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Thread: Libya News and Interests

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    black smoke billows over the skyline as a fire at the oil depot for the airport rages out of control after being struck in the crossfire of warring militias battling for control of the airfield in tripoli libya july 28 2014

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    One trick phony
    It is the responsibility of every American citizen to own a modern military rifle.

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    Italy reopened its embassy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli this week, the first Western country to do so since 2015, when a worsening conflict between rival factions allowed Libya to become the major gateway for migrants to Italy.
    Angelino Alfano, Italy’s foreign minister, described the embassy reopening as a “great gesture of friendship to the Libyan people” and promised more controls on migration from Libyan shores.
    Analyst Riccardo Fabiani of the Eurasia Group says Italy’s move is partly driven by domestic politics.


    Italian Embassy (left) -Tripoli

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    Libya forces retake Benghazi district from jihadists
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/libya-for...154606356.html
    Forces loyal to Marshal Khalifa Haftar on Monday retook a district in Libya's Benghazi from jihadists after fighting that killed nine soldiers in two days, a military source said.

    "We now control the district of Abu Sneib" in the southwest of the city, said a commanding officer in the army headed by Haftar, who backs the parliament in the country's east.

    "Our forces now completely surround the Qanfuda area" nearby, the same source said.
    The source said 52 troops had died in fighting since January 1 in and around Benghazi.

    Haftar has managed to retake a large part of the eastern coastal city from jihadists since Benghazi came under their control in 2014.
    But jihadists still control the central districts of Al-Saberi and Souq al-Hout.


    These jihadist groups include the Revolutionary Shura Council of Benghazi, an alliance of Islamist militias that includes the Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Al-Sharia.
    Benghazi was the cradle of the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
    Libya has since fallen into chaos, with a UN-backed unity government failing to assert its authority over the country.



    The parliament based in the eastern city of Tobruk has refused to recognise the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord.

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    What is Russia's endgame in Libya?

    Rival factions wrestling for control in a divided Libya are plunging the country into further chaos, as a UN-brokered government struggles to bring stability to its people.

    In a quick turn of events this week, Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar met Russian officials in an effort to secure crucial military support that would pave the way for his control of the North African county.

    Haftar visited a Russian aircraft carrier off the cost of Tobruk from where he held a video conference with Russian defence minister Sergey Shoigu. Italian State TV RAI reported that Haftar signed an agreement whereby Russia would build two military bases near Tobruk and Benghazi.

    Russian State media did not mention the agreement but confirmed that Russia would get a foothold in the south of the Mediterranean. The move would also step up the foreign presence in the Eastern part of Libya, where Emirati and French air forces have been reportedly operating since March from the Al-Khadim Airport in the city of Marj, Haftar's headquarters.

    General Haftar refuses to acknowledge the political authority of the UN-sponsored Presidential Council led by Fayez al-Sarraj and has engaged in a power struggle with Tripoli that has strongly weakened prospects for a unification of the country.

    OPINION: In Libya, Britain's ignorance triumphed over caution

    Meanwhile, on Thursday, Prime Minister Sarraj flew to Egypt, Haftar's main ally along with Russia and the UAE, in an attempt to avert a further worsening of the political stalemate, which is resulting in an unprecedented economic crisis.

    However, Sarraj had to make a hasty return to Tripoli, where supporters of Khalifa Ghwell, a former prime minister in the unrecognised National Salvation Government, staged a tentative coup last October to flag up the growing discontent over Sarraj's management of the political crisis.

    Ghwell's demonstrative act took place a day after Italy reopened its diplomatic mission in Libya, in a symbolic display of political support for the crippled Government of National Accord (GNA) presided over by Sarraj, whose authority has been progressively eroding when the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR), under the direct influence of General Haftar, has refused twice to endorse Sarraj's proposed list of ministers.

    The HoR, which under a UN deal is set to become Libya's legitimate parliament, is endorsing a different governing body in the east of the country led by Abdullah al-Thinni, thus leaving Sarraj's executive in a risky political limbo.

    The future of the UN-led initiative, which resulted in the Libyan Political Agreement and was signed by the Libyan factions in December 2015, now hangs in the balance. The success of the deal inevitably depends on Haftar's next moves and the extent of Russia's involvement in Libya, analysts say.

