Syria Chlorine Allegations: Where Was Dr. Tennari?

Syria Chlorine Allegations: Where Was Dr. Tennari?
Adam Larson
June 20, 2015
(incomplete)
updates 9-8-2016, 3-19, 3-27-2017 

A Global Player at Center-Stage

Dr. Mohammed Tennari is the Idlib province Coordinator the Washington DC-based Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), a group opposed to Syria's government and allied with the competing "transitional government" in Turkey. Not far cross the Turkish border in northern Syria, Tennari set up his Field Hospital in the city of Sarmeen (alt. Sarmin - clinic logo at left), southeast of the regional capitol Idlib. This reportedly was started  in 2011, supported with funding to hire staff, secure supplies, etc. from SAMS (SAMS), as well as Doctors Without Borders/MSF (MSF), and it continues running today with an unusually transparent and public medical process (see the clinic's Facebook page for intensive surgery documentation).

 

Dr. Mohammed Tennari, left, and interpreter
during congressional testimony, June 17
(AFP/Getty Images photo via ABC News)

He obviously spends some time in Turkey and, recently anyway, transiting to and from points west. Dr. Tennari was in New York on April 16 to address a closed-door session of the UN Security Council said to move everyone to tears. (BBC) Most recently he addressed a meeting of the U.S. House of Representatives foreign relations Committee, on June 17 (PDF "transcript" from house.gov). He's always urging foreign military intervention or, in June, asking alternately for help in "reinforcing and rebuilding secure underground hospitals" to withstand the onslaught, if no one has the fortitude to stop it like they should. 

Tennari's main thrust and selling point in these lobbying efforts has been relating his direct experience with the government's intolerable chlorine barrel bombs. He came on the national spotlight after his clinic hosted the deaths of three young children, aged 3, 2, and about 1, on March 16, 2015. It was the first and worst of the new round of alleged chlorine attacks in Idlib. These deaths were exactly what he showed to move the UN to tears and, apparently, short-circuit their analytical skills.

This info-offensive with dead babies and calls for war against a Baath party government in the Middle East has been frequently compared to the 1990 Iraq incubator babies disinformation fiasco (many examples in the Guardian's comments, for example). That dictator-killing-babies story boosted support for the 1991 war on Iraq and was a fiction hatched by the Kuwaiti royal family and PR firm Hill and Knowlton. One big difference is here there undeniably are babies being killed by someone who either has bad aim or very bad morals. But otherwise, the propaganda power of the dead baby should be noted as one reasons to suspect this might be just that - but hatched by a different kind of PR group...

We know Al Qaeda's branch in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, was at the time of the incident the leading force deciding who lives and who dies in the Sarmin area. The area would still, even after all the running so many have done, contain some religious enemies - Shi'ites from the nearby and vulnerable village of Fu'ah, Sunnis who they think support the infidel government, etc. These might wind up dead in fits and spurts as soon as there's a good cover story and some fake names lined up.

As that situation might suggest, the stage Dr. Tennari rose to fame on is troubling one. At right is one sign of serious problems with Tennari's clinic in al Qaeda territory; Mohammed al-Taleb (as given), the youngest victim of that inaugural attack. On the  left is a stray view of him in the general treatment area, sat upright, receiving oxygen by a mask, and having injections at least considered, if not performed. He lived long enough to get to the emergency room. On the right is the more famous view from there. He's left on his back, apparently vomiting or exuding mucous, depending, and given no breathing assistance, even as he tries once to draw a breath on his own and fails. "Assad" was blamed for his inevitable death, but "Assad" could not stop them from continuing oxygen support, nor from making the other errors that may have helped finish off his sisters Aysha and Sara as well.  Please see the explanation at What Killed the Talebs? : "A disturbingly unsuccessful medical effort")

Exactly one month later, director Tennari spoke to the Security Council session, describing his version of the night's events with himself at the center of the medical drama. New York Times reports Dr. Tennari “said he tried to save the three children" seen in the videos. Elsewhere he's said "as quickly as we worked, we could not save them," (AFP) and - while the grandmother died before arrival - "we tried to treat the others. The children were foaming at the mouth, they were suffocating, then their hearts stopped." (HRW) Later, he told The Guardian:

“The children who came to us were suffocating and we couldn’t do anything because they had breathed too much chlorine,” Tennari told the Guardian from Idlib, describing the most difficult cases he had to handle. “It’s very distressing to see children suffocating in front of you and you cannot do anything.”

He doesn't explain why he could not get that mask back on Mohammed's face, for one thing. Maybe it's part of the (Islamist?) "fate" concept Civil Defense ("White Helmets") chief Raed Saleh talked about; referring to one of Mohammed's sisters, probably Sara Taleb, he said "we did what we could to save her, but dying in silence was her fate. Death in silence before the whole world.” Why is this their "fate" in anti-government hospitals? Why the combination of preventable death, and a global audience for it? The answer can perhaps be sensed in the accompanying calls to "stop the death" - not by enforcing proper medical procedures in this or other rebel clinics, but by starting an air war against the religious enemies of the people the clinic managers are allied with.

There are a number of possibly shifty details Tennari has offered casting some doubt on his true knowledge of the events of March 16. But after that inflammatory introduction, these are best considered in a section below, so we can get to the main question...

Was He Even On the Stage?
As the New York Times related, Dr. Tennari "tried to save the three children shown with their grandmother’s body in the video that he said was taken that night." From this, there's little reason he should not be seen in that same video, or set of two videos rather, filmed mainly right around the children as they died. These show everyone who was that close to the central drama, but Dr. Tennari does not seem to be one of them. It's all but impossible to prove a negative like his not being at the clinic, but from the available video, we can see that he probably wasn't there, and he almost certainly wasn't in the emergency room at the crucial time.

The question was first raised and considered in this section of the ACLOS event talk page. Here, you can check for yourself if you like, or have the time. Dr. Tennari looks like this:

And here are the emergency room videos, apparently what was shown at the UNSC and for the HFRC, as Dr. Tennari sat there claiming his central involvement in this drama. Can anyone spot him actually in that drama? I can't.

Video 1, Idlib Civil Defense

Video 2, Jabhat al-Nusra

In the first one, we can see only Mohammed is there at the start - anyone helping prior to this wouldn't be treating "children," just the one child. Mohammed is alive at the beginning, the girls are brought in halfway through the video, and one person says Aysha is alive (breathing) near the end. In video 2, they all increasingly seem dead. There's little to no gap between the videos, which show the time when the children died. Any life-saving efforts on them would happen in this span I estimate at 4-6 minutes long. And we see life-saving-type efforts, just poorly done, and mainly after the kids are dead.

Dr. Tennari is not the cameraman for either video, we can presume, so should be one of the people seen, eyes burning or not, hunched over the victims at least part of this time.

There are 7 people of medical relevance outlined here at ACLOS, numbered in order of appearance. Two of these - M1 (right, wearing the Taqiyah cap favored by some Islamists) and M6 (below, on the left) seem to be - or be considered as - qualified doctors. Neither of these men is Dr. Tennari; M1 is too old and lean, while M6 is younger and has all his hair. Is he one of the rescue workers whose faces we can't fully see? Visually, M4 or M5 (on the right below, holding Aysha so gingerly) could be him, but the director isn't likely to be working with the rescue teams like that. Is he hiding under a hijab as the one female nurse, M2? Is he one of the other, less relevant, people here? Or is he simply not in the room?

Consider M6, the young doctor (on the left in the image at right). For most of video 1, he's consistently not seen or sensed in the room, until he appears from the back at 1:34. From there on, he's clearly in the action through both videos. Dr. Tennari seems to be missing in that same way, but for the whole time.

A less thorough scan of videos from other parts of the filed clinic also failed to reveal any matches. He may have been on-site, just out of frame at times, maybe he is visible and we just can't see it yet, or he may simply not have been there.

It's a valid question, then: where was Dr. Tennari?
* Was he there after all? Can anyone out there locate a possible match? Comments below are open.
* He would have less reason to be in New York or Washington before he and his clinic delivered their chlorine attack and dead-babies story - but he is with SAMS, if not a Syrian-American himself. So maybe he was in the US.
* Maybe he was off in Turkey, or even Qatar for example, securing support.
* Maybe he was working elsewhere in Idlib, or elsewhere in Syria, or was at home like he says, but passed out drunk, or something embarrassing.
* Consider: he works and lives mainly in an area run by known terrorist groups and their ideological allies. For all we know he was briefly arrested that night so others could manage the clinic for a while - maybe he had nothing to do with the crime spree (see below), but can't say anything or they'll brand him a regime collaborator, execute him, and his children will be the next random victims of "Assad shelling." That's an overly-imaginative scenario, but there are a lot of possibilities in that direction, tainting his reliability as a witness. All we know is he flew out of this terrorist-held area to the UN and Capitol Hill and issued some softened demands, something about delivering explosives to kill the religious enemies of those terrorists. All pure coincidence, right?

Update: He was At Least Near the Stage 
--(Added 3-27-2017)--
An important point I've been half-aware of half the time this post has been up. Dr. Tennari, I presume, is seen in this video ("testimony of director of the hospital for cases affected by chemical gas") filmed apparently at this clinic during the events in question. It was posted quickly, before 9 am on the following day, and seems filmed in the dark hours.

He has the dark rings of no sleep under his eyes, and seems strangely out of the loop, in street clothes with no gloves or scrubs, seemingly trying to avoid eye contact with the whole room as others bustle about treating patients. His clothing helps clarify he's not even the guy in the green hoodie above, and simply wasn't in the ER when he says he was.

