Cynthia McKinney Speaks from Tripoli

May 22 2011
last update June 6 2011



http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2011/05/former-us-congresswoman-cynthia.html

Not the best messenger as far as the conditioned masses will be concerned (especially now considering this, and the last line), but personally, I like her and I of course applaud what she's doing.

(CNN) -- A former U.S. congresswoman slammed U.S. policy on Libyan state TV late Saturday and stressed the "last thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war."

The station is fiercely loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and her interview was spliced with what appeared to be rallies in support of the embattled Libyan leader.

"I think that it's very important that people understand what is happening here. And it's important that people all over the world see the truth. And that is why I am here ... to understand the truth," former Rep. Cynthia McKinney said during a live interview.

She said she was invited to Libya by the "nongovernmental organization for fact-finding," adding that she intends to bring more people to the country soon so that "they too can understand."

NATO warplanes have been pounding military targets since March after the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution to protect civilians by any means necessary, as Gadhafi's forces try to quash a nearly three-month revolt against the leader's roughly 42 years of rule.

Gadhafi's government has repeatedly urged the international community to send fact-finding teams to Libya to report what's happening on the ground.

At one point during the interview, state TV cut to what it said were live airstrikes, hitting Gadhafi's compound.

"Is that a bomb?" McKinney asked.

"I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of war ... are not what the people of the United States stand for, and it's not what African-Americans stand for," she told state TV.

The former Georgia representative also slammed the economic policies of U.S. President Barack Obama and said the government of the United States no longer represents the interests of the American people.

"Under the economic policies of the Obama administration, those who have the least are losing the most. And those who have the most are getting even more," she said. "The situation in the United States is becoming more dire for average ordinary Americans, and the last thing we need to do is to spend money on death, destruction and war."

Separately, McKinney appeared on state-run Press TV this week in Iran. She was reported to be in Tehran attending the International Conference on Global Alliance Against Terrorism for a Just Peace.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/05/21/libya.mckinney

Stop the War and Hands off Libya

A recent post on Mercury Mail.blogspot, Libya Turmoil 129

A letter from one of the Libyan students in today's protest march.
One of our readers participated.

The Third Voice of Libyan People and Students

Dear All
We are here in this very difficult time for all the Libyan people to raise our wisdom voice and to say please stop the war and let the Libyan parties sit round the negotiation table.
The conflict is taking lives from both sides and the NATO’s air strikes are also killing civilian people as they are aiming to destroying the infrastructure of Libyan cities. The situation is very difficult for all people in all cities as there is shortage of food, medicine and fuel. The children and elderly are suffering most physically and mentally from the bombardment and are unable to sleep because of the shaking and bombing noise every day and night. The NATO air strikes have destroyed hospitals, schools, houses and other civilian buildings.

The disaster in Libya is getting worse every day by the outside intervention and the trade embargo on Libya is preventing everything to reach the country as well as seizing the Libyan money which cannot be used to buy food, medicine and fuel.

We were shocked and disappointed when the UK government became part of these ongoing air strikes and not allowing a peaceful solution or sending fact finding missions to at least learn the truth. We are here in UK studying, living and learning the tolerance and accepting of others views and also the democracy which took the UK about 800 years to build. Your help to have a peaceful solution and reach an agreement between all Libyan parties is very important and will save lives and the Libyan people’s future.

We ask you to put pressure on your government to call for talks between Libyans especially after the tribes had their meetings on 5th/6th May 2011 when 2000 tribal leaders met and asked all Libyans to set some talks for peace and refuse any outside intervention and condemned the act of some parties in providing weapons to the opposition, which will not help the peaceful solution.

So please, for the sake of all Libyan children, women the elderly and Libya, as well as UK‘s reputation, stop the war and hands off Libya. We like and support a good and healthy relationship between the UK and Libya, better than ever, built on respect to the all Libyan people, not part of them only.

So please help us find a solution to this conflict as soon as possible as every day goes by we lose Libyan lives and our country is further destroyed.

We thank you all for every little help
The Third Voice of Libyan People and Students. London 16.5.2011

amdalala@hotmail.com

Frozen Funds / Defrost Piracy

May 7 2011
last update May 22

Money is important. It helps you buy things. That's why people steal it, to buy neat things for themselves and their own selfish purposes. Sometimes they also steal, in part, to hurt someone they don't like, but that's another type of the same selfishness.

Below is the story so far of a recent very large theft of money and the plans to spend it, both aimed at illegaly destroying the government of a sovereign state and plunge it into chaos.

By February 26, it had become clear the Libyan protests had mobilized into a viable civil war, with over half the cities in rebel hands. U.S. president Obama that day announced the freezing of certain Libyan funds under its control - a record-setting quarantine of about $30 billion. The idea that you can just do that is still strange to me, but he did it. As one expert put it:

"Treasury hits a button and everything is frozen," according to Erich Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari Legal, a firm that specializes in trade sanctions. [source]

A February 28 follow up announces the freeze has happened and might expand. At this time, the impression given was that all of Libya - even the military - had mutineed, and only Gaddafi's family, "African mercenaries," and the personal funds that linked the two, stood in the way of an amazing adventure in free market reform - er - in people power freedom things.

But Obama knew it might be a rockier road than that, and this partial cutting of funds was just the beginning of an escalating push against the grain for that fleeting "utopian" image. And as the government stayed together and tried to push back, it proved one heck of a start. As Peter Dale Scott recently noted:

If the idea to attack Libya originated with France, Obama moved swiftly to support French plans to frustrate Gaddafi’s African initiative with his unilateral declaration of a national emergency in order to freeze all of the Bank of Libya’s $30 billion of funds to which America had access. (This was misleadingly reported in the U.S. press as a freeze of the funds of “Colonel Qaddafi, his children and family, and senior members of the Libyan government.” But in fact the second section of Obama’s decree explicitly targeted “All property and interests… of the Government of Libya, its agencies, instrumentalities, and controlled entities, and the Central Bank of Libya.”)

While the U.S. has actively used financial weapons in recent years, the $30-billion seizure, “the largest amount ever to be frozen by a U.S. sanctions order,” had one precedent, the arguably illegal and certainly conspiratorial seizure of Iranian assets in 1979 on behalf of the threatened Chase Manhattan Bank.

The European Union initially froze only the more narrowly defined evil Gaddafi clan funds. But on March 8, it was revealed, they agreed to follow Obama's lead, and expanded an existing freeze to cover, as Washington's did, all state funds. They just took the government's money, to ensure they couldn't pay employees or debts or purchase new supplies or feed people should a crisis break out, or anything.

Other nations followed suit (Australia on March 9, and so on), and the amounts blocked off grew steadily. Even the Swiss finally came on board, on May 5 announcing they had found 360 million Swiss francs ($418.4 million) of assets that, as al Jazeera put it, "were potentially illegal and belonged to either Muammar Gaddafi or his circle." But as they reported, deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim said that the money was far less ("closer to $29 million"), and was the peoples' money, not the leader's.

"The money in bank accounts abroad is part of the investment portfolio of the government abroad," he told reporters. "If there is a single penny of the leader's money ... you are free to take it and to give it to anyone."

By the end of March, people on Capitol Hill had started wondering if all this handy frozen wealth could be thawed out and used to pay ourselves back for the expensive air war we'd just begun against the regime. But as CNN reported, duh, the answer was no.

The idea is that if Gadhafi falls, the next government will take control of the assets. "We will safeguard the more than $33 billion that was frozen from the Gadhafi regime so that it's available to rebuild Libya," Obama said on Monday. "After all, the money doesn't belong to Gadhafi or to us - it belongs to the Libyan people. And we'll make sure they receive it."

Once his conditions are met - a legally recognized replacement regime of his approval. And perhaps conditional to other things, like a nice finder's fee, commercial concessions, military basing ...