    "If Haftar doesn't agree to the UN plan, there is no way out of the crisis. His role is key," said Arturo Varvelli, a Libya specialist at the Institute of International Political Studies.
    "The question is whether the General aims at playing a role within the GNA or at becoming Libya's new leader. I am afraid he is going for the second option. He mistakenly believes he would be able to govern the entire country, but militias in Misrata and Tripoli will never consent."
    In a display of strategic sagacity, Haftar has waited for Sarraj to progressively erode his authority in Tripoli while avoiding engaging militarily with rival militias in Misrata, who support Sarraj and the GNA. Misrata forces have been occupied throughout 2016 in the war against the Islamic State in Sirte, which they liberated in December after suffering extensive casualties.

    In the meantime, Haftar has consolidated his role in Cirenaica. He has successfully contained jihadists from the Revolutionary Shura Council in Benghazi and in September he occupied the oil terminals in the east of the country, after dislodging military units of the Petroleum Facilities Guard and their commander Ibrahim Jadhran, an ally of the GNA.

    The seizure of the so-called Oil Crescent has been a major blow to the GNA, for which crude oil exports represent a vital source of revenues. The move has further shifted the balance of power in favour of Haftar, who all along has worked on strengthening his ties with foreign powers, above all Russia.

    Libya represents an interesting opportunity for Russia's geopolitical ambitions. The Kremlin is taking advantage of the political void left by the American administration and is stretching its arm in the Mediterranean.

    Arturo Varvelli, a Libya specialist at the Institute of International Political Studies

    "Libya represents an interesting opportunity for Russia's geopolitical ambitions. The Kremlin is taking advantage of the political void left by the American administration and is stretching its arm in the Mediterranean," Varvelli told Al Jazeera.

    In an interview with the Italian Il Corriere della Sera, Haftar said Russia granted him help for an end to the UN arms embargo on Libya and could supply him with weapons, although the Russians haven't confirmed Haftar's claims.

    "We were told arms can arrive only after the end of the embargo and [President] Putin has promised to help lift it," Haftar said.
    Since 2011, the UN embargo prohibits the transfer of weapons into Libya. Only the legitimate government of the National Accord can receive weapons upon the approval of a UN Security Council committee.

    "It is unlikely Russia will try to lift the embargo, considering Europe's determination to maintain it in such a dangerous context," said Mattia Toaldo, senior policy fellow at the European Council for Foreign Relations. "I don't believe Moscow is seeking a direct intervention in Libya in the same way as in Syria. In the next few months the Kremlin will keep exerting its influence from the outside," Toaldo explained.

    "However, until Haftar will believe he has the unconditional support of Russia, and possibly of the Trump administration, he won't have any interest in taking part in the ongoing political negotiations."

    There is an intense activity in Egypt and Libya's neighbouring countries to find an agreement over a reform of the UN power-sharing agreement. The international community is still keen on establishing a comprehensive governing body that would include the Islamic factions and where military power would be submitted to political authority.

    On the other end, General Haftar, backed by Egypt, is seeking to exclude the Islamists from the political negotiations and pursues the independence of the military power from the government.

    However, a reform of the peace deal that would acknowledge heavyweights and main actors on the ground, above all Haftar and the Misrata forces, is inevitable, analysts say. Sarraj may not be necessarily part of a future picture. His incapability to manage the crisis has proven fatal and the UN may not want to salvage him against all odds.

    "In 2017 we may see this political stalemate continue, while Haftar will slowly advance into the west and south of the country. In the meantime, the living conditions in the country would further deteriorate," Toaldo said.

    (continued)

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    The population discontent is rampant against the GNA and Sarraj's management of the economic crisis owing to the daily water and power cuts, shortage of cash and lack of basic services. Food shortages have resulted in a thriving black market, driving up the price of food by 31 percent in the first half of 2016. Electricity is more and more sporadic, with longer brownouts

    The combination of inflation, devaluation of the dinar in the black market and the increased cost of basic goods and commodities has led to significantly reduced purchasing power for the Libyan people.

    According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) at least 2.4 million people out of a total population of 6.4 million are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

    The UN agency said that in 2016 Libya registered the fourth consecutive year of decline in oil production, from which government revenues depend. In the first half of 2016, the country produced an average 350,000 barrels per day, almost 20 percent less than in the previous year.

    Year 2016 has ended with a GDP budget deficit of more than 60 percent, while foreign reserves have been rapidly depleting, halving from US$107.6bn in 2013 to an estimated US$43bn in 2016.