From his body language, he seems to mumble in dejection to the cameraman, and seems almost bullied or worried about other people present... or maybe he's just got a headache. This dialog clearly deserves translating, if it can be made out. But just from the visuals, I get the impression Dr. Tennari was there telling the first rebel story, but from a spot to the side of the main stage. Maybe he was pushed aside by some ambitious new team managing this night's special event. That's a lot to infer. I may be back with content. ...

In this new Al-Jazeera English report, Dr. Tennari describes himself as hectically running around from one patient to the next, and the whole scene was "noisy." Is that his way of explaining why he doesn't seem to appear in the ER videos? It doesn't seem to match what he is seen doing - chatting on the sidelines in street clothes as if he literally had nothing better to do.
----

Crime and Punishment, and Evidence

On June 17, Dr. Tennari presented alongside former ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, and border doctor Annie Sparrow (her "voice cracking with emotion"), who also happens to be the wife of Human Rights Watch CEO Kenneth Roth. All three were quite clear and professional on the point that that the government and its helicopters were behind these chemical attacks, and ideally at least, they should be stopped with some sort of aerial solution. None of them makes note of the unprofessional medical care that contributed to the deaths.

Consider; including the six who died on March 16, the death toll from 30+ alleged chlorine attacks is said to be ten, as of mid-June. Dr. Tennari swears everyone in Idlib is hopelessly terrified anyway, for whatever reason no one can change, and this is both why "Assad" does it and why it must be stopped (see Why Chlorine?). As allegedly used, chlorine counts as a chemical weapon and may well cross Obama's "red line." So Tennari has some alleged reason to press for direct U.S. military intervention in Syria. But after the hearing, a report in ABC News passed on signs that the audience was perhaps not as moved as it was hoped.:

Rep. Ted Yoho, R-FL, told the witnesses the committee was introducing a resolution condemning the chlorine attacks that included a “strong recommendation” to the international community requesting no-fly zones to be implemented. However, he said military fly zones shouldn’t be seen as a solution, but a military operation. “I just want to remind everyone that a no fly zone is an act of war,” Yoho said. “We're attacking a sovereign nation that has not attacked us. They are not a direct threat to the United States.”

"Sure," Dr. Sparrow might as well have responded, "just get that protective solution in place so the death can stop, like we did in Libya."

To the commission drafting that request, or those reviewing the request, anyone who reads this ... not only is it an act of war, it's one being requested based on the provided evidence we just looked at parts of. And while we have this case open before us, people of Earth, another important feature of the events of March 16:
the victims in this deadliest chlorine attack were visibly not killed by chlorine at all.
As best explained in the previous article What Killed the Talebs? the children, especially Mohammed, show signs consistent instead with an overdose on some CNS depressant drug, most likely some kind of opiate. This is seriously the best visuals-based assessment anyone has yet made (but open to review). A drug overdose of course would not come from a barrel bomb, but from a person in this Islamist rebel-administered area.

In the case of the girls anyway, and likely with Mohammed as well, the drugging happened before they were brought into Tennari's clinic. But it was probably done by friends or overlords, and still perhaps using drugs supplied to him by MSF or SAMS and somehow "loaned out." There was a chemical murder in the area, and  a staff that had chances to stop it, but let these pass. Why save a life if the plan is to end it? But why would the same plan hold into the clinic, past its ethical gates?

This really should be considered carefully, and as Tennari and his allies ask, with an eye to some kind of punishment for the perpetrators. It's a at least as hideous a crime as they say, besides being an elephant-in-the-living-room insult to our collective intelligence. If the facts are as the visual evidence suggests, Dr, Tennari is complicit in these murders and the cover-up. And it's not even a very good cover-up, just one that the ruling elite is very hungry for. 

Further Red Flags
Some noted possible inconsistencies between Dr, Tennari's various accounts - mostly to be expanded on later - there may be others I forgot.

Fumes Off Victims Clothes?
From NYT report on UN session, April 16:

... Even treating the patients was harmful. Dr. Tennari said his eyes itched, and he felt nauseated. One of the nurses fainted from the chlorine fumes off the injured.” (NYT)

First, No one is seen fainting in the videos. Next, it's unlikely chlorine gas will drift or even rub back off a patient's skin or clothing enough to do anything, in the war Sarin easily could. It changes to hydrochloric acid on contact with water (so eyes, airways, maybe skin), so surface particles could irritate, even float up into one's eyes, maybe, off the clothes of a freshly exposed victim. But from what I've read, passing out would come only after severe exposure to an air-borne cloud of the stuff, after coughing violently for a while.

Human Rights Watch April 14 report, using a different name spelling, "Tirani": 

Mohamed Ghaleb Tirani, the director of the field hospital in Sarmin who treated many of those affected by the attacks, told Human Rights Watch that the patients’ clothes smelled strongly of chlorine – “like the detergent.” ... Tirani said that four of the paramedics at the hospital were affected by second-hand exposure, including burning eyes and shortness of breath and dizziness.

The problem with this, as anyone who's reviewed the videos or who was there should know, is the children at least had been stripped and washed before arriving in the clinic, as anyone can see looking at the videos he presented. Most other victims, if not all, seem to be similarly stripped (usually to underwear) and washed with water out in the street, then given a civil defense blanket and taken inside. It's true grandmother Ayosh is not processed, and seemingly remains in her clothes, but she's also wrapped in a blanket that would greatly mute any vapors - only her face and one arm are exposed.

Dr. Tennari should probably know what makes basic sense, and even if he wasn't there himself, he should have seen the videos and thought it out before the UN session. But what he says about "fumes" rising off clothes causing symptoms that secondary chlorine exposure would not cause makes very little scientific sense.

Later, just ahead of the June 17 congressional hearing, the Guardian reported a different story, or an unknown twist in the same one. Given a copy of his planned testimony (apparently the same one released by the House as a PDF "transcript"):

As he left his house to head to the hospital, he could smell bleach. “When I arrived at the hospital, a wave of people had already begun to arrive. They were all experiencing symptoms of exposure to a choking agent like chlorine gas. Everyone was decontaminated with water before coming into the hospital, and their clothes were taken off of them.

This now is clearer in matching what the video shows, as if he had watched it. But he insists he was affected anyway, and still blames the children - just not their clothes. In the full testimony (transcript) he says "As I worked, my chest became tighter and tighter, my throat burned, and I had a hard time breathing. The young nurse who took care of baby Mohammed had symptoms of a critical level."

Perhaps it's this tenacity in holding to his first story regardless of the holes in it that's got so many influential people willing to believe everything he says.

Friend of the family?
Dr. Tennari says the father of the killed family, Waref al-Taleb, was a friend of his.  "Their father was a friend of his, he said, and ran an electronics repair shop in town" (NYT) or "Among the people who entered, I saw my friend Waref Taleb. He ran an electronics repair shop in town, and recently helped to fix my phone." (House testimony) Add 3-26-17: Later he told Al-Jazeera Waref “was friendly, quiet, [a] good person,” who “had a nice family. He loved his family.” Tennari says his last visit to the repair shop in Sarmin was to fix an internet router, a month or two before the attack. “Taleb did not charge him for the fix,” Al-Jazeera reported, as a gesture between “the two Syrian friends.”

Well... when he first spoke, to MSF (who support his clinic with drugs and supplies) as "Dr T, the director of Sarmin hospital" and saw this friend and his family brought in, what did he say?

“We saw people arriving at the hospital from a neighbouring village ... Amongst them, there was a family, three young children with their parents. They were in a very serious condition, dying. Their parents were able to speak but they were having a lot of difficulty breathing.” 

But then they died, except the grandmother, who he says arrived dead. But that speaking the parents did before must be how he learned who they were, at first. Later he already knew, they lived in that geo-located basement apartment in Sarmin (see here), ran a repair business in town, and Tennari was Waref's friend and customer.

Talebs Gassed Through a Vent?
Dr. Tennari said the gas seeped into the home through a vent: "The family lived in a basement apartment which became “a gas chamber” when toxic gas seeped in through a vent, Dr. Tennari said." (NYT) But the visual evidence shows two walls of the  apartment blown apart. The OPCW investigators would later hear the barrel bomb itself fell through this vent - with "an approximate dimension of 3 m x 1.5 m" - and then knocked down the wall. "A ballistic expert analysis supports the statement of the witnesses, improbable as it sounds, that the device impacted through the ventilation shaft." (October, 2015 report, PDF) Tennari's first description could be a simple mix-up based on what he heard, or a red flag.

For what it's worth, as mapped (see here),  the alleged Taleb family home has always had a strange rectangular hole of perhaps this size or smaller, no bigger, along its north edge. This correlates to about where the bomb seems to have crashed through, or detonated anyway. What the hole looks like now is unclear, butit seems larger from how much light comes in. What seems like a strange new wall blocks the view. It's not a very clear situation yet.

Children's Symptoms
In testimony (PDF) before the U.S. House of Representatives, Dr. Tennari has cited a few symptoms he claims he observed, besides the smell, as proving the victims were affected by chlorine.
* "Mohammad was foaming at the mouth.": True but irrelevant. Only the infant does this a bit, because he's spit up and manages a few shallow breaths through the goo, causing bubbles. The girls show no such thing. And it's not a specific chlorine indicator anyway, contrary to popular belief. With the mucous produced, foaming can happen, or not.