And then, maybe we don't even have to wait for that. Without funds now, the good guys might never even get to take over. So on May 5, two things happened. The Libyan people spoke up, insisting Gaddafi stay in power, and the rebels and NATO should go away. And European and allied leaders meeting in Italy to plan their exact opposite version on behalf of the same people. Among the points broached in the Libya script conference was a promise to give some of that money, soon, to the Libyan people (those who behaved well by taking up arms against the government, anyway).

The United States is trying to free up part of $30 billion it has frozen in Libyan assets so it can better support opponents of Moammar Gadhafi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a conference Thursday on Libya.
[...]
Clinton said the Obama administration, working with Congress, wants “to tap some portion of those assets owned by Gadhafi and the Libyan government in the United States, so we can make those funds available to help the Libyan people.” [source]

They used to be able to take care of theselves, when the government had money and hadn't lost control of much of the country. And it's only getting worse.
Kadhafi regime hits out over rebel war chest
By W.G. Dunlop (AFP) – May 6

TRIPOLI — Moamer Kadhafi's regime reacted angrily Friday to a decision by world powers to provide funding to Libya's rebels, asserting that plans to tap assets frozen abroad were "piracy."
[...]
The fund, agreed at a meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya on Thursday, is intended to provide an emergency lifeline to the rebels, whose provisional administration has no source of financing to replace receipts from oil exports, which have come to a virtual halt.
It will initially receive international donations. Blocked assets -- estimated to be worth $60 billion (40 billion euros) in Europe and the United States -- are to be used at a later date.

The dates and manner and exact amounts, of course, are to be decided for "the Libyan people" by their great white guiding hands. For reference, at a unity and peacetime population of just over 6 million, this stolen amount of $60 billion is nearly $10,000 for each man, woman, and child on both sides of the civil war. And it's been locked away just to starve the government, and those who still rely on it, to force them all to surrender to the rebel hordes - the "people of Libya" who suffer the misfortune of being "outnumbered" - in Libya.

The funds made available are far less than the figure of up to $3 billion dollars that had been sought by the rebels, but their leader, Mahmud Jibril, said "it's a good start." Jibril said three billion dollars represent "a six-month budget."


French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the new fund could be up and running "within weeks." However, he said it would take longer to tap Libyan government assets frozen abroad under UN sanctions to secure a longer-term credit line sought by the rebels, as unblocking the assets "poses legal problems."

Yes, problems with laws - designed to prevent piracy just like this. Funny how we can talk abut it openly though, since everybody hates Gaddafi and wants to do whatever it takes to rinse away the foul taste. Enter the "complicated" thinking of lawyers, currently poring over how to avoid breaking the narrowest "word" of the law. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

To get frozen assets to the Libyan opposition is fraught with complexities. “It is a lot more complicated than saying we are going to unfreeze these assets and hand them over,” says Harriet Territt, a London-based lawyer at Jones Day.

The U.K., for instance, is keen to help address humanitarian needs, but needs to clear a number of complex obstacles, said a person familiar with the situation. “We’re considering a number of options to do this and we will see what is legally possible,” a spokesman for the U.K.’s Foreign Office said. [source]

Just keep humming and ignore the Gaddafi thugs when they almost seem to make sense:

Kadhafi's government was infuriated by the prospect of seeing funds it regards as its own being used to finance the rebels. "Libya still, according to the international law, is one sovereign state and any use of the frozen assets, it's like piracy on the high seas," Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said. [source]

Update May 22: Please see Libya's Free Market Future for some later moves by rebel interlocutors to thaw out and access these funds.

Fact-Finding Mission Reports Civilian Bombing Deaths

May 20, 2011

Dr. Moussa Ibrahim: No Massacres, But Oil

May 20 2011

A Valuable site I'm happy to direct my few viewers to:
http://stopbombinglibya.info/now/

In particular, a video section I was tipped off about led to the Youtube posting, by an account called Dr. Moussa Ibrahim, Libyan government spokesman. Countdown to politicized sanctions-related account closure for "supporting attacks on civilians" in 3 ... 2... 1:

Posted May 10, it explains the war, in its most basic terms, "from our point of view." This is something we usually only get bits and pieces from, and it's always put in such a way as to make Libya seem strange and out of touch with what we're to presume is reality. As he points out, we were given such impressions about Iraqi government sources when they denied having weapons of mass destruction, denied throwing babies out of their incubators, denied plans to invade Saudi Arabia...

Kofi Annan on NATO and the Civil War

http://allafrica.com/stories/201105180337.html
Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan gave an interview to Alex Russel of the UK Financial Times, in the last week of April 2011. In it, he talked about the Libyan civil war.

He's not as critical as I think he should be of NATO members' handling of the crisis it seems likely they helped create. But he does have some interesting and useful insights worth sharing here.

He starts with the Libyan government's rapprochement with the west following its 2003 letter about their blame in bombing Pan Am 103, renouncing all terrorism, and nuclear deterrent development. For this, and opening its markets somewhat to the outside world, the regime was rewarded for an eight-year golden age of non-sanctions before the current overthrow effor began.

AR: You negotiated with Gaddafi over the years. How would you assess him now?

KA: He came out of the cold and probably felt he had managed a difficult situation very well. He went to European capitals. European heads of government and heads of state flew down to see him. He probably felt he'd re-established and reinstated himself as a member of the international community. And then, of course, this happens. He'll probably wonder if indeed there has been that much progress in his relations with them. My sense is that he'll become much more suspicious today and, unless he's really backed into a corner, will be extremely difficult to negotiate with.

AR: What about the bigger issue of the intervention? There are all sorts of historical parallels one can come up with. One analogy is, of course, 1991 after Iraqis had been pushed out of Kuwait and then the world's policymakers decided not to intervene to stop Saddam putting down the Shiite uprising. Should the policymakers have done the same thing, should they have hardened their hearts this time?

KA: I think the world has moved on. You're right to start with 1991 but one would also need to look at Srebrenica and Rwanda and the repetition of the phrase "never again," or "we will defend the helpless". And there was a situation where Gaddafi himself, he brought it on himself with some of the statements he was making about being "merciless" and "blood will flow" and all that. When a leader makes that sort of statement and you see him approaching populated areas with tanks and military gear and equipment, an international community that had been talking tough and talking of a no-fly zone and rushing to establish a no-fly zone would have had a lot to answer for if they had not intervened to protect the population.

The question is where you draw the line. Was every action taken by the coalition designed to protect helpless civilians or, in some cases, to support the weak, rebellious army? And how far do you go? And does it fit with the [UN] Security Council resolution and the mandate? And we should remember that it wasn't a unanimous decision and some pretty important countries abstained. So you start with a divided Council, which makes it even more important that those in action respect the mandate otherwise the divisions widen. And the Council can get paralysed on future decisions on Libya.

The bolded part is my emphasis - this tough talk was optional, and counter-productive as far as avoiding warfare and innocent deaths. The tough talk upped the rebels' determination and audacity, toughening the regime's stance, and so on until bombs are flying, as NATO prefers - sticking to their strengths.

AR: You seemed to imply, from your earlier remarks, though, that you were in favour of the Libyan intervention.

KA: I'm in favour of the efforts that were made to protect the people. You see, the problem, the argument the Libyan intervention will lead to, is they quoted the "responsibility to protect" but it's a graduation. You sort of go through a whole series of events and as a last resort you use force; political pressure, sanctions and others.

Of course, one could claim that we were beyond that, that the way events were moving so fast, you couldn't influence a situation by applying political or diplomatic pressure, imposing sanctions, and that more effective measures had to be used, and this is the argument that has been made.

And I think the whole world saw that time was on the move with the people in Benghazi and they felt that action was taken to stop the tanks before they got to Benghazi and did lots of damage. I'm sure everyone will support that, or most people will support it. I can say most people will support that.