    "The failure of public financial administration continues with the government unable to come to an agreement on a national budget, a plan or a system to provide for the population," said a recently published UNOCHA country report.

    "While funds are being allocated [including most recently the announcement from the Central Bank on the allocation of US7.8bn] from the contingency budget to the Presidential Council for energy, security, health and salaries, it is not clear how these funds will be distributed and if they will reach people in need."

    Corruption is widespread, with stakeholders at multiple levels taking advantage of financial mismanagement throughout the country, the reports said.
    Building on the population discontent, last week, supporters of Ghwell, the former prime minister of the Salvation Government,(Islamic) stormed some empty ministerial buildings in the capital, Tripoli. Ghwell's attempt seems aimed to reinforce the perception of Sarraj's vulnerability as well as the volatility of the front supporting the GNA.

    "The security situation in the capital remains fragile as usual," said Italian ambassador to Tripoli Giuseppe Perrone. Italy reopened its embassy on January 10 in an attempt to break the international isolation that Libyans are living in, Perrone said.

    "Until security will be managed by different rival factions, the situation will not change. In this contest the ongoing effort to create a presidential guard that would serve the institutions and grant their safety is very important," the ambassador said.

    Italy has promised to provide logistical and training support to Libya's coastguard and military forces to enhance border control and migrants flows. But the plan is far-fetched as long as Libya's authorities fail to exert any control over the country's territory.

    Libya is the primary route for refugees and migrants from Africa and the Middle East with Italy their first destination. In 2016 some 181,000 refugees arrived on the Italian coasts, a 20 percent increase from 2015.

    The embassy reopening has been harshly criticised by the Tobruk-backed government of Abdullah al-Thinni which branded it as "a military occupation".

    Meanwhile General Haftar criticised Italy's presence in Misrata, where Italians set up a military hospital and invited foreign countries "to stay out of Libya's affairs".
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fea...061913370.html

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    Inside Obama's War Room
    How he decided to intervene in Libya – and what it says about his evolution as commander in chief
    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...-room-20111013
    In Libya, however, the uprising took on a decidedly different character than those of its neighbors. After only a week of peaceful demonstrations, the protesters had transformed themselves into an armed rebel force and began marching on Tripoli.
    A series of high-level Libyan officials defected to the opposition, joining the newly formed government in Benghazi. Qaddafi's hold on power looked shaky – until he mounted a brutal counteroffensive on March 6th.
    The rebel leadership in Benghazi pleaded for Western help, making a number of spectacular claims: accusations of mass rapes, of Libyan gunships firing on protesters, of 30,000 civilians killed.The claims would later prove false

    On one side were top-level Pentagon and White House advisers who were skeptical of further military intervention, given the continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    This group included Biden, Also in the skeptic camp were Donilon's deputy, Denis McDonough, who had served on Obama's campaign staff in 2008, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who dubbed calls for intervention "loose talk."

    On the other side of the internal debate was a faction of unlikely allies within the White House and the State Department who viewed Libya as an opportunity to enact a new form of humanitarian intervention, one that they had been sketching out for nearly a decade.

    They would now be to Obama what the neoconservatives had been to Bush: ardent advocates for war in the name of a grander cause. Libya, in effect, represents the rise of the humanitarian Vulcans.

    One of the most vocal interventionists was Susan Rice, Rice reinforced the Obama administration's commitment to a theory called "responsibility to protect." R2P,

    Joining Rice in the push for intervention was Samantha Power,,,, he angrily denounced Hillary Clinton as a "monster.",,

    The wild card in the debate over Libya, according to insiders, was Clinton herself.
    According to veteran officials at State, Clinton installed the most controlling – and paranoid – staff they had ever seen. "They do things like not release her schedule to us, like it's top-secret, even though other secretaries of state had been doing it for years," says one official. "For a while, it was like Spy vs. Spy," says another. "Hillary would have her people, Obama had his, and they were keeping tabs on each other.

    During the internal debate over Libya, Clinton started off questioning the wisdom of intervention.
    At first, she stuck with her longtime ally Robert Gates, who strongly opposed launching a war that he warned would overtax the Pentagon.
    Clinton also worried that if an intervention failed to remove Qaddafi, or failed to gain enough international support, it would be a blow to American credibility.
    Clinton began to break away from Gates and side with her former rivals, Power and Rice. "I think she had some firsthand experience that changed her views," says one official familiar with her thinking. On March 12th, before her trip to the Middle East, Clinton learned that Arab states might back an intervention in Libya. Three days later, she was rattled when a coalition of Egyptian youth groups refused to meet with her. According to several State Department officials, the snub left her thinking, "We didn't get off to such a great start with Egypt – let's reverse that with Libya."