* ""(Waref), his wife, his mother, and his three young children – all under the age of three – were a sickly pale color when they arrived, a sign of severe lack of oxygen and chemical exposure." This is true for the children at least, and it's a problem. If they'd been hit with chlorine  they would likely suffer some red skin irritation, besides major eye irritation, causing redness. Instead, they're just pale.  Pallor is more consistent with a drug overdose. He's thinking of cyanosis (a blue shift), which they also display, slightly (this is consistent with an OD as well, if it doesn't come with other chlorine-specific signs). The grandmother has a reddish face and eyes, suggesting maybe she was exposed to chlorine, despite what Dr. T describes. The father isn't seen clearly enough, and the mother isn't seen at all.

* Difficulty breathing/suffocating: Not in a chlorine sense. That would be violent coughing and visible efforts to manage lungs full of fluid and get some air in there. These kids... one (Sara) is said to be dead and seems it. Aysha is said to be alive, but never visibly breathes. Mohammed is clearly alive, as he tries one visible, yawn-like breath, and the bubbles ("foam") indicate he was breathing a bit in between. Being unresponsive, comatose, flaccid, plae, and "too sleepy to breathe" are all symptoms of a drug overdose, and roughly the opposite of what chlorine poisoning looks like.

No Beds for Grandma
"We were forced to treat Sara and Aisha on the body of their dead grandmother because we had no free beds." Dead bodies must be on a bed, even if it complicates saving the lives of children? Did they really have no other place, anywhere, to put her that didn't obstruct the emergency room? No other beds, no morgue, no free floor space? Unlikely. It seems more likely they left her there to make a visual point about their lack of space.
Consider this snippet of translated dialog from one of the blame-chamber videos (as shown on RT, about 2:05) "Make sure the mother (sic) is at the bottom of the picture, and the children are at the top." (they already were, so maybe it's more of a filming direction - don't film it sideways. Still, it's interesting...)

Oft-Destroyed Clinic and Financial Irregularities (added 3-19-2017)
See our ACLOS analysis of what Dr. Tennari calls the 11th and final direct air attack on the Sarmin field hospital, in October, 2015, which he claims destroyed it totally and left it out of business. Here's where the two blamed strikes hit, relative to the untouched clinic. The damage seems to be: an (abandoned?) school and guardhouse directly hit, the cameraman's leg was injured, and he limped it into the hospital, leading to an injured knee at the hospital. Also, a photo shows a trashed room inside, with equipment strewn about, but every wall intact and not even a cracked window. Somewhere, several local men and two hospital staff members were said to be killed by this air attack. How it all really adds up remains impossible to correlate.

Now note the hospital at that time is a 3-floor structure. Consider that it had just gotten that way before this. Here's a comparison of images from Google Earth showing its growth: correction, it seems to be just one floor to begin with, and the northern place two. The hospital has a second floor added in 2014, and a third added in 2015, with its roof still incomplete on August 18. In October, it seems to be roofed over: the top floor is as dark inside as the second.

So whatever it means, this place had just reached full size when "Dr Mohamed Tennari, director of Sarmin hospital, said the facility appeared to have been directly targeted and could no longer serve patients on one of the fiercest frontlines in the war. He said the hospital had been the target of at least 10 other airstrikes earlier in the conflict." (Guardian) As far as I've noticed, it may have shut its doors for good. I don't think I've seen any further reports from there.

(otherwise, forthcoming - here and/or at  this spot at ACLOS.)

"Bombing His Own People." Really?

Evidence and Over-Acitivist Imaginations
August 1/2, 2011
last edits Nov. 22
bumped Feb. 21, 2012, for app. one-year anniversary

There has been virtually no Libyan Air Force presence over Libya's own territory since the March imposition of a no-fly zone and swift enforcement of it by NATO. Just how much aerial bombardment there was prior to that, and of what kind, is the matter of some deabte.

The pre-no-fly period can be further broken into two main segments. The first is late February, the 16th to about the 25th, when the rebellion is generally understood (incorrectly) to have been strictly protest oriented and peaceful. The other span is after cities had fallen, starting Feb 19 really, but only a solid fact to respond to by the last days. By then, no one could reasonably deny the government's opponents were armed bligerents to be called "rebels" or "freedom fighters," not "protesters."

It's the earlier reports of bombing simple protesters that had the shocking effect on world conscience driving intervention, especially in the skies NATO would seize to bomb Libya. These came in quick, in a rapid burst from Feb. 21-23, and then stopped.

Supporting evidence beyond the flimsy early reports never surfaced. We saw no videos of jets over head, let alone of bombs falling from them. There are no photos of craters in the streets, or of homes or anything flattened by these attacks. Remains of the exploded bombs, or any unexploded ones, never surfaced. No victims among the hundreds claimed have ever been shown or named.

The only evidence is as follows:

Videos from Labraq Airport:
Der Spiegel reported on Feb. 26 about "the first solid proof that the dictator's regime had bombed his own people." This they cited an activist's "shaky" videos of the Feb 18-20 battle for Labraq airport, near al Baida. Among other things, this footage was said to show "a Libyan fighter jet roaring over al-Baida and dropping a bomb not far from the airport," itself not clearly against protesters, but there was also "a helicopter shooting into the mass of people."

The video was said, by Der Spiegel, to have been posted all over the Internet, but as I said there, I cannot find it now, nor any other allusion to it. It seems likely this claim of widespread dissemination - or the content of said videos - was just a miscommunication.

Orders to Bomb Benghazi
The most high-value moment that really made an impression on the world community, and shaped the coming "no-fly zone," was when pilots defected to the rebel side and claimed they were ordered to bomb innocent people. It happened twice in a three day span.

As I've written about elsewhere, two Libyan pilots in their single-seater Mirage jets defected and landed on Malta February 21. They didn't just land quietly either, but swooped around in an air-show manner to draw attention prior to landing, a witness tells me (see the link). They claimed they'd been ordered, at least as Reuters put it, citing Maltese officials, "ordered to bomb anti-government protesters in Libya's second largest city of Benghazi."

Benghazi had just the day before fallen under rebel control, in a military sense. So even if the order was true, it's not obvious why the government would be interested in killing those still only protesting, rather than the heavily armed and ruthless gangs declaring war on the government.

But we don't know for sure the order, or even a more legitimate version of it, was ever truly given. We have only the word of those two pilots. They remain unnamed, but were both reportedly high-ranking colonels, not unlike their fellow Air Force colonel Abdullah Gehani, arrested by the Libyan government a couple of weeks earlier on suspicion of helping set up some kind of overthrow with French involvement (see here).

The defecting colonels also seemed to be - possibly - escorting two helicopters ferrying undocumented, mysterious Frenchmen who arrived on Malta just before them. One set of craft escaping from Benghazi without clearance, the others allegedly sent to Benghazi but veering off without clearance, both meeting up on Malta. Hmmm...

Strange as it this alleged order was, two days later came confirmation of the charge. Two more Libyan air force pilots ejected from and ditched their two-seater SU-22 jet near Ajdabiya. They landed and surrendered to the rebels, claiming they too were ordered to bomb Benghazi but just couldn't follow through. News 24, Libya pilot rejects orders, crashes plane:

Tripoli - A fighter pilot disobeyed orders on Wednesday to bomb the opposition stronghold of Benghazi and ditched his plane after he and his co-pilot ejected, a Libyan newspaper reported on its website.

The Russian-made Sukhoi 22 crashed near Ajdabiya, 160km west of the city which has fallen to anti-regime protesters, a military source said, quoted in Quryna newspaper.

"Pilot Abdessalam Attiyah al-Abdali and co-pilot Ali Omar al-Kadhafi ejected with parachutes after refusing orders to bomb the city of Benghazi."

On the co-pilot, there is a variant story where the pilot refused and al-Kadhafi (Gaddafi - of the ruler's tribe) pulled a gun on him to continue, but he ejected anyway, the rat had to follow suit, and was then arrested and put in prison. See comments below for more details.

So, to summarize: three jets were allegedly sent to the rebel capitol to kill protesters only. Four pilots, two missions, all aborted by the pilots, none carried out. Both the puny alleged attempts and the near-universal rejection of them reflected poorly on the regime, whose orders no one seemed to follow anymore. And their 0% success rate might explain why they stopped allegedly trying to bomb Benghazi just three days after it fell.

Ammunitions Depots, Not Protesters
Successful air-strikes in rebel-held areas were nonetheless implied in a February 22 interview with Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi. The leader's son told Christiane Amanpour that the military had not attacked Libya civilians. "Show me a single attack, show me a single bomb. The Libyan air force destroyed just the ammunition sites. That's it." he said." [source]

Again, no one has shown him or anyone the evidence that any bombs were dropped on protesters as opposed to raid-worthy ammo dumps and possibly other fully military targets the "protesters" had already stolen.

Aerial Bombing of Tripoli Neighborhoods
While the government failed to bomb actual enemy fighters or civilians in the east, there were contemporaneous claims of successful attacks on their own capitol city to snuff out the relatively small violent protests that had started there. At first, I thought it came down to a single bold claim by one Adel Mohamed Saleh, a "political activist", to al Jazeera. It was translated and reported by Reuters, filed 1:43 PM EST (6:43 GMT).

What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead. Our people are dying. It is the policy of scorched earth. Every 20 minutes they are bombing. It is continuing, it is continuing. Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car they will hit you.