And, as I suspected, the rebels will not be ready to talk to Gaddafi. They want Nato to help remove him, and of course, I think eventually probably he will have to go, but you cannot put it upfront the way people are saying: Gaddafi must go. A future Libya without Gaddafi must be part of the negotiations and handled properly. It should be part of the agenda, and this mantra of Sarkozy, Cameron, Gaddafi is one… Obama saying Gaddafi must go. Putting it upfront like that… it's not very helpful.

But, on the other hand, I see their problem. If, at the end of the day, he stays… how do you explain to the population – both the Libyan and the western populations – that you went through all of this and you leave them with Gaddafi? But on the other hand, I think they were right, as I have said, to get rid of the air defence systems. Most people forget that even in Iraq, by the time the air and no-fly zone was established, the air defence system had been removed through the first Gulf war. All of them had been neutralised.

They were right to stop the guns and the tanks from getting to Benghazi. The problem they have now is the sense that they've crossed a line and are now part of the civil war and fighting on one side of the civil war.

I noticed that line being crossed just before the bombs started falling.

KA: ... But here, I will tell you… you will find this interesting, because I said this to Samantha Powers [the academic and liberal interventionist in the White House] and she said: "How can one say a civil war? One side is so weak. The other side is so powerful." I just listened. I kept saying, but who told you in civil war, the sides have to be evenly matched? It never starts like that. But it is a civil war, and they are now perceived as having been sucked in, and where does it stop? How far… how much deeper do you get in? And if it drags on, how patient will the population be and the parliaments be? This is a problem.

Catholic Opposition to the War

Posted May 17 2011

Please note: These are not the western-favored appeals to the Gaddafi regime to implement a cease-fire, demands that are either absurdly naive or dishonest. These views from the highest and middling levels of the Catholic Church, reputable as it is these days, call on all parties to stop shooting. They seem to know this must first and foremost be NATO, the ones shooting with the greatest effect and least legitimacy. Then the rebels of Cyrenaica and Misrata will have to agree to talk with Gaddafi, which they've foresworn. And then the beleaguered government, who - despite its rigidity in some areas, might well negotiate if given the slightest chance. If they're smart they would.

It's the first two parties, NATO and the Libyan rebels, assuring each other of a mutually profitable victory, who've been the problems when it comes to giving an inch. And it's to Euro-American leaders the Pope and others in the Church seem to be speaking with these dispatches from May 1 and 14. (more perhaps to come)

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI has led the Church in calling for an immediate ceasefire in Libya, saying he is concerned about the safety of civilians in the North African country and urging ‘reconciliation’ across the Middle East.
[...]
The Pope made his strongest statement to date on the Libyan crisis on Sunday, calling on all combatants to immediately lay down arms.

“I launch a heartfelt appeal to international organisations and those with political and military responsibilities to immediately launch a dialogue that will suspend the use of arms,” the Holy Father said. “Faced with the ever more dramatic news coming from Libya, my concern over the safety and security of the civilian population is growing, as is my fear for how the situation is developing with the use of arms.

“At moments of the highest tension, it becomes more urgent to use every diplomatic method available and to support even the weakest signal of openness and of willingness for reconciliation from all sides involved.”

Pope leads call for ceasefire in Libya, May 1

Bishop Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic vicar of Tripoli and Libya’s most senior Catholic clergyman

[Martinelli] said the Pope’s call for an end to conflict was ‘wonderful news.’

“The Holy Father’s appeal was wonderful news and gives us great comfort,” the Apostolic vicar said. “The Pope spoke words that affirm the need for reconciliation, peace and dialogue. We have translated [the] appeal by the Holy Father into Arabic and we will send it as a voice message to the Libyan Foreign Ministry, for their information.”

Pope leads call ...

"I repeat that I have never said that Gaddafi has been injured, or gone abroad, " Archbishop Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli says to Fides, referring to some news released by the international press about this. " My position has been communicated in a letter to the Italian Foreign Ministry - says Archbishop Martinelli - in which I also hope that the Italian government implements a truce, as requested also by the Holy Father and the United Nations" .

Archbishop Martinelli said that "yesterday, in Marsa Brega, 16 people died and several were killed in other parts of Tripoli. The bombs are still claiming victims. A truce seems appropriate to help the civilians breathe again. Even last night there were several bombings, the strongest we heard around 3a.m. They do not allow us to sleep”. "With regards to the Church - Archbishop Martinelli continues - we are still respected, and even foreigners are. We conduct our regular religious services on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Yesterday there was a good participation of the faithful to mass. In prayer, we invoke the grace of peace and reconciliation. Certainly on one side and on the other there are sins to be forgiven, but you cannot forgive by throwing bombs, " concludes the Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli.

"A truce is necessary ... May 14

The bishops of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, Joint Statement

“We know that war solves nothing, and when it breaks out, it is just as uncontrollable as the explosion of a nuclear reactor,” the North African bishops said. “The first victims are always the poorest and most disadvantaged. Moreover, whether we like it or not, the war in the Near East, and now in the Maghreb, will always be interpreted as ‘a crusade.’”

Pope leads call ...

Archbishop Antonio Mennini, the new Apostolic nuncio to Great Britain

In London, [Mennini] took the Pope’s message to an international summit on the future of Libya on Tuesday. Prior to the meeting, which he attended as Vatican observer, the archbishop spoke on the need for an immediate ceasefire. [...] The nuncio represented the Vatican as an official observer at a special conference in London chaired by Prime Minister David Cameron and attended by 40 foreign ministers and the United Nations General Secretary.

Before the meeting, the archbishop said that he hoped the international community would accept the need for a ceasefire that will allow for effective humanitarian care to be given to those in need.

“A ceasefire is necessary, in order to bring a concrete and effective peace for all sides,” he said. “For the people are suffering under the air strikes but also under the previous suffering.

“There also needs to be a roadmap for peace in Libya, one that would be fair, to all people in Libya, apart from their political, religious or ethnic identity.”

Pope leads call ...

Legal Warfare: ICC Joins NATO Axis, Insanely Unfair

May 18 2011

Andy Dilks: The “International Criminal Court”: Prosecuting Gaddafi With Questionable Evidence While Ignoring NATO-Israeli Atrocities

The International Criminal Court has requested an arrest warrant for Colonel Gaddafi and his sons for “crimes against humanity”, accusing them of ordering, planning and participating in illegal attacks on civilians. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, International Criminal Court Prosecutor, said, “Based on the evidence collected, the prosecution has applied to pre-trial chamber one for the issuance of arrest warrants against Moammar Muhamad abu Minyar Gaddafi, Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah al-Sanoussi.”

But what is the evidence? The press release on the website of the International Criminal Court makes frequent reference to “direct evidence” but fails to cite any of this evidence in detail. In order to try and clarify the grounds for the prosecution, I emailed the ICC:
[...]
The ICC promptly responded, providing me with a document entitled, PUBLIC REDACTED Version Prosecutor’s Application Pursuant to Article 58 as to Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar GADDAFI, Saif Al‐Islam GADDAFI and Abdullah AL‐SENUSSI.

Needless to say, “redacted” is the operative word.

Sources backing up the frequent assertions in the document regarding crimes against humanity carried out by Gaddafi and his sons are notable by their absence. For example, the document states, “In the early days of the demonstrations, GADDAFI transmitted orders through his Secretariat to “discipline” civilians, by killing them and destroying their property, who had openly rebelled against the regime. Further, AL‐SENUSSI, upon GADDAFI’s instructions, directed and coordinated the operation of the Security Forces in Benghazi and expressly ordered the shooting at civilians. Demonstrators were attacked by members of the Security Forces who opened machine gun fire on them in different areas of the city, such as the Juliyana bridge and Jamal Abdun Naser Street.” The sources for these alleged transmissions and subsequent attacks are not provided. Further, the report uses vague generalisations concerning the history of Libya in an attempt to bolster its case. “Direct evidence of the plan to use extreme and lethal violence is corroborated by the scale, scope and duration of the attacks; the pattern of the attacks in various cities; the speeches and statements of GADDAFI, SAIF AL‐ISLAM and AL‐SENUSSI; the history of the regime’s response to any political opposition within Libya; and the complete authority exercised by GADDAFI and his subordinates over all important security decisions.” Again, the “direct evidence” is not sourced, while appealing to a state’s prior human rights record is not proof by any measure of the current crimes of which they stand accused.