    The president apparently shared the impulse to use Libya to make up for the administration's slow-footed response to the Arab Spring.
    Iraq architect Paul Wolfowitz, who had signed a letter to Obama in February urging the president to protect Libyan civilians and overthrow Qaddafi

    Steve Clemons, an influential progressive at the New America Foundation, offered a more skeptical take on the rebel leaders, who included a mix of former Qaddafi thugs, high-minded reformers and militant Islamists once aligned with Al Qaeda.

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    the president said, failing to intervene would be a "psychological pendulum, in terms of the Arab Spring, in favor of repression." He concluded: "Just signing on to a no-fly zone so that we have political cover isn't going to cut it. That's not how America leads." Nor, he added, is it the "image of America I believe in."

    The debate was over. The president ordered Rice to go back to the U.N. and "lean forward" on a resolution that would authorize NATO to strike targets on the ground and take "all necessary measures."
    The humanitarian argument for intervention had carried the day. "The media makes as if this was an esoteric discussion on a foreign-policy website about intervention versus realism," says a White House official. "That's crap when you're sitting in the Situation Room and a city of 700,000 is facing indiscriminate slaughter. That's what moved the president."

    As Rice scrambled to line up votes at the United Nations, Qaddafi and Saif, his son and heir apparent, didn't believe that NATO would actually intervene.
    Why would the West move to overthrow him after they had reintegrated Libya into the international community? "Qaddafi was genuinely surprised,"
    says Dirk Vandewalle, an expert on Libya who has consulted with both the U.N. and the State Department. "Saif and his father were never really very good at reading accurately where Libya stood in the West. They thought everything was forgiven and forgotten." On March 17th, two nights after the meeting in the Situation Room, Qaddafi went on Libyan television and gave the speech that sealed his fate. His army, he declared, would hunt the rebels down and show "no mercy."
    (note Qadaffi mentioned the "rebels" -not Bengazi protestors)
    Qaddafi's son Saadi immediately realized that his father had made a major miscalculation. According to Jackie Frazier, an American business consultant who worked for Saadi in Tripoli during the run-up to the war, Saadi leapt into his Jeep, raced to his father's house and begged him to withdraw the threat. "Dad," he pleaded, "you have to take it back." In a last-ditch effort to prevent the U.N. from voting to authorize military intervention, Saadi also tried to get a message out to CNN that Qaddafi would not march on Benghazi.

    The next night, according to another American who is close to the Qaddafi family, Saif tried to arrange a phone call with Hillary Clinton, thinking he could talk the Americans out of intervening. But when Saif placed the call, Clinton refused to speak to him – instead, she had Ambassador Cretz call Saif back, telling him to remove all his troops from the cities and to step down from power. Through an American contact, Saif also tried calling Gen. Charles Jacoby, who was involved in drawing up military plans at the Pentagon, but to no avail. Saif and his chief of staff, Mohammed Ismail, laughed off the situation, apparently believing that Obama was simply engaging in the sort of anti-Libya bluster that Reagan had made a staple of American politics. "They didn't get it," says Frazier. "They thought they had been through this before. They thought it was the 1980s."

    Once the bombing started, Qaddafi and his sons felt betrayed. "We gave up our nukes and they screwed us," Saif told his dwindling circle of friends. In July, four months into the war, Qaddafi's sons still held out a delusional hope that their father would prevail. "We have an army of 1 million men in the streets," Saadi boasted to Frazier when she visited him in his rooms on the 23rd floor of the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli – even though Qaddafi's real strength was less than 20,000. "He'd drunk the Kool-Aid," Frazier recalls. Later that night, when a bomb hit near the hotel, Saadi looked out the window and shook his head. "NATO," he muttered.

    In his effort to forge a new, more multilateral model for intervention, Obama had succeeded in securing the backing of NATO, the United Nations and the Arab League. But the White House had done little to line up the one U.S. body that is actually vested with the constitutional authority to authorize a war: Congress.

    On Friday, March 18th, the president invited 18 congressional leaders to the Oval Office. According to two senior congressional sources with direct knowledge of the meeting, Obama "came into the room, sat down and read some talking points off a paper." Then the president said, "If there are any questions, you can ask my advisers," and left the room.