"There was no independent verification of the report," Reuters noted, and in fact the evidence suggests he didn't witness any of that at all. Another message of the day, via Twitter (See here and/or here), said:

sultanalgassemi: Al Jazeera breaking Multiple reports confirm that military airplanes are bombing protesters in Tripoli.

The rulers in Libya have cut off most international communications, but Al Jazeera is broadcasting ways that their jammed TV feed can be picked up, other agencies are offering land lines so that Tweets can be passed on to the world.

Multiple reports? Indeed. Another Tripoli witness came out in support of the activist Saleh who spoke to al Jazeera. This time it came in via al Jazeera, from "Soula al-Balaazi, who said he was an opposition activist." As Reuters again translated, filed actually before the other report (5:11 PM GMT, one hour, 32 minutes before).

Military aircraft attacked crowds of anti-government protesters in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Monday, Al Jazeera television said.

A Libyan man, Soula al-Balaazi, who said he was an opposition activist, told the network by telephone that Libyan air force warplanes had bombed "some locations in Tripoli". He said he was talking from a suburb of Tripoli.

Again, "no independent verification of the report was immediately available," said Reuters. But a while later there would be, and the second time, that same statement wasn't true. Or were they suggesting these two were not independent reports? One way or another, they probably weren't.

A Version by Sea
Possibly related is a similar accusation of insane naval bombardment of Tripoli on the 21st. This time, it was an activist, named Salem Gnan, "a London-based spokesman for the National Front for the Salvation of Libya," speaking to the UK Guardian (I presume) and reported at 5:07 PM GMT - four minutes before al-Balaazi and 96 minutes before Mr. Saleh.

Gnan said eyewitnesses in Tripoli told him the navy ships were firing into one part of the capital, on the outskirts. "Many people have been killed," he said, and added that "[Gaddafi's] plan is to use absolutely everything he can to stop what is happening." But there's no mention from these witnesses of jets - which Gaddafi had - dropping anything. (See here for more on Mr. Gnan and theNFSL - he would also be the only source to allege bombing - by planes - of nearby az Zawiyah on the 24th.)

Both versions of the attack of Feb 21 share multiple deadly explosions across town, but differ on what was happening in the sky. And they all three came in over a span of about an hour and a half. Quite strange. My guess is this: something blew up loudly at about 5:05 PM, heard by many people who would be left wondering what it was. This triggered the first two dramatic guesses what it was. Then Mr. Saleh thought for a bit before he decided to "corroborate" and expand the airplanes version with his over-activist imagination. Thus "multiple reports" can sometimes be born.

What it Meant
If not the evidence, the implications were certainly clear. As Reuters reported (the second one cited here), citing a total genius:

An analyst for London-based consultancy Control Risks said the use of military aircraft on his own people indicated the end was approaching for Muammar Gaddafi. "These really seem to be last, desperate acts. If you're bombing your own capital, it's really hard to see how you can survive, " said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Control Risks' Middle East analyst.

Just like ordering protesters shot, running to Venezuela, hiring mercenaries, resorting to mass rape, sniping children dead, and so on. All of these and more fantasies yet strongly hint to to us that Gaddafi is over. It's been said worldwide, daily, for over five months now. Each time, the big "if" was the big problem.

It wasn't a problem for whoever made this image, seen at libya-watanona.com.

Never mind the dramatic relevance of this parallel for the grinding down of Sirte, October 2011, it's rather telling that in the absence of a single damn photograph, rebel supporters had to rely on a 74-year-old painting to get their point across.

Video Evidence from Tripoli
There are videos from Tripoli claiming to show the aftermath of these air attacks. By one of these I've seen, but didn't save and cannot re-locate, we might have been seeing the effects, over a whole neighborhood, of some type of bomb that sprays graffiti, burns out a few buildings, and drags junk across the street. Does such a weapon exist, and is Gaddafi known to have acquired them?

Another with very similar effects is still around. This is given as the rebellious Tajoura district: bombing in tajoora tripoli 22.02.2011.mp4. There is smoke rising in the distance, perhaps from an air-strike.
But this bomb does nothing, on closer inspection, than burn a car and perhaps the insides of a building, sending up a plume of smoke. There's also gunfire from men perhaps guarding a hilltop building in the distance. But a horde of civilians is unafraid of the warning shots into the air, charges the security line, and breaks through as the guards retreat. Others clamber over a wall and join their march towards that green-domed building.

Another interesting video on Youtube is a re-broadcast on Jazeera English, it seems, of the original Saleh phone call (dubbed in English). Here it's specified he's calling from and speaking of the Fashlum neighborhood "where the revolution erupted in the city of Tripoli." He claims that anyone who comes out to help the wounded and dead are shot by pervasive snipers, and that bombing runs were ongoing and aiming for people. Yet the B-roll footage under the audio shows many hundreds of people calmly walking away from somewhere, towards somewhere. A few run in and out of that column, for unclear reasons, but no one is falling dead. There's no mass panic as if suddenly attacked, and there are no jets or anything shown.

Mr. Saleh's rant is worth a listen. He's clearly fired up and shrieking over these things he says happened. And he knew just what was needed to stop them: outside intervention. From the video:

The Libyan people need urgent help! People are crying, death is everywhere! Why is the world silent on these atrocities? Why? This is the question. Why are the Arab countries keeping silent? Why? Within the next few hours, the entire Libyan population can be wiped out if this continues ...

On March 4 Sky News had a look at Fashlum and Tajoura and brought back video:

"This is Fashlun, this is the centre of Fashlun," Saif al Islam Gaddafi said.
"Show me a single attack, one drop, one attack on Tajoura."
I was invited to tour around the suburbs of Tripoli with Col Gaddafi's son.
He insisted there have been no bombings in the capital designed to intimidate anti-government protesters - and prevent them from launching an uprising in the capital.
During our drive we saw no evidence of airstrikes, but this was just a short, unscientific exploration of the city.

There was no time for science, just journalism, and they failed. Sky was given a chance to visit any site they wanted. They had the reports of which areas (vaguely) were bombed. If they didn't ask to go there, it was their loss. If they did, they saw nothing. Nothing but people loving Seif, even in the neighborhoods supposedly bombed for their insurrection.

Sukhat Chandan was part of a UK delegation that spent longer and was more thorough. Here in late April he speaks with Russia Today about one of the first fact-finding missions. Mr. Chandan started with what he considered the most important claim, vis-a-vis unleashing the bombing of Libya. This was the alleged bombing of "three particular districts in Tripoli: Souk-al-Jouma, Fashlum, Tajoura," all well-stocked with men like the ones we just heard from. "We visited these areas and there was no indication whatsoever of any aerial bombardment," he said, along with many other fascinating findings.

Looking for these scant videos of or about Tripoli bombings in February, I saw a very large number of non-hits roll by. Bombings of Tripoli, flames, flattened buildings, craters, unexploded ordnance, mangled or charred bodies, including baby-sized ones, damaged civilian infrastructure,  etc. But these were all after mid-March, and exclusively carried out by NATO, for months now aggressively bombing civilians to protect them from bombing that was itself only rumored to begin with.

Update Aug 14: The Russian Evidence
Goodness, did I completely neglect for weeks now to even mention the Russian evidence against Gaddafi “bombing his own people?” Most, like this scholarly article by Ronda Hauben, cite an alleged Russian satellite-based information proving there were no airstrikes carried out in Libya in these early days

I don’t really like this evidence, especially in its wide re-use as a lazy crutch. The allegation comes from a Russia Today broadcast, re-posted on Youtube here, for example. There are no supporting explanations or even specifics I’m aware of. It was satellite-based, perhaps photo-based. But if so, to prove a negative like “no airstrikes,” you’d need something like constant security camera footage over numerous Libyan military bases, showing no craft leaving, or over all cities, to prove no bombs dropped. Perhaps it was based only on photos looking for damaged buildings or craters in the streets. Or maybe it was something different, like monitoring military communications that would have heard such an order. Again, no specifics were given.

Besides, Saif al-Islam admitted there were air strikes, just at ammunition depots, not on protesters in the street.

When this notion was put before the skeptics at the JREF forum, it didn’t do so well. A reasonable-sounding consensus emerged among people of middling knowledge that this wasn’t possible. That’s not scientific disproof, and the forum has a mixed record, but I can’t see why I should embrace this as a leading point of evidence. If the claim is ever explained better and shown to be proof, or even as inconclusive supporting evidence, so be it. Until then I’ll call it an alleged support for an idea that’s still apparently true and is better illustrated in other ways.

Oct. 17: Grimaldi's View
From a recent interview with 73-year-old Italian filmmaker Fulvio Grimaldi, "the legendary Italian (and former BBC) journalist and filmmaker who shot and smuggled out video footage of the Bloody Sunday massacre from under the noses of the British army almost forty years ago," who's now working on a film about the Libyan war which I very much hope to see finished:

I began by asking Grimaldi how closely his recent trips to Libya matched the impression given in the mainstream media:
“Not in the least. I personally visited areas around Tripoli where Gheddafi had allegedly “bombed his own people”, but not a bomb had fallen before Nato started its attacks. And this was confirmed by Russian spy satellites. Wherever I went – only in the company of other Fact Finding officials, talking freely to people of my choice, and stopping wherever I wished – I came across multitudes of young and old, men and women, who declared themselves committed to Gheddafi. They are the people who withstood a 7 month war by 27 military powers who had promised a two-week victory, those who defended Tripoli for over a week, those who today hold out in Sirte, Bani Walid, Sabha, Kufra and in 75% of the still free national territory – against genocidal bombings, special Nato troops and mercenaries.”