Again, the link: Prosecutor's submission for the arrest warrants. It's a PDF download, and worth a scan. Indeed, the supporting evidence section, what I'm most interested in as it's probably bunk, is entirely redacted. For "safety" reasons, to be sure. The findings themselves will give us some clues, but I'd have to read it much closer before I could add anything. It's probably just more unsubstantiated and illogical rebel reportage and defector drivel, lapped up eagerly by a corrupt system.

These arrest warrants, if issued, will ensure a longer fight. If there's no safety to guarantee from arrest, there's no negotiation and less chance than ever of turning back this insane operation. Not that NATO and its supporters have previously shown any interest in that. Only holding a country - a rump Libya or Tipolitania if nothing else - will insulate the leader's family from that, and the Gaddafis will insist on that all that harder now, as they arguably should anyway.

More later, perhaps ...

Details on the May 13 NATO Strike at Brega

May 15/16 2011

On Friday, May 13, NATO struck again in Libya, repeatedly as usual, in their effort to protect civilians. One of the bombing targets was in Brega, and, according to the Libyan government, killed nothing but civilians - nine of them (but reported as 11 - see below) - from a group of Libyan imams, or Muslim religious leaders.

I didn't manage yet to track down NATO's full cookie-cutter dead-civilians statement anywhere, but was able to piece this together from a few sources:

A command and control bunker was struck in Brega early Friday morning, as the structure was being used by the Qadhafi regime to coordinate strikes against the Libyan civilian population. [...] The building in Brega was clearly identified as a command centre. [...] We are aware of allegations of civilian casualties in connection to this strike, and although we cannot independently confirm the validity of the claim, we regret any loss of life by innocent civilians when they occur.

Pakistani paper Dawn reports:

Funerals for the 11 imams reportedly killed when they gathered early Friday in the eastern city of Brega were to be held later on Saturday, officials said.

At least 50 other people were wounded in the Nato aerial attack, with five of them in critical condition, government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told a news conference on Friday in Tripoli.

The Guardian's Michael Chulov said:

The Libyan government has shown video [...] The gruesome images showed 11 dead imams and 45 wounded Muslim holy men – five of them in a coma – according to Libyan government officials speaking in the courtyard of a Tripoli mosque where Islamic elders and Christian Coptic priests had gathered to condemn the attack.

In another related piece for the Guardian, Chulov reports:

It was impossible to corroborate the government claims. However, funerals for the victims have been arranged across the country on Saturday and Christian priests joined Muslim leaders in condemning the deaths at a central Tripoli mosque late on Friday.
[...]
If the carnage proved to be the result of a Nato strike, it would be the most serious setback to the three-month [sic] air campaign, whose stated mission is to safeguard civilians from attacks by loyalists of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The Libyan leader delivered a brief audio address on Friday night to rebut rumours he had been injured in an air strike and to condemn the "cowardly crusader aggressor attack" in Brega.

Their mission was reportedly to ask the rebels of Cyrenaica to lay down their arms or at least consider negotiations with the Gaddafi regime. According to Chulov:

The group had reportedly travelled to Brega from across the war-torn country. They had appeared on state-run television on Thursday and, according to government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, planned to move to the nearby city of Ajdabiya on Friday and then to Benghazi.

But as it happened, they spent the hours between those events in a "command and control bunker" which NATO was forced to bomb during their brief stay. The Saudi Gazette gives the most detail of the government press conference later in the day, including another Libyan Imam's dramatic and unwise call for mammoth revenge.

The imams’ “aim was to call upon their brothers and sisters in the eastern part of the country and everywehere to join them in the call of peace and dialogue in Libya,” he said, referring to rebels seeking strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster and who are predominantly based in the east. “But in the early hours they were attacked by the barbaric, inhumane NATO - they were hit in their sleep,” he said.

Later in the news conference an imam identified as Nureddin Al-Mijrah called for 1,000 people from a list of Western and Gulf countries to be killed for each of the dead imams. “This will have a very bad consequence as it will push us towards fighting back in all Islam against those who are humiliating our religion and our nation,” he said of the Brega strike. We “call upon the Muslims all around the world to take revenge for our brothers who died today. For every man we should take down one thousand men,” he said.

Ibrahim said before Mijrah’s remarks that his views were his own and not those of the government, but he was still part of the speaker lineup at the government-organized news conference.

Until and if this threat becomes a reality, the main issue here is the Friday morning attack itself. It seems the imams were not sleeping, as Ibrahim said, but had just woken up.

Reuters Africa:

Libyan state television [...] said the attack occurred at dawn and most of the victims were clerics who had gathered for a religious ceremony.

NATO strikes do usually happen late at night when people are asleep. This one was a bit later, and caught them just as they had woken up and gathered together for the spiritual exercise needed for their  just-announced march to Ajdabiya.

John F. Burns for the New York Times covered the funeral in Tripoli for nine victims on Saturday, the 14th. (Islam requires burial, generally, within 24 hours of death). He manages to sow plenty of doubt and confusion. To start with:

Earlier in the week, the propaganda apparatus had been focused on a gathering of tribal leaders in support of Colonel Qaddafi. Now, the deaths of the imams appeared to lay the ground for marshaling an even wider body of opinion. Calling the NATO attackers “crusaders” set the tone, as did the assertion, common in all the bombings, that NATO was lying when it identified the Brega target as a “command-and-control” center for pro-Qaddafi forces.

Burns insinuates that it's all part of Gaddafi's "propaganda apparatus." He also notes, as one clue of something amiss. the funeral itself. This "seemed strangely flat" and "underwhelming," with "barely 500 people" in attendance. But even from this small pool, the reporter got some print-worthy "contradictions and uncertainties that flowed from official accounts, and those given by the mourners." One apparently official witness said he was there when it happened, and the victims were Imams, but he wasn't visibly injured himself. Further:

According to officials, the nine coffins, with bodies wrapped in the green of Islam, were those of the dead Muslim clerics. But some mourners offered differing counts. Two men whispered that their uncles, among those being buried, were soldiers, and one of those said the man concerned had been dead for weeks. Another identified one of the dead as a driver.

That sounds less than convincing, but it will surely suffice for most Americans. The whole thing was a fake set-up using already dead bodies to discredit NATO! It's happened before!

However:
- As we've seen, their mission to Brega and beyond was mentioned by the government, with video support, the day before the strike.
- The bodies were shown on TV, in situ, near damage from an acknowledged NATO attack fitting the entourage's publicized schedule.
- Numerous other clerics have been convinced of their comrades' demise. Surely if the identities were made up, someone will find that out, and if any of them turns up real but alive, the same can be expected. I predict neither will happen, and these nine people will remain absent from the Earth when previously they walked it.

Reuters Africa:

Libyan state television showed footage on Friday of at least nine bodies with multiple wounds, wrapped in blankets.

"At least nine" suggests nine by the journalist's count, but said to be eleven, so maybe he missed some.... That nine were later buried suggests the original figure was some sort of mistake and nine were in fact killed. As the Saudi Gazette pointed out:

Earlier, state television put the toll from the Brega strike at 16 “civilians” killed, citing a military source.

"Quotes" probably not in the original. Eleven (erred) plus five in a coma (erroneously reported as dead) could explain that. Fog of war might just be worse than usual under sustained bombardment of the 3 Cs.

Diaa Hadid and Sarah el-Deeb, Associated Press

State-run Libyan television showed a concrete building in Brega with its facade blown off. Nearby houses also were damaged, and some of them were tipped off foundations. Upper stories were blown off other nearby buildings.

The bodies of many of the dead imams were laid out in two rows. Most had visible wounds, often to the head but also to legs and other extremities. Some were covered with dust scattered by the explosions.