    The congressmen were stunned. "It wasn't a consultation," recalls one staffer. "It was an announcement." Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican known for his bipartisanship and his expertise on foreign policy, was particularly incensed. He launched into a volley of tough questions: Who's going to pay for the war? How much is it going to cost? What does it mean to Iran, Syria? Clinton and Gates were both present, but the answers they gave didn't satisfy the senator. "They punted all those issues," says a source with direct knowledge of the meeting.

    White House officials say that because Congress was on recess that Friday and some lawmakers attended the meeting via phone, Obama could not go into detail about classified portions of the operation. "It's fair to say the president spoke with great precision," says a White House source who attended the meeting. "These are serious actions, and being precise is important." At 10:35 p.m. that night, Obama was wheels-up for a long-scheduled trip to Latin America.

    The next day, when Democratic leaders in Congress held a conference call to explain the White House's decision to go to war, a number of Democrats made their displeasure known. According to notes of the meeting, shown to Rolling Stone, Rep. Steny Hoyer, the number-two Democrat in the House, faced fierce resistance as he pitched the White House plan. He kept using the words "limited and discrete," insisting that the U.S. would only be in the lead for a matter of days. But his explanation didn't go over well with some of the Democrats on the call. "How could we do this when we are just years away from WMDs?" complained one. Rep. Brad Sherman pointed to the administration's lack of consultation with Congress over Libya: "It would be ironic to promote democracy there, and lose it here." Toward the end of the call, Rep. Dennis Kucinich piped in: "Is this an impeachable offense?"

    The White House pressed ahead. As the bombings began, staffers tried to downplay what was happening in Libya, calling it a "limited kinetic action." Facing increasing criticism, however, the president returned from his trip and gave a prime-time address explaining his decision to the country. The speech, delivered at the National Defense University, was imbued with the language of the humanitarian interventionists. (Hours earlier, Samantha Power had given a speech at Columbia University saying it would be a "stain on our collective conscience" if the U.S. didn't intervene – the same words the president would use later that evening.) "I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves," Obama said, raising the specter of genocide. He also tried to distinguish his strike against Qaddafi from the "regime change" Bush pursued against Saddam Hussein, insisting that "broadening the mission to include regime change would be a mistake."

    Before the speech, the administration also invited another group of outside experts to the White House, in part to "influence the echo chamber," according to a source who attended the meeting. Dennis Ross, a regional director at the National Security Council, insisted that the administration had prevented a "localized genocide." The Pentagon, however, seemed less than enthusiastic about the president's decision. "We're all sitting there in the Roosevelt Room, getting a very thorough briefing from the National Security Council, Treasury, Defense, State, the whole crew," says one person who attended the meeting, "and I remember feeling like the Pentagon didn't have much clarity to their answers. What are the rules of engagement? How do you distinguish between Qaddafi elements and civilian elements you're trying to protect? The biggest gaping hole was: What is the political road map moving forward? How do you avoid a continued implosion and a struggle for power?"

    The fact that such critical issues remained unresolved reminded some participants of the rush to war that ended up embroiling the U.S. in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "It's good Qaddafi didn't fall right away," one U.N. official involved in post-intervention planning confided to an insider. "There was no plan ready." Gates complained publicly that the operation was being conducted "on the fly," and initially resisted requests by the administration for more surveillance flights. "The White House kept saying, 'We know you can do this,'" says a Pentagon official involved in Libya planning. "But when it came to some of the assets, we had to push back: 'Actually, no, we can't.'"

    Only two years earlier, when Obama had conducted his lengthy review of Afghanistan policy, the Pentagon had taken advantage of the new president's inexperience to win approval for a troop surge. Now, however, Obama was undeterred by the military's opposition. He had gone against Gates on Libya, and he would do so again a month later when he decided to send Navy SEALs to kill Osama bin Laden. (Gates had wanted to use an airstrike.) This time, despite the defense secretary's grumbling, the Pentagon followed Obama's lead. Within 72 hours of receiving his orders, the military had halted Qaddafi's advance with missiles fired from U.S. submarines and destroyers.
    Six months after Clinton met Mahmoud Jibril in Paris, Obama greeted him in New York – as the interim prime minister of Libya, a country with full international recognition, taking its seat at the United Nations. Two years earlier, it was Qaddafi who had stolen the show at the U.N. on his first visit to New York with a rambling, 90-minute diatribe against the West. Now the spotlight belonged to the men who had deposed him. For Obama and his advisers, it was a moment of deep satisfaction. The president had led America into a new kind of war,In the early days of the war, the administration was also careful to keep its distance from the rebel leadership, not wanting to make the mistake of backing a single faction within the Libyan opposition. "The White House didn't want to do anything until Tripoli fell," says a Libyan source. In May, when Mahmoud Jibril made a trip to the White House, he wasn't allowed to speak with the president. Instead, he met with Donilon, who frustrated the Libyan leader by referring to the National Transitional Council only as "an" interlocutor of the Libyan people, rather than "the" interlocutor. The behavior of the White House, according to a Lib*yan opposition source, was simultaneously "bold and timid."

