The Second Battle of Benghazi: Really?

January 1, 2012

Petri Krohn has asked me to start a post on this, as I've long been meaning to. The mainstream version of this pivotal event is well-encapsulated in the Wikipedia article
The Second Battle of Benghazi. The first "battle" was of course the five-day blitzkrieg of Islamist militants and terrorists masquerading as "protesters" that briefly surprised its way to control of Benghazi on February 20/21, in a movement co-ordinated enough to seize all cities east of there as well, and of several in the west.

The latter part of the late-March escalation, in which Gaddafi loyalist forces were blasted by superior Western air power, undeniably occurred, killing hundreds of brave patriots. It dramatically announced that "no fly" meant just that. Or rather, it was there for real, lie that it was. It's the part before that, the loyalist attack on Benghazi of March 19, that stands in question.

It was said Gaddafi promised a mass-slaughter of everyone inside Libya's second city, a fair subject for this post as well. The proof was always semantics-based, aside from what we heard were the first actual attacks in that campaign, already showing troubling signs of random, overblown evil and a severe deficit of logic.

I have already covered the quickly-discarded Gaddafi attack with one fighter jet - within a day the rebels acknowledge they shot it down, then that it was theirs (they have jets?), then that loyalists shot it down. Proof of how close they were to the city's gates... sort of helped the "no fly" thing despite failing ... the Libyan forces were the ones already enforcing a genuine no-fly zone, allegedly.

I do have some research on this, but nothing coherent enough to be able to write a post. I open it for comments and will submit some highlights myself, only later pulling together a summary of the evidence for any such attack.

Mohammed Nabous issues will be covered separately in this post.