This devastation can be seen here on Youtube, in a long 18-minute segment right from Libyan TV (JANA, I think):

Indeed, only nine bodies are shown. Two remain covered, but one is briefly bared to show a convincing mess of a damaged head. The rest look injured but fully intact. One is wearing pretty un-Islamic dress - black shorts, and perhaps thong underwear, and a black t-shirt saying in English "FLV Emirates" (interesting, considering the early emirate in Dernah and YouTube's FLV file format for the videos with which the rebels partly announced their "birth of a nation.") . For what it's worth. The rest look fairly young, neither dressed nor bearded like we usually imagine Imams looking (that's more like the guy in the wheelchair off to the side, pointing and explaining).

A slightly different and probably better informed version here at Mathaba:

A cleric who identified himself as a witness gave a different account and said that nine were killed. He said they were a group of 16 men sent by the country’s Islamic affairs department to Brega to demonstrate that the port city was firmly in the hands of government forces as an act of defiance.

“We wanted to show that Brega wasn’t in rebel hands,” the cleric said. “We wanted to prove it by praying in the mosque on Friday. But we didn’t make it — my friends were killed in the strike,” he said at the funeral in Tripoli’s main Shat al-Hanshir cemetery.

The cleric said three strikes hit their guest house and formed a crater he estimated to be 16 feet deep and 50 feet wide.

“It leveled the area,” he said. “We identified our friends from their clothing,” said the cleric.

(Most of these are identifiable by face as well, to be fair). I will come back to this possible disconnect between nine "men sent by the country’s Islamic affairs department" for a Brega demonstration vs. nine imams on their way to Ajdabiya. For the moment, my guess is the clergymen were on such a mission, with an early Friday demo in Brega before pushing off to the northeast. But it almost seems that none of those killed were the actual imams. Except, as the same Mathaba article says, the dead include "a leading cleric named Sheik Omar Ibrahim."

Two Tribal Opinions on Libya's Future

May 9/10 2011

A Tribal Denial of Tribal Warfare
On May 5, leaders of the Euro-Capitalist tribe gathered in Rome to plot Libya's future, with a consensus by and large, that sitting leader Muammar Gaddafi, plus his loyal clan, must leave power. They were already isolated, it was often repeated, from the real people of Libya, who had defected and rebelled all at once, in a spontaneous wave. But barring a Gaddafi surrender, the near part of that future was to be charted right through the air war against the regime, all in the name of the people of Libya.

Yet the same day a prominent group of Libyan tribal leaders - traditional pillars of society - met in Tripoli to have their own say (Explained in some detail here). The meeting was called by the tribes themselves, and hosted, by all accounts, about 2,000 chiefs, representing most, but not all, the tribes of Libya. Their actual influence is somewhat debatable, but their message, by a wide margin, was that Gaddafi must stay, Libya should be re-united under his rule, NATO should stop its bombing and the rebels should lay down their arms and agree to peaceful settlement. Some tribes were prepared to send fighters to help the government, if need be. But they called for peace; as one attendee put it:

"We reject the fighting in Libya...we strongly reject foreign intervention. We call on our brothers in the eastern regions – the armed ones, the misled ones – we call them to peaceful dialogue."

It's been widely ignored and marginalized as unrepresentative and a stunt by the regime, although no one has yet explained how they pulled it off.

A rebel spokesman dismissed claims that those attending the Tripoli conference represented all Libyan tribes. "Libya doesn't have 850 tribes," said the head of the political committee of the rebel's Transitional National Council, Fathi Baja, in the eastern city of Benghazi. "Gadhafi is just a big liar. ... He never had any legitimacy. The Libyan people did not choose him." [source]

This complaint doesn't go far. The generaly accepted number of tribes is "at least 140" and not much more. 850, given wrongly as the number of tribes, apparently refers to clans or sub-tribes (the mammoth Warfalla tribe has 55 clans). In reality, the meeting makes the best case yet that NATO's humanitarian mission does not represent the wishes of any clear majority of Libyans.

When The Tribes Were Said to Say the Opposite
But it wasn't the first time the chiefs from Tripoli to Tobruk were said to have spoken up about Gaddafi and the future. The first time was publicized just a few days earlier, and it wasn't as ignored or as harshly cross-examined as this latest conference. Indeed, the late April achievement was widely noted with the simple proclamation of fact that "Libya's tribes have called on col. Gaddafi to step down."

But to see what it really was, let's start with this from National Post, April 28:

Chiefs or representatives of 61 tribes from across Libya called for an end to Col. Gaddafi's four decades of rule in a joint statement released by Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French writer who has become the Paris-based unofficial spokesman for the revolt.

"Faced with the threats weighing on the unity of our country, faced with the manoeuvres and propaganda of the dictator and his family, we solemnly declare: Nothing will divide us," said the statement, released in the rebel stronghold, Benghazi. "We share the same ideal of a free, democratic and united Libya.

"The Libya of tomorrow, once the dictator has gone, will be a united Libya, with Tripoli as its capital and where we will at last be free to build a civil society according to our own wishes."

Mr. Lévy is credited with pressing Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, to mobilize international political and military support for the rebels.

"Each of the tribes in Libya is represented by at least a representative. In this list of 61 signatures, some tribes are represented 100 percent, others are still divided," Mr. Lévy said.

The messenger, Mr. Levy, is a French philosopher-activist-celebrity, the richest one around, who likes to be called BHL and pose with serious "visionary" eyes beneath his windswept hair sculpture. It was he who officially convinced president Sarkozy in March to make France the first nation to extend diplomatic recognition to the rebel Transitional National Council. I don't think I like him, but he does have that hilarious fling with "Boutlism," citing the work of a joke persona for an important philosophical argument in some grandstanding book.

But this joint letter wasn't just a paper exercise, nor just passed on by the Frenchman. They actually met, with each other and with Levy. Wall Street Journal, May 8

On the opposition side, chiefs and representatives of 61 tribes met in Benghazi in April with Bernard-Henri Levy, a French philosopher and staunch advocate of Western intervention in Libya, to affirm their unity and confront “the dictator [Col. Gaddafi] who is trying to play Libya’s tribes against each other; dividing the country to better rule,” read a statement posted on the website of French periodical La Regle du Jeu.

The periodical also posted scanned pages bearing the signatures of the gathered tribal elders, who included a Benghazi-based leader of one Warfalla’s almost 55 clans.

The significance of such an act is likely to be limited given that Libya’s tribal heft remains in the center and west in areas still under Col. Gaddafi’s control where most tribes continue to uphold the “document of honor” they signed with the regime in the past. [source]

The publication in question, La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game, sharing the same name as a creepy film about Nazi-era French elites), has its website here, and the letter in question revealed here, with a picture of Bono-Henri hanging out with some of the berobed Libyan elders. Dated April 27, this posting is only thing I've seen called the full text. That itself is dated April 12, two weeks prior, and it's in French. The scans beneath confirm the signed documents were also completely in French. Who translated the Libyans' words? Were they able to review the translation before signing? Did Mr. Levy and his unbuttoned shirt write the whole thing, and just charm them all into signing it how he explained it?


There is some background in French at Levy's website, which shows the picture at left, apparently of the meeting - which only had 32 tribal representatives. (I have a rough translation of this whole thing, and some comments, posted here). The other half of the names were gathered later, and according to Levy, "all the tribes of Libya, I repeat, [are] present here," including the largest one, all the southern ones (via one representative), "Lockerbie bomber" al-Megrahi's tribe, and the leader's own, al-Gaddafa (with two representatives, he says)!


Comparison
First, it's clearly relevant that these rival tribal opinions come from their respective capitols (Tripoli and Benghazi) and wound up reflecting, more-or-less, the position of the leadership seated in that capitol. It's not fair to denounce the one as a Gaddafi stunt without at least wondering if the other was a Rebel-French PR move as opposed to a genuine reading of Libya's tribal temperature.