Oct. 26: Shammam's Explanation
Mahmoud Shammam, currently the NTC lying sack of an information minister, was back in February just a Libyan dissident giving a fair-minded account of what was happening inside Libya. On the 27th, he spoke with Al Jazeera English's Inside Story, along with French defector and schemer Nouri al Mesmari. At 10:10 he's confronted with Seif assertion that there were no airstrikes against the Libyan people. His response:

They were for the last four days working day and night to clean areas to look - Tripoli looks like a normal city. And we warned against it. We warned the media, and we helped them come from the eastern part, from Salum (?) and they come starting from the eastern part.

That was all he could say before veering off. Wherever he's speaking of, one presumes that, unlike in any videos or photos ever presented, one will see ... what? Roads patched over where there was a crater? A house being torn down to sanitize its visible bomb damage? Who did this "cleanup" and why was none of that filmed either? If bombs like those evidenced in videos - ones that trash, burn, and loot - were used, a standard "clean-up" will suffice. But normal bombs like people meant will require heavy work crews to erase the signs of. Shammam blames the cover-up on "public relations firms in Europe, especially in Italy," who were apparently doing this urban reconsructive surgery in complete secrecy within dissident areas of the capitol that we know were flooded with cell phone cameras. Shame on those PR firms who hadn't yet nullified their contracts and defected to the rebel side!

Departures From Protocol at the UN

Sketching out the New Libya: Departures From Protocol at the UN
July 28/29, 2011
extensive edits Sept. 12

From What Fount Springeth This? 
The unfolding of the new libya, and its old colors of monarchy, has been painted as the natural triumph of the peoples' will against a tyrant's rule. This had just occurred in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia (and nowhere else yet), leaving everyone just knowing it was just time for change in that narrow region and, hey, who doesn't hate Gaddafi, right? Everyone who was capable joined with the masses, we believed, driven by the noblest of abstract virtues - freedom, equality, justice - perhaps unseen in such purity since the French Revolution. The old, the corrupt, and the cruel was to be swept away by crashing waves of light, it seemed back around March 1.

By now we can see this wasn't quite right (well, most of us can). In fact the reality on the ground seems artificially murky, brutal, deceptive, and highly troubling. And the first and major steps towards enforcing any new Libya - the help of powerful outsiders - looks more like a well-planned soft coup than a mass uprising.

The uprising originated, to some extent anyway, with Libyans - but only a select few visionary ones operating within Libya, in Paris, and especially in New York. These pioneers worked largely through the United Nations, but in an unusual personal, not national capacity. I'm no expert on international law, but I suspect what happened here was illegal.

This fascinating but ignored line of thought is the cornerstone of an impressive recent article I read and will cite throughout this one: The Role of the UN Security Council in Unleashing an Illegal War against Libya, by Ronda Hauben, published on July 20 by the Center for Research on Gloablization.

The article starts with the the official explanation why the UN's Security Council chose to take up the issue of Libya: a member state of the Security Council, Lebanon, had brought the issue before them in late February. This was followed by a second from the Arab League, and the white people countries well-known for loathing Gaddafi simply followed up on that. No euro-Imperialism there, most presume.

But the Arab League has its own conflicts of interest and reasons to dislike the Libyan regime, at least in the alleged 2003 Gaddafi plot to kill Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah (a decent starter source, NYT, on that strange chapter). There are also supposed rivalries over religious influence, wiath Gaddafi accused of wanting to supplant the medieval monarchy and make Libya the new center of Islam (can't find a handy link for that).

And Qatar, a firm non-european support for the rebellion against Gaddafi in every conceivable way, through the Arab League and on their own, has some kind of previous beef with the Colonel that's apparently quite serious. According to recently published reports, based on files found in Tripoli, British authorities had agreed to offer special protection to Seif al-Islam Gaddafi from a possible 2002 plot to kill him. According to Muzaffar Iqbal, writing for Pakistan's The News (International), the plot might be disinformation, but was linked to "Qatar’s interior minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani," who "was also accused of sheltering “terrorists” at his farm by none other Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, who considered his ministerial post a “direct and serious threat to US forces present in Qatar.""

The Arab League - Arabs! - approved
"no fly" at the UN. Photo: Reuters, 
via the Sofia Echo

And as the UK Guardian noted, Lebanon also has its beef with the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, in the form of a long-dead Shia cleric allegedly killed and buried - or alive? - inside Libya. By the sound of it, this was well-played on by rumor-spinning rebel schemers and helped prod things along.

Along with a hasty, poorly-attended, and still far from unanimous vote, the Arab League - Arabs! - approved a "no fly zone," and thus provided a fig leaf for this open door to imperialist  bombardment of Muslims which they later - limply - protested for a couple of days.

The "hate Gaddafi" club - which the regime had clearly allowed grow too large - put themselves in charge of writing Libya's future. The "screw Gaddafi" and "oh well, what can you expect?" clubs - also too large - apparently just let them do it, with nothing more severe than abstention.

The Libyan Invite I: Dabbashi  
But even with the troubling grudges considered, this telling obscures an earlier and shadier genesis yet, Hauben argues, also from within the Arab world.

It was not a Security Council member nation which started this process. Nor was it the Arab League. Rather it was a party that one could argue had no legitimate basis to speak at the United Nations, especially not to the Security Council.

This party, was, by that time, the former Chargé d’Affaires to the United Nations for the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya [Libya], Ibrahim Dabbashi. Dabbashi had taken the unusual actions of first announcing to the press that he had defected from representing the government of Libya at the UN, and then requesting an emergency meeting of the Security Council about the situation in Libya.

His request to the Security Council began a process which, in less than a week, resulted in passing the stringent sanctions against Libya and the referral of its officials to the ICC that are included in SC Resolution 1970. SC Resolution 1970 then set the stage for SC Resolution 1973 passed three weeks later which authorized military action against Libya.

Mr. Dabbashi seems to be the second in charge of the mission to the UN, normally. The mission was actually headed by Abdel Rahman Shalgham, the Permanent Representative of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Libya's formal title). Why Shalgham's Chargé d’Affaires was able to have such leverage isn't clear to me; elsewhere Dabbashi is also described as the "Deputy Ambassador," so perhaps he was in charge at the moment, February 21 to be precise, for some legitimate reason.

Either way, the underling defected on day six of greatly misunderstood "protests", rejecting the post he filled ... or, rather, not doing that. As Hauben put it "while an appropriate course for a defecting government official from a country would be to resign his official position as a Deputy Ambassador for Libya at the United Nations, this is not what happened."

Dabbashi tells it juuuust how
it is. Photo: Al Arabiya

In fact, he went on to represent "the people" of Libya. This always clearly meant the anti-Gaddafi insurgents, and eventually their strange political leadership, the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC or some variant - they change it every couple months). But before they had quite gelled, Mr. Dabbashi in New York had declared himself their ambassador - and not the deputy. By dint of entrepreneurial spirit and swift action, he was now the boss now and his old boss ... that remained to be seen. Boss again, or an enemy supporting the "genocide?"


Ibrahim Dabbashi's actions were clearly geared towards creating a new nation in the space of the old, and that seems a bit like diplomatic warfare to me. And whether he knew or suspected it then, he was making himself the permanent representative to the UN for racist lynch mobs, looters and retribution thugs, arsonists, rapists, cop-killers, serial fakers of claims and evidence, neo-colonialist free-market sell-outs, genuine if misguided freedom-seekers, and, to some extent, al Qaeda and assorted Islamo-nihilist mercenaries.

Dabbashi's Roadmap
Either way, I went a bit beyond Hauben to see more of just what this turncoat did with his invented new position; it would take the form of words on the record. I rely on an article from Al Jazeera English, Feb 22. By this, it's not the cautious statement of a loyal servant of his government forced by events. The turns of phrase and even more the suggested actions reveal a rather advanced conception of what this crisis offered and how it should be exploited. Calling on the widely reported but unverified rumors of a bloodbath, he said in part:

The tyrant Muammar Gaddafi has asserted clearly, through his sons, the level of ignorance he and his children have, and how much he despises Libya and the Libyan people [...]
This is in fact a declaration of war against the Libyan people. The regime of Gaddafi has already started the genocide against the Libyan people.

The officers and soldiers of the Libyan army wherever they are and whatever their rank is ... [should] organise themselves and move towards Tripoli and cut the snake's head.

Here Dabbashi clarifies he is declaring war, but only after the other side started it. With quick and comprehensive thinking, he laid out much of how it should be done: he demanded an inquiry by the International Criminal Court for crimes against Humanity by Gaddafi and his sons (investigation done, warrants eventually issued, used as bargaining chips to bring the NTC to power). He warned of Gaddafi fleeing justice into exile (setting up the travel ban), and warned of money smuggling (setting the world towards freezing as much of the Libyan economy as possible).

He also prophetically recommended a no-fly zone and air embargo over Libya, as al Jazeera explained, "to prevent mercenaries and weapons from being shipped [sic] in." (It was only just then that rumors of aerial bombardment were starting to appear as well, greatly strengthening this case).  He warned of sabotage at oil installations "by the coward tyrant," (reminding us all what this was really about). And of course he encouraged employees of Libyan embassies all over the world to join him, and "stand with their people." He urged this specifically for the mission in Geneva, which should pressure the UN Human Rights Council to action. [again, the al Jazeera article]

By and large, these diplomatic defections did happen, swiftly and en masse, a real coup of an achievement. Other areas of the government and military only dribbled defectors, usually loud-mouthed ones, but the ambassadors just poured out, helping convince the world it must really be over for the Jamahiriya. And again, this moved fast starting on day six of the violent protests in Libya that allegedly surprised everyone.