    But as the war dragged on, the administration finally acknowledged the NTC, which waged an intensive lobbying campaign with the help of two prominent Washington firms, Patton Boggs and the Harbour Group. Three weeks after they were rebuffed by Donilon, Hillary Clinton referred to the NTC as "the legitimate interlocutor" during a meeting in Abu Dhabi. And the next month, in a meeting in Istanbul, the United States officially recognized the rebel leadership as the voice of the Libyan people.

    At the same time, the administration was increasingly criticized for its failure to follow the War Powers Act, which requires the White House to get congressional approval for any military action within 90 days. The White House argued that NATO operations in Libya did not involve "sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops" – but Congress wasn't buying it. In June, the House passed a largely symbolic measure that formally rebuked the president for failing to consult Congress. Kucinich, meanwhile, was working behind the scenes to try to persuade Qaddafi to step aside. "There was a very real chance of opening up talks," Kucinich says. "But it became abundantly clear that there was no interest on the part of the administration to settle this peacefully. There were too many other interests – oil markets and NATO fighting for its viability. It's quite regrettable."

    The administration knew it was paying the price for a war that seemed to have no end in sight. "We thought it was going to be quick," a White House source acknowledged. As the costs mounted, Clinton made at least nine trips overseas, working feverishly to keep European and Arab allies onboard. "Some wanted to scale down the ambition of the effort or look for an exit strategy," says a State Department official. "She kept telling them to stick with it."

    Over the course of seven months, America spent $1 billion on the war in Libya. As NATO flew more than 22,000 sorties, including hundreds of bombing runs and drone strikes, the goal of the war quickly morphed from a limited desire to protect civilians into a more sweeping and aggressive push for regime change.

    By the time Tripoli fell on August 24th, it was understood in the White House that the real test of its policy in Libya was just beginning. "The big lesson from Iraq, to state the obvious, wasn't so much whether we could defeat Saddam," says a senior administration official. "It was the day after, the year after, the decade after. It was about whether we could secure the peace." Avoiding another Iraq-style mess was clearly on the administration's mind when Obama marked the fall of Tripoli with a simple press conference. There was no strutting aboard an aircraft carrier, no Mission Accomplished speech – just a few words from the president during his family vacation on Martha's Vineyard. "All of this was done without putting a single U.S. troop on the ground," he said, while carefully acknowledging "the huge challenges ahead."

    As the White House knows, there is still a real possibility of it all unraveling in Libya////
    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...-room-20111013

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    oday, Libya is in ruins. The seven months of NATO bombing effectively destroyed the government and left behind a political vacuum. Much of this has been filled by extremist groups.

    Millions of Libyans live without a formal government. The internationally recognized government only controls the eastern part of the country. Rivaled extremist Islamist groups have seized much of the country.

    Downtown Benghazi, a once thriving city, is now in ruins. Ansar al-Sharia, a fundamentalist Salafi militia that is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., now controls large chunks of it. ISIS has made Libya home to its largest so-called “caliphate” outside of Iraq and Syria.

    Thousands of Libyans have been killed, and this violent chaos has sparked a flood of refugees. Hundreds of thousands of Libyan civilians have fled, often on dangerous smuggling boats. The U.N. estimates more than 400,000 people have been displaced.

    Clinton’s leadership in the catastrophic war in Libya should ergo constantly be at the forefront of any discussion of the presidential primary.

    Throughout the campaign, Clinton has tried to have her cake and eat it too. She has flaunted her leadership in the war as a sign of her supposed foreign policy experience, yet, at the same moment, strived to distance herself from the disastrous results of said war.

    Today, Libya is in ruins. The seven months of NATO bombing effectively destroyed the government and left behind a political vacuum. Much of this has been filled by extremist groups.