Mr. Levy says "each of the tribes in Libya is represented by at least a representative." It's not clarified if that term means someone selected by the tribe's leadership as a rep, or just a member of the tribe. A certain subset of these 61, unspecified, were spoken for by the actual tribal chief. "In this list of 61 signatures, some tribes are represented 100 percent, others are still divided," whatever exactly that means.

If "each of the tribes in Libya" is represented - and there are 140 of them to just five dozen names - we have a problem. Some of these signatories must be standing in for multiple tribes, or turnout was only 42%. And that's combining chiefs and representatives, which may just mean members. In fact, considering this pathetic turnout, it seems they weren't even trying to get a wide sampling. More likely, they focused on those few dozen who'd be reliably on message, and strained to get the most tribal appearance from that pool.

To turn Fathi Baja's complaints on their head, "Libya doesn't have just 61 tribes. The rebels and Mr. Levy are just big liars." That might be a bit extreme, but their attempt clearly pales next to the later meeting in Tripoli.

Do the math: about 2,000 tribal chiefs, compared to "61 chiefs or representatives." A well-publicized gathering with hundreds of public speeches in their native tongue and own voices, and provided transcripts to compare with the video. Compared to a behind-the-scenes meeting with a couple of staged photos, announced only two weeks later, followed by signatures attached to a single letter that only speaks once, which they couldn't even read, being in French and for France. As the statement they signed closes:

Nous profitons de ce message, confié à un philosophe français, pour remercier la France et, à travers la France, l’Europe : ce sont elles qui ont empêché le carnage que nous avait promis Kadhafi ; c’est grâce à elles, avec elles, que nous construirons la Libye libre, et une, de demain.

(trans):
We take the opportunity of this message, given to a French philosopher, to thank France and through France, Europe: it is they who have prevented the bloodshed that we had been promised by Gaddafi, it is thanks to them and with them that we build a free Libya, and a unified tomorrow.

(trans):
سنكون يدفعون لك مرة أخرى لسنوات قادمة. تهاني.

Abdul Kadr's (mythical?) Proofs of Air Attacks

May 14 2011
edits Aug 1

I've been trying to find any visible evidence - anything other than tweets and other reports from supposed witnesses - for the crucial claim that the Libyan government "bombed its own people" as they sought to protest. I'll collect all the alleged proofs and how they pan out elsewhere, but so far, I'm not impressed.

 Der Spiegel's Matthias Gebauer reported on February 26 2011 about the bloody battle for Labraq airport, well off the east near al-Baida, on Feb 18-21. One of his sources was a kid named Said with an odd story ranging into nationwide intrigue (covered elsewhere). Here I'd like to discuss the alleged video evidence of this epic battle that seems to carry the theme of just how crucial a "no-fly" zone would be:

Solid Proof
The world has Abdul Kadr to thank for spreading the news of the airport battle. The young student lives in a small town not far from the airport -- and he filmed the three-day-long battle day and night. From rooftops and from the street, he shot [... see list below...]

Kadr didn't sleep at all during the three days of the battle. Sitting in his parents' living room, Kadr describes how the tanks that were flown in fired on buildings outside the airport grounds. Several houses in his village were hit and four people were killed. Kadr knew how important his videos were. When the first BBC reporter made it to Bayda in the days following the battle, Kadr handed over his images and begged him to publicize them. Just hours later, they could be seen on computer screens across the globe. It was the first solid proof of the brutality that Gadhafi had visited upon his own people. It was the first solid proof that the dictator's regime had bombed his own people.

According to this, the "solid proof" - first and, I think still only - is said to consists of the following being recorded and published:
- Ilyushins [transport jets] landing at the airport to send more mercenaries into the battle.
- A Libyan fighter jet roaring over al-Baida and dropping a bomb not far from the airport.
- A helicopter shooting into the mass of people.
- He apparently didn't catch the tanks firing.

These sound like powerful images, smoking guns of airborne state brutality, and all from one guy at a pivotal spot. They should be all over Youtube, and might finally help convince me these allegations have some merit. Although the battle at Labraq, armed from the taken barracks at Shehat nearby, is a far cry from peaceful crowds in city squares.

But even this I can't find. Image search for his name reveals nothing. Video, same.
Google video search for all "Helicopter + Libya - Dutch, looking at any posted before that article of Feb 26.
All helicopter over Libya videos -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7VX3PJq6V8 - Tripoli
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIrU-GfKX4w&feature=player_embedded - bombiing planes on Tripoli 2/20
Feb 21 - Zawiya?
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/17/live-blog-libya
They're all clearly in transit, not likely firing on anyone.

Ah, I see "niqnaq" has beat me to citing this Spiegel report and asking "where's the video?" Abdul was said to have given these to the BBC, but the search "Abdul Kadr" at BBC News reveals nothing. Some alternate transliterations didn't help. I'm going to drop it there with two best guess possibilities:

1) young Mr. Kadr made up all these incidents and his videos of them and meeting the BBC and telling the world. And Mr. Gebauer simply took his word for it, as the type of thing that's happening all over Libya, it seems.

2) The videos were handed over but showed a rebel force too well-armed to send the right message. That was supposed to be people power, not firepower. Mass defections and harmonious waves of self-liberation is how the bases fell, not surprisingly well-armed and audacious military assaults. That almost suggests planning, secret knowledge emboldening them, and so on. And it certainly cries less for outside help.

In that case the BBC folks simply sat on it, and only the part about being seen around the world was made up. That in itself wold be interesting.

If anyone can prove me wrong by pointing to any evidence these videos were ever seen by anyone, or to the actual videos themselves, I'd be much obliged. Then, I'll keep looking for any sign of the few reports prior to this across Libya when people weren't yet diving tanks to the "protest." This, likewise, is still unverified, despite triggering a "no-fly zone" that's opened up into a fully packaged and widely pushed regime change campaign.

Down Time

May 13 2011

The last couple of days were rough. I had to work extra hours at my job (unpaid) to catch some things up, and in my scant free time, Blogger has been down almost constantly. Before it goes out again, a quick post to let people know I'm still trying.

Gaddafi Attacking Europe With Refugees!!!!

May 12 2011
edits May 16

Note: Mixed sarcasm and other sharp verbal tools below, with spots of meltdown. Proceed with caution.
---
The UK Telgraph the other day reported on a troubling new tactic from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi:

In a sign that the regime is trying to force a refugee crisis as a weapon against its NATO enemies, almost 1,900 people from Libya arrived in five boats on the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa this weekend alone. Another vessel sank – bringing the total lost to four boats. Hundreds of bodies are now washing ashore...

It’s like the human shields he's always used everyone as, but used in an offensive capacity! It’s about time the West took seriously the threat posed by this madman and his refugee-generating ... madness.

Here's how it worked: His repression caused protesters to suddenly be able to take over half the country in about two days. It also forced them to decide every black man they saw was an “African mercenary.” hired by Gaddafi to rape their women and "detract" them. Probably hundreds of black Libyans and foreign workers were lynched in a variety of ways, while others escaped by loudly joining the rebels, by hiding, or by fleeing for refuge in regular Libya, or further afield yet. Most of the displaced African workers seeking to escape are in rebel held-areas, but as we've seen, the fault clearly lies with Gaddafi.

There's an air embargo over Libya for unclear reasons, so no one - military, civilian, or otherwise, can fly into, within, or our of the nation, except foreign military forces. This is the UN's doing, but as usual, it's Gaddafi's fault ultimately. So now the people he's forcing to flee have to do so by land or by sea.

Hundreds of these African workers sat in a makeshif camp at the rebel-held but surrounded port of Misrata for weeks before being shipped out in trickles. This was occasionally managed on European aid and evacuation ships that were also assisting the rebels and trying to ignore the nefarious government of Libya. This had put a no-sail-without-inspection zone, an unheard of measure over the port (I mean really, what government, even in war time demands to inspect incoming ship cargo?). So despite the occasional "enforcement" shelling, the rebels in charge and the ship's crews would decide what comes off the ships and who goes on. The government occasionally force an early departure, which tends to leave some people behind.