Mr. Dabbashi's bold course of action, as personal as it was, could conceivably have lined up with the overall will of Libya's people.  Clearly a formidable segment rejects Gaddafi just as virulently (if less strategically) as he does. But with time to understand, we can see the impression of a total nationwide mutiny that drove Dabbashi was a fiction, and one he himself co-wrote.

Al-Mesmari and The Date that Lives in Infamy/A Cabal Enabled? 
The address above was given on February 22, since the UN headquarters was closed on the the 21st when Dabbashi first announced his resignation elsewhere (President's Day is for the whole world now). Besides commemorating our own great leaders, the date of his unequivocal defection is noteworthy. As Hauben explains, another Libyan official, Nouri al-Mesmari, also announced his resignation as the Jamahiriya's protocal chief on the 21st.

Al-Mesmari resigned from Paris, having informally resigned upon flying there, unannounced, in October. He had reportedly spent the time between linking French intelligence with Libyans planning some nebulous uprising set for February, and rebuffing all inducement to return to the targeted nation. (See here for explanation.)

Al-Mesmari's previous job as chief of protocol (from Which Dabbashi would so boldly stray) had put him into intimate contact with all diplomatic posts, like Dabbashi's. He told al Jazeera on February 27 (video) that he was "a pure diplomat," in charge of "relationship with the embassies." Strangely, six days after resigning, he told them "I am in charge of the diplomacy in Libya" (emph. mine).

And for what it's worth, it's also been speculated by seasoned observers that al-Mesmari was in turn put up to defect by now-defected Libyan foreign sinister Moussa Koussa (reported on Africa Intelligence, passed on via Meyssan at least).  Hauben also makes note of both men, Mesmari and Dabbashi, making specific use of the term "genocide" to describe what Gaddafi was doing. This term has no basis in reality, with the "cide" based on confused rumors, and the "geno" part being just silly. But that precise word, accurate or not, does have a certain resonance - especially in Geneva.

The apparent signal for these twin defectors in Paris and New York was the decisive turn of the previous day in Benghazi, their emergent rebel capitol. Heavily armed "protesters" finally overwhelmed the Katiba army barracks, after days of trying, with the heroic help of a suicide bomber. To save this last toehold of security in the city, Interior Minister Abdel Fateh Younes was sent by Tripoli to restore order. But upon arrival he made a deal - the surviving soldiers would be allowed to leave, and he, Younes the great, would join their cause, along with the force he brought. He was "with the people" publicly by the evening of the 20th.

It was first thing in the morning that these two made their announcements - only once it was clear Benghazi had fallen and Younes had jumped. If people are jumping, it might seem like the ship is sinking. And they knew, by some instinct (?), it was time to add to that impression and quickly, before it could be shown the Jamahiriya still sailed on, just a few rats lighter.


As I've noted here before, it's generally illegal to recognize a group not in charge of a nation. And even considering that, there was no group here - Dabbashi at first represented no legally extant body. If he was chosen by anyone in particular, (besides that defunct old regime that once chose him), it would be by a still-unproven conspiratorial cabal, who all agreed to things like "say genocide," and "be sure to mention his sons!"

If not Conspiratorial, at Least Illegal
These are just little clues, and not proof, but in concert with the stealing and re-appropriation of government posts, alarm bells should have been going off.

It would appear to be a serious breach of UN protocol for a defecting official who had formerly been the representative of a nation that is a member of the UN, to be able to request a Security Council meeting and to have the Security Council grant the meeting and allow the defecting official to participate in the meeting. Similarly, to allow the defecting diplomat to make unverified allegations at the meeting against the government of a UN member nation would only compound the serious violation of the UN Charter represented by this abuse of UN processes.

I never really thought about it before reading this article, but that does seem quite illegal. I just thought it sounded extremely wrong. Why did I not think of, or hear of the actual impropriety of it? I can understand the Americans, French, Qataris, etc. biting their tongues and egging this on, but where are the clear protests from Russia, China, Venezuela? (Out there, perhaps, but ignored). This is really a strange and shady situation. As Reuters said:

The [security] council met at the request of Libyan Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi, who along with most other staff at Libya’s U.N. mission announced on Monday they were no longer working for leader Muammar Gaddafi and represented the country’s people. They called for Gaddafi’s overthrow.”

The Libyan Invite II: Shalgham Jumps Ship, Washington Sinks It
As we've seen, deputy ambassador Dabbasi took the first bold steps, while his superior, ambassador Shalgham at first acted differently. Before mindlessly repeating the tales of massacres and "genocide," he called home and asked. Hauben cites this video and explains:

Shalgham also attended the February 22 Security Council meeting, along with Dabbashi. In informal comments after the meeting, Shalgham indicated that he had been in contact with a relative in Tripoli and was told that the alleged atrocities that the media was claiming had happened in Tripoli were not true. 

Similarly, speaking to the press, he indicated that he had been in contact with government officials in Tripoli who said that they, too, disputed the claims of atrocities taking place in Tripoli and planned to invite journalists from Al Arabiya and CNN to see for themselves that the allegations were inaccurate.

These offers would have been useful towards establishing the truth as it's now emerging, but they were rebuffed forcefully by the West. Shalgham's pointed reference to Tripoli's view was not in the spirit of the cabal, and as that video link shows, made him a persona non-grata with the journalists there, expecting an absolute defection to the "light side."

But he was somehow brought around, perhaps by his number two, or any other comination of forces in this massive geo-political lynch mob against his home government. Within a couple of days, he too was resigning and denouncing his personal friend, Muammar Gaddafi, and his regime in stringent terms. A more specific example of the diplomatic disconnect over who represents Libya arises from his subsequent lobbying, as Hauben explains:

One good example of this departure from protocol obligations is demonstrated by two documents. The first is Security Council Resolution 1970 (S/RES/1970(2011). The document states in its opening statement (21):

“Taking note of the letter to the President of the Security Council from the Permanent Representative of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya dated 26 February 2011.” (S/Res/1970(2011),p.1)

The problem of acknowledging this letter this way in the body of Resolution 1970 is that on February 25, the former Libyan Ambassador to the UN, Abdel Rahman Shalgham had informed the Security Council that he had defected.

By February 26 he no longer represented the Libyan government. Consequently there was no basis for the Security Council to refer to a letter from him, as a letter from the Permanent Representative of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

The Security Council should have found a way to hear from a member of the government of Libya, rather than substituting a defector Ambassador and his delegation for the official delegation of Libya.

Once enough rats had jumped, the ship was sunk. However many nations immediately recognized them or didn't, the UNSC had recognized the rebels from a mile away as of February 22. The Gaddafi regime was diplomatically neutered, just a thing that the bombing of could commence.  As Hauben noted, the actual Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, headquartered in Tripoli, in charge of most of Libya, and supported by an uncertain but sizeable chunk of Libya's people, was not allowed to speak for itself. 

No legitimate Libyan government official was invited to take part in Security Council proceedings. When the Libyan government tried to appoint legitimate government officials to replace the defector delegation, the US government would not approve the visa requests for the replacement delegates, in violation of the Host Country obligations of the US. In this way, the US prevented the Libyan government from being able to present its case before the Security Council.

And so Mr. Shalgham, the slightly delayed rebel ambassador of NATO's Libyans, was number one again and Dabbashi again his deputy. The ambassador of the brand-new nation, sketched out in New York and soon inked-in with ever more blood in Libya, put his words on the record on the 25th. He easily swayed the council to embraced the new Libya, literally. One last time, Hauben:

In his presentation to the Security Council meeting on Friday, February 25, Shalgham made a virulent denunciation of the Libyan government, complete with analogies to Hitler. Shalgham ignored the conflicting accounts of what was happening in Benghazi and instead painted a picture of peacefully demonstrating civilians unjustly subjected to a massacre. 

Shalgham presented no proof for his allegations nor was he asked to present any. Instead, he was consoled by the Secretary General and members of the Security Council, with several Security Council members, embracing and comforting him. 

Photo: Monika Graff, Getty Images

At right is actually a separate hug on March 16, upon securing the pivotal no-fly zone at the UNSC, sanctioning NATO bombardment of his country. Shalgham, right, and the US ambasssador, Susan Rice, left. Might have that backwards, I don't follow the news too close.

Something snapped between February 22 and 25, and the real Abdel Rahman Shalgham was apparently killed in the process, another early casualty of the Libyan Civil War, snuffed out like so many under murky circumstances.

Bombing Civilians to Protect them from Bombing

June 1, 2011

The following are a few notable excerpts from a great Canadian article, questioning that nation's continuing role in a "hypocritical" war against Libya.

Time to rethink Canadian involvement in ill-fated Libyan venture
By SCOTT TAYLOR ON TARGET
Mon, May 30 - 9:04 PM

During his visit last week to London, President Barack Obama took the opportunity to assert America’s commitment to deposing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. This came in the wake of stepped-up NATO airstrikes in Tripoli that had reportedly killed another 19 civilians inside Gadhafi’s targeted presidential compound.

"Gadhafi and his regime need to understand that there will not be a letup in the pressure we are applying," said Obama. "Ultimately this is going to be a slow, steady process in which we are able to wear down the regime."