    Millions of Libyans live without a formal government. The internationally recognized government only controls the eastern part of the country. Rivaled extremist Islamist groups have seized much of the country.

    Downtown Benghazi, a once thriving city, is now in ruins. Ansar al-Sharia, a fundamentalist Salafi militia that is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., now controls large chunks of it. ISIS has made Libya home to its largest so-called “caliphate” outside of Iraq and Syria.

    Thousands of Libyans have been killed, and this violent chaos has sparked a flood of refugees. Hundreds of thousands of Libyan civilians have fled, often on dangerous smuggling boats. The U.N. estimates more than 400,000 people have been displaced.

    A disjointed peace process, mediated by the U.N. and other countries, drags on, with no signs of the war ending anytime soon.

    Hillary has, understandably, said little of these consequences. Yet, in debate after debate, with her call for more aggression on Syria and Iran, Clinton has only continued to demonstrate that she is an unabashed war hawk.
    Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, looking back, the facts show that she did not just push for and lead the war in Libya; she even went out of her way to derail diplomacy.

    Little-discussed secret audio recordings released in early 2015 reveal how top Pentagon officials, and even one of the most progressive Democrats in Congress, were so wary of Clinton’s warmongering that they corresponded with the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in hopes of pursuing some form of diplomacy.

    Qaddafi’s son Seif wanted to negotiate a ceasefire with the U.S. government, opening up communications with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Clinton later intervened and asked the Pentagon to stop talking to the Qaddafi regime.

    Rep. Dennis Kucinich wrote a letter to Clinton and Obama in August 2011, warning against the war. “I have been contacted by an intermediary in Libya who has indicated that President Muammar Gadhafi is willing to negotiate an end to the conflict under conditions which would seem to favor Administration policy,” the Democratic lawmaker said. His plea was ignored.

    A Pentagon intelligence official told Seif Qaddafi that his messages were falling on deaf ears. “Everything I am getting from the State Department is that they do not care about being part of this,” he explained.

    “Secretary Clinton does not want to negotiate at all,” the U.S. intelligence official added.

    And not negotiate is indeed what she did. In fact, after Qaddafi was brutally killed — sodomized with a bayonet by rebels —
    Clinton gloated live on TV, “We came, we saw, he died!”
    http://www.salon.com/2016/03/02/even..._of_libya_was/

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    Default Libya News and Interests

    Quote Originally Posted by Rune View Post
    One trick phony
    That's you that is!!

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    Anatta, you constantly pump out an unending stream of bad news about Libya. Whilst there is much to do things are slowly getting better.

    https://www.libyaherald.com/2017/01/...g-in-benghazi/

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    Is that you Katsung?
    It is the responsibility of every American citizen to own a modern military rifle.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rune View Post
    Is that you Katsung?
    Are you Katkrap?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Milagro View Post
    Anatta, you constantly pump out an unending stream of bad news about Libya. Whilst there is much to do things are slowly getting better.

    https://www.libyaherald.com/2017/01/...g-in-benghazi/

    Sent from my Lenovo K52e78 using Tapatalk
    probably had a lot to do with ISIS getting kicked out of Bengazi.
    Libyan problems are systemic the country is fragmented -the GNA is failing. Feel free to post anything you wish.
    Kissinger: “demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.”
    ________

    Cold War 2.0 Russia hysteria is turning people’s brains into guacamole.
    We’ve got to find a way to snap out of the propaganda trance
    ________

    Buddha: "trust the person who seeks truth and mistrust the person who claims he has found it "
    1.2.3.4.5.6.7. All Good Children Go to Heaven

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    The security official, who did not want to be named, said it appeared that explosives had been planted in the car.

    The blast occurred next to the Ministry of Planning and near the Egyptian embassy, which is closed. The Italian embassy is some 350 meters away.

    A Reuters reporter at the scene said roads had been cordoned off near the site of the blast, and dozens of security officials and vehicles had been deployed in the area. The wreckage of the car that exploded was quickly removed.

    Italy became the first Western country to reopen its embassy in Tripoli earlier this month. Most countries closed their embassies here in 2014 and early 2015 after heavy fighting and attacks in the city.

    Tripoli is home to a large number of rival militias, some of which oppose the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) that Italy has strongly supported.

    Islamic State is known to have sleeper cells in Tripoli, and it has claimed attacks there in the past, including against embassies
    Tripoli Car Bobming


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