That's Misrata, and in other ports like Benghazi or Derna, there's no conceivable government hand in such things. All of this would make the flood of refugees not entirely Gaddafi’s doing. But apparently, the Libyan government does run the boats in question . As the Telegraph says:

“Some of the refugees said they were forced on to the boats by Libyan troops and police, the International Organisation for Migration reported.”

Huh! That could only mean Gaddafi, and there finally is proof this is crime against humanity #4,408. One terrifying variant of this is how “others were given free passage, in contrast to the normal practice where migrants are charged fortunes for the crossing.” That bastard, usually! And in this case too!

And if the sinkings are purposeful, as the article faintly suggests, these must be regime-controlled ships, with bombs built in to rupture them near shore and flood Italy with corpses. It’s a tactic as old as war itself, except the article did note the bodies were "washing ashore along the Libyan coast." Surely a warning to others that there is no escape. That's crime 4,411.

So the bodies aren't being sent to Italy so much just yet, but it’s believed Gaddafi has long-range artillery capable of catapulting baskets of burned refugees, or of limbs severed from children, all the way to any city in southern Europe. Unless the people there want to see that, they had better support the war effort to just get rid of this insane tyrant before he does something else ridiculously evil.

And he might have already. Another Telegraph article adds two new twists, without quite specifying either one as Gaddafi crimes against Humanity. One point is only suggested in the accompanying photograph. It shows coast-guard men rescuing some of these weaponized people hurled against Europe's rocky shore. The workers are wearing all but hazmat suits to guard against germs. This might well mean the authorities secretly know the refugees are ill with something contagious, probably injected by Gaddafi, making this a biological weapons attack on Europe to boot! Human shield bio-weapons! Some are children! He's just crazy enough to do it, someone stop him! That's crime #4,437!

And the other twist is the chilling story told by a 16 year old boy on one of these refugee boats. It was probably a Gaddafi-run one, since evil occurred. Some Nigerians on board were spooked enough by bad weather and rough seas to throw a couple people overboard, as a sacrifice to the sea gods. The witness might thank them he reached shore alive, but he thinks that would have happened anyway, and one of the vitims was his brother. He also reported numerous rapes of female passengers, and it might have been by escaping Gaddafi mercenaries on Viagra and Scotch. Either way, none of this would have have happened without the base fact, as the Telegraph points out this is all happening "as the conflict in North Africa has escalated," which we know is all Gaddafi’s fault.

All these atrocities are surely in preparation for the tyrant’s final act, when a bomb finally manages to kill him, in whatever obvious command and control facility he’s in that day. Imagined intelligence officials tell me that in that case, he plans to use his own guts – intestinal shields if you will – to gunk up the bomb. That’s clearly a final crime against humanity, as that bomb will be property of some NATO country, and in the service of UNSC Resolution 1973 for protecting civilians. The evil bastard will be in violation for attacking his own people, right to the very end.

Lord help us. Why haven't we done it already? Do we lack moral clarity, or what?

A Shocking Display of Restraint in Zintan

May 8 2011

Earlier today I was looking into evidence for the massive and brutal suppression of peaceful protests in Libya I had heard so much about, in vague form. Along the way of checking into one claimed support for sniper - A site called "Wikileaks Central" posted a detailed collection of Twitter tweets, video, and such for the first week of the uprising. One entry was from the very beginning, February 16, and shared by a man in Benghazi, Libya's second city, speaking to al Jazeera. He said in part:

7:15 AM The eyewiness says there is no Libyan government presence for negotiation, they brought thugs to Benghazi from outside but they all fled from the protesters. Snipers are positioned atop buildings in all parts of the city with the primary aim to kill the Libyan youth. 

The snipers and their  known aims must have been learned by visual sightings, not felt with live fire. At least one source says no one was killed in Benghazi on the 16th, only 38 injuries, mostly suffered by security forces [source]. But by another, unconfirmed and unlikely account, at least six were seen being killed by the same witness, who saw African mercenaries hacking people up with swords. The snipers of Benghazi, if they existed, sure didn't earn their paychecks that day.

But the Wikilieaks Central posting inserted in support of the claim "men with what appear to be rifles on top of buildings can be seen in the video below." It was the same one below here, uploaded February 16 by Youtube user "leakspinner," suggesting the same person assembling the page in question.


The video as posted is labeled Az-Zintan, a city in the country's west, south of Tripoli and near the Tunisian border. So off the bat, it cannot support the claim of roofline snipers in Benghazi. (it was apparently mislabeled at one point as from al-Baida, corrected to Zintan, but never Benghazi). The western town did however see unrest in synch with the other two, starting from a temporary arrest of an activist in Benghazi, two days before the planned Day of Rage on February 17.

As in al-Baida further east, Az-Zintan witnessed large marches and the burning of pulic buildings on the 15th. "[H]undreds marched through the streets and set fire to security headquarters and a police station, then set up tents in the heart of the town." [source] Either this video is a day old (despite saying "today"), or it shows about the same thing happening for a second day in Zintan. A mob with a few signs, sometimes called protesters, is burning images of Gaddafi in very large piles right up against what seems to be a police station.

By two minutes in, the fires out front were really blazing, and the smoke is getting thick. No one is running for cover from any snipers. They ignore loudspeaker warnings, hurling rocks and junk at the buliding, climbing up in its windows like children, perhaps trying to light up the inside. It's possible they succeeded, although the video is too short to show the station bursting into flames.

Protesters are firmly demanding, and just taking, their perceived right to set fire to occupied public safety buildings for days in a row. These are John McCain's heroes, Libya's Islamist Weathermen, and they were not even really raging yet.

Finally we see men on the roof, the possible snipers, overlooking the hostile crowd below. One apparent soldier slinks up from behind the outer wall at 2:10, and stands up, pacing along the edge a little. No rifle is visible at this resolution, but his posture - and common sense - suggests he's holding one at the ready.

He gestures to others invisible across the roof, but only at the end, 40 seconds later, does another soldier appear. In the meantime, the crowd has calmly, and prudently backed off on noticing their new company. They shout as a parting taunt "God is Great!" I imagine one of the soldiers muttering "of course he is! Why do you have to keep yelling it at ME as if I don't know it?"

No shots are fired whatsoever, although the first soldier apparently tosses a few of their projectiles from the roof back down to them as he first appears. So no, this video at least shows nothing like peaceful protesters just trying to "express themselves" only to be mowed down by insane, genocidal forces ... in fact it shows quite serious restraint, in the face of a rather audacious and unsavory sort of vandalism.

In other spots and other times, these "idealistic youths" apparently managed to provoke the bloodshed they'd need to get really mad by the 17th and take over half the country. But at this station on this day, it wasn't happening. At the end, the first soldier removes his shirt and starts fanning it in the air, perhaps to flag down a rescue helicopter to save them from the burning building and the hostile crowds around it. The other one we see is doubled over, perhaps coughing out smoke.

That could class as a type of oppression, to a fevered enough imagination. Certainly if they had pushed the the crowd back enough to force an escape from the inferno, they robbed the crowd of the right to "express themselves" by claiming their burnt corpses later as regime victims, who were torched "for refusing to fire on potesters". It would have been true, in a roundabout way.

(note: the rebels' right to fob off their own crimes like that has been upheld in the court of public opinion.)

The Battle for Labraq Airport: Said's Story

May 10

After the city of al Baida was liberated from Gaddafi's hated grip, Matthias Gebauer, a writer for German paper Der Spiegel, spoke with one protester in his hospital bed. Named Said, he had been badly injured at the very start of a battle for the local airport, of February 18. The city had been in turmoil since Wednesday the 15th, with police stations torched and reports of massacres of civilians off the bat. Somehow the whole city was quickly overwhelmed, with some security forces defecting to the rebels, others fleeing, or being killed or captured, or captured then killed. 