...NATO agreed to enforce the "UN Resolution ban on all flights, except for humanitarian aid purposes, in Libyan airspace to make sure that civilians and civilian-populated areas cannot be subjected to air attack." For the record, the previously quoted passage is taken right from the NATO website outlining the current Operation Unified Protector mandate.

So in a twist of logic eerily reminiscent of the famous American Vietnam War quote "We had to destroy the village in order to save it," NATO is launching stepped-up airstrikes against Libyan civilian populated areas in order to protect them from airstrikes. The battlefield tactical confusion of this intervention is mirrored by the complete lack of strategic cohesion on the part of the NATO military alliance.

Considering also the evidence for airstrikes against civilians ever occurring or even being ordered are on Twitter rumors and the word of a few defecting pilots. The threat we're blowing Libya to hell over was a phantom one to begin with.

Adding to the hypocrisy of the NATO position is that, while member nations such as Canada are providing warships to enforce the arms embargo against Libya, the U.S., the United Kingdom, France and Italy are openly increasing their provision of weapons and advisers to the rebel forces.

There is now discussion of both the U.S. and U.K. adding helicopter gunships to support the rebels and to enforce the authorized no-fly zone over Libya. For our part, Canada announced last week that our air force has so far dropped more than 240 laser-guided bombs on Libyan targets in order to protect Libyans from airstrikes.

Libyan Crisis: Events, Causes and Facts

June 6/7 2011
edits July 2

I haven't watched it, but it's important enough to post instantly. Libya's government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, on his Youtube channel (still not pulled as a war  crime!) has uploaded at least two long videos in a series of the above title. Please share this!

Okay, it's two parts. about 30 minutes total, and in English.
Made by R. Breki Goheda, of Tripoli.
Part 1/2:


Part 2:


Just for the unique footage used in abundance, this video is well-worth watching if one is interested in this war. The narration is workable, but should have been re-done, at least in places - there are a lot of verbal type-os. It's better than my Arabic would be. The tone is pro-Gaddafi, with the style of state news, and most English-speakers will find it unconvincing just because of that. However, the facts as presented are in some cases verifiably true and in other case, we at least shouldn't be too quick to dismiss the view from Tripoli. A fair amount of detail is included, and it lines up with what I've been learning elsewhere as the nebulous, emergent, historical truth of the matter.

Part 1, around 6:15, shows the "al Baida massacre" aftermath and interrogation. The scene of the soldiers' capture, if not their execution, is given as happening at Labraq airport, near al Baida.

In essence, the video blames the violence on Islamic extremists who hijacked the peaceful protest - in some spots from the first day - and turned it into a civil war. And they are now enabled by the massive Western intervention of NATO.

It's claimed that contrary to the popular mythology, the government forces tried their best to not massacre civilians. I'm leaning that way myself seeing more and more video evidence, and the government's laxness seems to have been a huge factor in how so many cities and even military bases fell into rebel hands. It could well be argued they should have been more violent early on. Hundreds did indeed die, but on both sides, and nearly all at security bases far from the original protests, during attacks on these that eventually succeeded. A lot of detail is given here on how many total tanks (250) and other weapons fell into rebel hands, along with video of them playing with their new toys.

Besides the massive shooting of peaceful protesters, two other crucial claims are addressed - the bombing of protesters by aircraft, and the use of African mercenaries against them. Both are denied, if in a stale and unconvincing manner. Still, it's true - there's no credible evidence for either type of state crime. In fact, despite the huge importance of the charges, none of the these three main ones was ever verified in any way and thus remain, as Goheda pointedly notes, nothing but rumors.

And of course the UN security council resolutions 1970 and 1973, based on these rumors, opened the way to legal, economic, and military action against Libya. This is, of course, highly troubling now that we learn the rumors were all apparently false. More troubling yet is that the simple excuses were used shamelessly and without consequence or reproach, to muscle through a long-desired regime change agenda that will hand all of Libya to those same "armed gangs" and, more importantly, their US-educated, NATO-backed, free-marketeer puppets for plunder in the rebel leadership.

A "Mirage" Over Benghazi on the Cusp of Air War

Originally posted April 5 as Crimes Against Reality in Libya, Part 2
Re-posted here May 11
minor edits Jan. 1 2012.

Resolved to Protect Benghazi
Talk of seizing the Libyan skies started early in the civil war, fed in large part by the impression that Gaddafi's insane forces were bombing peaceful protesters from the air (still no evidence). Considering real atrocities, like the 130 government soldiers executed around al-Baida for refusing to shoot protesters (we heard), bloodbath and madness loomed. The world had to act, it gradually became clear, as they had in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and elsehwere, by seizing the skies away from the repressive government and using this high ground themselves for "policing" powers. Responsibility to Protect, P2P, it's called. Respond to Panic is more accurate.

Three weeks into the insurrection, it was getting desperate for the rebels. They had pushed too far and been left too long as the regime pushed back. One-by-one, cities west and then east fell back to government hands, and by March 17 loyal forces were moving in on Benghazi itself. Gaddafi had promised to go to Libya's second largest city and the de-facto rebel capitol, and crush those who refused to surrender. That coming to fruition would destroy any reasonable hope of finally toppling the colonel with this insurrection.

United Nations security council resolution 1973 was voted in 10-0 at the end of a late-night session on the 17th. It called for a "cease-fire," with special emphasis on government actions. But it was never in fact to be applied to the rebels, and became a one-sided cease fire demand. The resolution also tightened sanctions, froze assets, and imposed a "no-fly zone" for government aircraft, over the whole nation.

The skies were authorized to be seized as of morning light on the 18th. As the west prepared to attack and scheduled a special meeting in Paris, Libya announced a cease-fire in the evening. The world scoffed, and noted that government forces were still rushing towards Benghazi. No one bothered waiting for the rebels to agree to stop shooting, and they never did. They couldn't topple anything without firing a whole lot more.

There is some confusion, but not as much as there should be, about the supposed siege of the city starting on the morning of the 19th. The new Wikipedia page for "the second battle of Benghazi" has the first shots fired, by Gaddafi's forces near the city, at about 7:45 am. [1] The government denied any attack on Benghazi, that hey held their positions miles away. But shelling of the city's southern areas occurred, and scores were killed and injured, according to hospital staff, Even two air strikes were reported in the early morning hours by one reporter. Gaddafi troops were fought at the gates, said one rebel commander, and government tanks were roaming freely inside the city, according to many reports.

The evidence of heavy weapons usage in the area, including Libyan army tanks seems entirely credible, but there are no photos of these attacking forces to show their context. Considering this abandoned army base on February 24, the rebels had heavy weapons early on and numerous tanks, among other things, after this siege. And the government claimed with a straight face they did none of that, that it was apparently the work of rebels with seized equipment shooting at each other to draw in the West.

Whichever the case, the West was trying its best to be drawn in. Very wealthy leaders of some handful of normal countries (US, UK, France, etc.) talked it over in Paris. By the middle of the day an urgent consensus was reached to save Benghazi by starting to enforce the 36-hour-old resolution 1973. A rather lopsided vote from 9 of the 22 members of the Arab League had already been managed, bolstering the surface-level worldliness of this trojan horse air campaign. Asked if military action would now go ahead, the British Prime Minister David Cameron said:

"Gaddafi has made this happen. He has lied to the international community, he has promised a ceasefire, he has broken that ceasefire, he continues to brutalise his people, and so the time for action has come." 

Fire in the Sky: A Government Air Attack?

The last straw, merging in the news stories announcing the line in the sand, was a dramatic visual that morning from Benghazi's southern outskirts. Around 9am local time the first reports and video emerged, despite the supposed total internet blockage, of a high-speed fighter jet seen streaking over the city, then bursting into flames and tumbling from its path, apparently shot from below.

The pilot was seen to eject from the flaming jet with a parachute rather late in the sudden nose-down plunge. On impact with a residential area, a massive, dull orange fireball crusted with black expanded over the sururb and stretched into a tower of black smoke. Citizens of the rebel capitol reportedly cheered and celebrated as the jet crashed. [2]

The photo was run in huge sizes by countless news outlets that day, visualizing the situation in appropriately stark and dramatic terms. As Sky TV put it, "the aircraft crash in Benghazi appears to be the first solid evidence to contradict Libyan claims of refraining from military action." The solemn decision reached in Paris came "just hours after a Libyan ceasefire was broken" by this crash, reported The Sun. "Gaddafi appeared to openly flaunt the threat of a no-fly zone resolution earlier today as a fighter jet was shot down..." [3]

The Telegraph's Rob Crilly in Benghazi, was on the roof of a hotel where journalists stay when he saw the fighter. In a blog entry at 9:21, he wrote:

It came in from the sea, somewhere to the north. At first the residents of Benghazi cheered, believing it would herald the start of air strikes against Gaddafi forces still rumbling towards their city. “Is it European,” shouted one. Then it swung back around the city, describing, a high, slow circle even as artillery shells pounded the outskirts of the city. If it was a Mirage then maybe it was one of Gaddafi’s last.
It’s next run would have been more deadly, as it roared back across the city, this time flying low and straight – the very definition of intent – as anti-aircraft guns roared along its western path. [...] A flash illuminated the jet, somewhere near its tail. The flash grew to a flame as an explosion ripped through the plane, stopping it as if caught by an invisible hand rather than anti-aircraft fire. Slowly the plane sycamoured towards the ground where it exploding in another, bigger fireball. [4]

It's still speculated that catastrophic engine failure caused this crash, but that's an odd enough coincidence, and enough reports suggest the sound of anti-aircraft fire, that I'm presuming it was torn down with guns on the ground. Again, the government of Libya denied this was their jet on any mission for them, that they didn't intend to flaunt anything at just that moment. [2] Again, the world didn't believe the civilian-bombing regime.


