions directly led to the chaos in Libya that enables it to grow and prosper. ISIS’s strength and prosperity has already led to the San Bernardino terrorist attack by ISIS adherents, and will lead to more attacks of unknown severity within the U.S.

It’s not just David Cameron who took his eye off Libya, Syria, Iran, and the rest of the Middle East. Obama’s duty, which his most valued foreign policy tenets characteristically overlook, is to protect and defend American national security wherever and whenever it is threatened.

Both Obama and Hillary Clinton left Americans behind to face the Benghazi attacks alone at the cost of four lives. As a friend of mine told me last weekend, every father, mother, sister, and brother of anyone serving in our military should remember that if she’s elected president, Hillary Clinton will abandon our people to the same fate whenever it’s convenient to her politically, just like she and Obama did in Benghazi.

Libya is indeed, as Obama reportedly said, a “gak show.” That would be the proper appellation for Obama’s legacy in the Middle East.

Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention.

The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook.

But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency.

Hillary’s Death Squads
A March 27, 2011, intelligence brief [archived here] on Libya, sent by long time close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary’s unofficial intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, contains clear evidence of war crimes on the part of NATO-backed rebels. Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary [emphasis mine]:

Under attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort to encourage additional defections.

(Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…).

While the illegality of extra-judicial killings is easy to recognize (groups engaged in such are conventionally termed “death squads”), the sinister reality behind the “foreign mercenaries” reference might not be as immediately evident to most.

While over the decades Gaddafi was known to make use of European and other international security and infrastructural contractors, there is no evidence to suggest that these were targeted by the Libyan rebels.

There is, however, ample documentation by journalists, academics, and human rights groups demonstrating that black Libyan civilians and sub-Saharan contract workers, a population favored by Gaddafi in his pro-African Union policies, were targets of “racial cleansing” by rebels who saw black Libyans as tied closely with the regime.[1]

Black Libyans were commonly branded as “foreign mercenaries” by the rebel opposition for their perceived general loyalty to Gaddafi as a community and subjected to torture, executions, and their towns “liberated” by ethnic cleansing. This is demonstrated in the most well-documented example of Tawergha, an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed NTC Misratan brigades.

These attacks were well-known as late as 2012 and often filmed, as this report from The Telegraph confirms:

After Muammar Gaddafi was killed, hundreds of migrant workers from neighboring states were imprisoned by fighters allied to the new interim authorities. They accuse the black Africans of having been mercenaries for the late ruler. Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans have been rounded up since Gaddafi fell in August.

It appears that Clinton was getting personally briefed on the battlefield crimes of her beloved anti-Gaddafi fighters long before some of the worst of these genocidal crimes took place.

Al-Qaeda and Western Special Forces Inside Libya
The same intelligence email from Sydney Blumenthal also confirms what has become a well-known theme of Western supported insurgencies in the Middle East: the contradiction of special forces training militias that are simultaneously suspected of links to Al Qaeda.

Blumenthal relates that “an extremely sensitive source” confirmed that British, French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi suburbs.

While analysts have long speculated as to the “when and where” of Western ground troop presence in the Libyan War, this email serves as definitive proof that special forces were on the ground only within a month of the earliest protests which broke out in the middle to end of February 2011 in Benghazi.

By March 27 of what was commonly assumed a simple “popular uprising” external special operatives were already “overseeing the transfer of weapons and supplies to the rebels” including “a seemingly endless supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition.”

Yet only a few paragraphs after this admission, caution is voiced about the very militias these Western special forces were training because of concern that, “radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command.”

The Threat of Libya’s Oil and Gold to French Interests
Though the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 claimed the no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians, an April 2011 email [archived here] sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.

The email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”

Most astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating as a prime African currency. In place of the noble sounding “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine fed to the public, there is this “confidential” explanation of what was really driving the war [emphasis mine]:

This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).

(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.)

Though this internal email aims to summarize the motivating factors driving France’s (and by implication NATO’s) intervention in Libya, it is interesting to note that saving civilian lives is conspicuously absent from the briefing.

Instead, the great fear reported is that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with a new pan-African currency.

French intelligence “discovered” a Libyan initiative to freely compete with European currency through a local alternative, and this had to be subverted through military aggression.

The Ease of Floating Crude Propaganda
Early in the Libyan conflict Secretary of State Clinton formally accused Gaddafi and his army of using mass rape as a tool of war. Though numerous international organizations, like Amnesty International, quickly debunked these claims, the charges were uncritically echoed by Western politicians and major media.

It seemed no matter how bizarre the conspiracy theory, as long as it painted Gaddafi and his supporters as monsters, and so long as it served the cause of prolonged military action in Libya, it was deemed credible by network news.

Two foremost examples are referenced in the latest batch of emails: the sensational claim that Gaddafi issued Viagra to his troops for mass rape, and the claim that bodies were “staged” by the Libyan government at NATO bombing sites to give the appearance of the Western coalition bombing civilians.

In a late March 2011 email, Blumenthal confesses to Hillary that,

I communicated more than a week ago on this story—Qaddafi placing bodies to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of Allied bombing—though underlining it was a rumor. But now, as you know, Robert gates gives credence to it. (See story below.)

Sources now say, again rumor (that is, this information comes from the rebel side and is unconfirmed independently by Western intelligence), that Qaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops. The incident at the Tripoli press conference involving a woman claiming to be raped is likely to be part of a much larger outrage. Will seek further confirmation.

Not only did Defense Secretary Robert Gates promote his bizarre “staged bodies” theory on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” but the even stranger Viagra rape fiction made international headlines as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice made a formal charge against Libya in front of the UN Security Council.

What this new email confirms is that not only was the State Department aware of the spurious nature of what Blumenthal calls “rumors” originating solely with the rebels, but did nothing to stop false information from rising to top officials who then gave them “credence.”

It appears, furthermore, that the Viagra mass rape hoax likely originated with Sidney Blumenthal himself.

Seaward wrote:
I think the bigger mess that Libya brought to light is that the United States is the only country in NATO with enough munitions to sustain a moderate air campaign against a third world country with a deliberately weak AD network.

Seriously, Europe, what the feth.

 dogma wrote:

Seaward wrote:
I think the bigger mess that Libya brought to light is that the United States is the only country in NATO with enough munitions to sustain a moderate air campaign against a third world country with a deliberately weak AD network.

Seriously, Europe, what the feth.

So that less than one day air campaign has been forgotten?

I get that military people like tradition, and that tradition is "Bomb the feth out of them!", but come on.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
You can't end this problem. You can kill people, but you can't kill ideas. If you destroy ISIL, a new organisation that is probably even worse is going to spring up real quickly.