Friendly Fire in the Sky? A Rebel Attack?
Just before noon, the Telegraph reported "confirmed reports from Libyan rebel leaders that the jet fighter shot down today over Benghazi was one of theirs, and not a Gaddafi aircraft." [4] The Guardian's Chris McGreal said as early as 9:45 "Some of the rebels say it’s their plane. It might have been their only plane that was shot down by Gaddafi's forces," adding at 10:19 "the rebels now concede it was their only plane."[5]

The protesters-turned-rebels were swooping over the city "low and straight – the very definition of intent"? And who shot their air force down? Previously it was presumed to be anti-aircraft fire from within the city. I could swear I saw a few whispers that it could have been friendly fire, in trigger happy wild west Benghazi. But I’m having a hard time relocating them now, aside from Rob Crilly, "tweeting" around 11:30 “rebels [are] telling us they think the plane shot down was a rebel plane – fog of war. We only saw one." [6]

A Government Attack on the Rebel Attack?
Most source leapt straight from rebels killing Gaddafi jet to Gaddafi killing rebel jet, either one meaning Gaddafi, but not the rebels, was in violation of the cease-fire-no-fly/whatever demand. Rick Leventhal told Faux News at mid-day "we don't know" who was flying the jet. If it were Gaddafi's fighter, it'd be in major violation just for flying there. But if it was a rebel jet, it was probably just aiming for the government tanks in the city, which he said "we believe" were targeting the journalists' hotel. [7] But if it had been a government jet, it may have been aiming itself for the hotel. Maybe the tanks were rebel-held and there to shoot down the plane.

Sky News' Emma Hurd said "suspicions have now been raised that the jet was a rebel-flown, stolen aircraft hit as it sought out Gaddafi's forces on the outskirts of Benghazi. ... There is still some confusion over that but what is clear is that despite claims of a ceasefire there still is fighting and it seems to be led by his [Gaddafi's] forces." [1]

Considering again the somewhat unclear location of government forces on the 19th, it needs a bit of presumption to take the rebel version that they were at and in the city. But this is all but necessary to accept they were close enough to shoot down the mystery jet. And, of course, that would also put them close enough to be targeted by it. Within just over a day, the no-fly-zone against the government of Libya became, effectively, a no-shooting-at-rebel-air-offensives-zone. That, I believe, is unprecedented.


The Sydney Morning Herald reported a bit later in the day:

However a rebel official reached by telephone acknowledged the plane was one of their Mirage fighter jets and that it had been downed by loyalists. "It was one of the insurgents' planes. It was downed by Kadhafi's forces. From what I hear the pilot is dead but I cannot confirm that," he said. [8] 

Aircraft Model
The rebels held very few acknowledged aircraft at this time. Most people believed the number was zero, leading to the presumption that it was from the government. As noted above, Chris McGreal passed on rebel reports, multiply confirmed, that this "was their only plane." [5]

The rebel official had cited it as one of a few, and gave it as a French-built Mirage (unspecified model). The Telegraph however noted this was "contrary to other reports that it was a Mig-27 Flogger-D." [4] One should hope that a rebel official giving specific information would know the make. David Crilly, citing rebel sources,  said "no-one able to ID it. Consensus was that it wasn’t a mig – possibly a mirage." [6]

Comments at the New Statesman suggest the craft was not a Mirage. Someone there so inclined did suggest the F-1 as compatible, the only specific model I've seen specified. [9] Other said Mig-29, and "visual identification confirmed: it's MiG 23." Live Leak's report and Wikipedia called it a Mig-23. [2] [1] This is supported by further sources, but that's perhas not it either.

I decided to overlay the jet photo with schematics of the Mirage F-1, Mig 23, and the Mig-27 Flogger D. I used perspective and skew effects on the photo to make it as "flat" as possible in overall proportions like these overheads (planar surfaces anyway, wings and horizontal stabilizers). Then I matched the body, nose-cone to tail-fin, as close as possible, and found all of them are reasonable fits, but the Mig-27 is the only one that seems perfect (note also the "shoulder spikes." likely off due to rotation). Then I looked at the wings. Both Migs have adjustable ones, but the sweep setting here also mimics the F-1's fixed angle. For size and shape the wings are a best fit best with the Mig-27, and is clearly out for the Mirage. The Telegraph had it.

update April 12: I re-did the graphics. The plane was a bit too wide before. For reference, the original version is here. Also, the rebels were recently caught flying a MIG-23, which NATO escorted back to the ground for violating the no-fly zone. Still no sign of them running any of the model used that morning. [source] 

I'll spare myself (for now) the painful research of seeing just what this model means vis-a-vis Gaddafi's air force, rebel-seized Gaddafi jets, and related implications. Others better informed may perhaps have a comment to share on that.

The Wreckage and the Crew
Seen from a distance, the mystery Mig seemed to plow straight down into a residential neighborhood, and engufled it in a massive fireball. A few deaths, many injuries, and much damage should be expected. It took two days for Fox News's correspondent Rick Levental to be shown the wreckage on the afternoon of the 21st. He testified the plane was definitely rebel, painted with the old monarchy flag on its tail-fin. Dull metal sheet and engine debris was strewn around a rather large walled courtyard of an “old adoption home.” [10]

Leventhall said the pilot had directed the plane there to minimize injuries on the ground, and none at all were reported to my knowledge. The pilot did indeed eject very late, and not surprisingly, this report confirms that he died of injuries on landing. [10] One comment makes a claim the “pilot died from wounds after ejecting, co-pilot ejected and had minor injuries. 3 days later he was back up in another plane.” [11] No other sources I’ve found confirm anything about a co-pilot, however.

Musings 
What if the government forces truly were too remote to have taken that shot? Only the rebels would then have controlled the ground fire in that area, as first noted in the presumption they had shot it down. They controlled the jet itself, as we found out, so absent AA fire from Gaddafi’s side, it was friendly fire, rebel-on-rebel. This seems most likely, in fact, going just by logic. But that contradicts rebel findings. ... Oh well.

But what if this wasn’t accident? All things considered, it probably was, but my over-active imagination has me wondering if it could possibly be a false flag bit of theatrics for the foreign journalists and their cameras. Perhaps it went awry, or was re-written behind the lead actor's back. Maybe the original idea was so strafe or rocket the hotel and massacre journalists, before zipping away from the hapless civilians' defenses. The rebels would clearly not have claimed it in that case. The possibilities are endless when you have a case this full of holes and mystery.

On the Mig/Mirage confusion, I would guess the rebels did in fact hold a very few Mirages, acknowledged, and at least the one Mig-27, unacknowledged as far as I know. If this were the case, we should ask why rebels were flying a model of jet they don't acknowledge having? Considering the first impressions that it was Gaddafi's jet, maybe it was to create that first impression? The painted tail-fin mitigates against this, but for all we know, that was painted on after the fact, to support the story they adopted, for whatever reason, if it differed from the original story, written by whoever ...

The Telegraph's Crilly said he saw the Mig-27 first come in, and the line of travel suggested “it came in from the sea, somewhere to the north.” Western airpower was sitting out there on carriers, ready to launch. It’s odd to suspect Gaddafi’s forces would launch from out on the sea or even swoop out much over it and risk shoot-down. The same might go for a rebel jet on its way to attack Gaddafi’s forces or … whatever it was “intent” on doing. Is it possible a rebel jet - or even a remote-controlled drone - was launched from naval points north? The photos of the pilot ejecting only shows a parachute and a large object from the distance seen. Again, the possibilities are endless...

Whatever was really  going on there, this mysterious incident certainly wasn't the cause of the bombing raids and 110 cruise missile strikes that started later that day. It did, however, serve a nice role tipping the scale in the public mind's eye. Gaddafi never stops flaunting, will never stop the killing and the insanity on his own, but now he will go down in flames. It started to really happen with jets that were French Mirages, to much cheering, a bare eight hour later, seeking out Saddam's forces - still stationed miles from the city.

Sources:
[1] Second Battle of Benghazi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[2] Live Leak March 19
[3] "PM: The time has come for action" The Sun. March 19.  http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3478243/Jet-shot-down-over-Libya.html
[4] Libya as it Happened: March 19. The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8393509/Libya-as-it-happened-March-19.html
[5] Libya military action - Saturday 19 March part 1. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/mar/19/libya-live-blog-ceasefire-nofly
[6] Libya live blog: latest developments on no-fly zone, ceasefire and ...
[7] Fox News. Coverage of Libya war, dispatch, Rick Leventhal. March 19. http://video.foxnews.com/v/4595510/rick-leventhal-live-from-libya
[8] http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/thousands-flee-as-fighting-rages-around-libyas-benghazi-20110319-1c1gp.html
[9] http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/03/jet-shot-allies-benghazi
[10] Fox News. Coverage of Libya war, dispatch, Rick Leventhal. March 21. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/20/significant-success-early-stages-enforcing-sanctioned-fly-zone/
[11] http://worldnewstrend.com/news/gaddafis-fighter-jet-shot-down-by-libyan-rebel-benghazi-19-03-2011/