Said explained how on the fourth day of this, February 18th, rumors spread of reinforcements - about 400 foreign African mercenaries being flown in to mow them down. With the city apparently under control enough, hundreds of citizens rushed to the airport to meet the Chadians, he said. 

By the map at the left, we can see they didn't likely walk, but it wasn't far either - about ten miles down Msah rode - to al-Baida or Labraq airport. The Spiegel report and other sources confirm plenty of physical evidence of a fierce fight there, one that reportedly ran for at least two days. 

But for the moment, our focus is on Said, who only saw the first part of it.  He was shot in the legs on the first wave and went own as they tried to storm the place. One leg was perhaps beyond saving, it was reported, but even of his feet, he used his phone to stay mentally involved in the airport battle. 

Over and over, he called acquaintances for news of the fight, which could easily be heard in the city five kilometers away. Said learned that the mercenaries continued firing on the demonstrators from the terminal building, even using heavy weaponry against the poorly armed insurgents.

It's a bit further than five kilometers. That's some heavy weaponry to thud like that. It could be. 

The main thing about Said is this friend of his, Farj, aged 23, who had just died in a Tripoli hospital. As if witnessing it all first-hand, Gebauer says "when Said learns of his friend's death, he becomes enraged. "This regime killed my friend," he yells. "They murdered him in the hospital."" That's quite a bit of news to happen to pass on right when the reporter is there.

We learn that the demise of Farj was passed on via his father, who learned by phone from a relative with contacts in Tripoli. It was convincing enough for him. "He was still young," he said. "But he died for the right cause. He is a martyr for freedom." 

As for how the two pals wound up injured or dead and so far apart, the report explains:

On Friday one week ago, the two were taking part in a protest in Bayda with 23 other friends when they heard a disturbing rumor making the rounds. A giant Ilyushin transport plane had landed at the airport carrying 400 African mercenaries [actually Libyans from Sabah]. The demonstrators knew immediately [Twitter rumors] what the mercenaries' mission was [...] crush the protests, if necessary by firing indiscriminately into the masses. Said and Farj rushed to the airport.

It's hard to believe, but in the short drive to the airport, no one thought to go back and get the few guns some of them were bound to have, and so they arrived for the fight "armed only with wooden clubs and steel rods." Not a good start, and "the mercenaries opened fire with their machine guns," an obvious escalation relative to wood and metal implements. 

This is where Said went down, and from the ground he saw Farj captured: "They shot him in the leg and dragged him into the terminal," he said. "Since then," Gebauer was told, and repeated. "Farj and the rest of Said's friends have been missing."  "Said assumes that they were taken to Tripoli by airplane," based on no sign afterwards, and apparently one plane escaping (?) with wounded protesters (but leaving behind a couple hundred "mercenaries" to be captured). It is thus interpolated that "Said was the only one of his [25] friends who survived the battle for the airport," by managing to not be dragged off to Tripoli like the other 24.  Gebauer continues: 

The phone call from Tripoli finally provided Said with certainty about the fate of his friend Farj. But he is consumed by a new suspicion. Doctors from clinics in the capital have called rebels in Bayda with disturbing news. Units of Gadhafi loyalists, Said said the doctors reported, are gathering up injured Gadhafi opponents so that they are unable to report on the regime's brutality. Said is certain that one of those units killed his friend.

"You don't die from a bullet in the leg," he says. "After all, I'm not dead."

That's quite some detective work. "Said said the doctor reported" that units were storming hospitals for wounded protesters they had put there after bringing them to Tripoli to be killed. This had the benefit of adding some witnesses in the hospital staff, who could tip off sleuths like Farj's friend and his dad. 

Any single part of this story is possible enough, but taken as a whole, Said's account clearly has some issues. He's not unique that way among our news sources in the rebel camp. They just don't often get scrutinized enough.  

Lévy Explains the Tribal Rejection of Gaddafi

May 10 2011

Below is a French to English translation of Bernard-Henri Lévy's explanation of his supposed joint letter by the trines of Libya. The wonky text is presented in full and in order, but broken up with comments.

Call of Benghazi

April 27, 2011

Read the appeal: All the tribes of Libya are one.

Read below decryption Bernard-Henri Levy.

The publication of this text is in many ways an event.

Signed by leaders or representatives of all tribes that make up Libya, he said the country's unity, he demolishes the idea, too often accepted as a matter of course, a nation divided into as many segments as tribes, it argues against the prejudice of Tripoli, and to a lesser extent, of Fezzan, which remain the bastions facing the rebel Cyrenaica, Gaddafi still a powerful

Again, plese note - there are about 140 tribes in Libya, something like 1,000 or more clans. The "appeal" in question was signed by 61 people. Even if they were all chiefs of 61 tribes (they weren't), that would be 42% of the tribes.

Also, the letter was two weeks old by the time it was published. Perhaps that was time to secure the 29 signatures to add to the original 32 to get the final 61.

On 12 April evening in a suburb of Benghazi during a meeting organized by Dr. Almayhoub, member of the National Transition Council and Chairman of the Council of Elders and dignitaries, that the idea of this call is born.

A text was then drafted and ratified soon by the 32 tribal leaders present or represented - basically, and that evening, the tribes of Cyrenaica martyrs and cities of the West.

Then, within days, contacts have been made , messages were launched, emissaries were dispatched towards all the other tribes of the country - the very ones which is assumed to Gaddafi or living under the terror of his army.

The result is there.

Indeed - they only had 32 representatives at the time of drafting. But a number signed later, to which Mr. Levy returns, providing some suspiciously impressive details I cannot yet vouch for or de-bunk - in particular, one man is claimed for the largets tribe, Warfalla, another one standing in for all southern tribes, one from "Lockerbie bomber" al-Megrahi's tribe swears off the regime, as does a "leader traditionnel" of the al-Gaddafa tribe, the Libyan leader's own!

The text has gathered signatures from Mouftah Al Matouk Werfali, chief of the tribe Warfalaa, located Baniwalid, is one of the largest tribes in western countries.

He considered the comments received and the signature of Al Nasr Sharif Sayfal, traditional leader of the tribes Al Gaddafi (Qadhafi's tribe) and Oulad Suleiman (present in Fezzan but whose center is Hrawi, near Sirte, city Gaddafi's birthplace and is considered one of its bases).

All the tribes of the city of Sabha in the South, all these tribes Al Fazazouna

was believed, too, acquired or not daring to disavow Gaddafi, are represented by Al Hajj Ali Al Fazan which we specify in a message accompanying that many leaders in his region who were unable, for security reasons, to ratify the manifesto. are with him through the heart and mind.

Similarly, the tribe Al Maguarhaa in the south: one of its leaders, Abdullah Sanusi, is the brother-in-law of Gaddafi and a pillar of his regime, but the signature of Al Hajj Moussa Al Magurahi, representative of one of the oldest and most influential families in the region is denied the claims of Tripoli to have his full support.

The presence among the signatories, Abd Al Kader Al Targi which is one of the leaders of the tribe Tawarik Al is also a major indication: Al Tawarik tribe, which has links with the Tuareg of Niger Algeria and Mali, is deemed Gaddafi - from today, it should not be.

There is also the coastal tribe Sourman: it is the birthplace of General Kheildi Al Hamed, mate Gaddafi, but here it is that, through Al Hajj Al Mabrouk Soumana says brightly that she chose the camp of insurrection.

Mohamed Al Dhmani Al Agilé represents the tribe Al Agilé, west of Tripoli.

Ashour Al Bou Krisse Wershefani Wesrhefanaa represents the tribe Wesrhefanaa, which is another tribe of the west of the capital, in the Al Azizia which is considered a stronghold of the most loyal and strongest of the Guide.

And there's still the case Khalifa Saleh Al-Qadhafi, leader of the tribe Al Gaddafi is, again, the tribe of Gaddafi: Khalifa Saleh Al Gaddafi was able to sign this text as it is nowadays, but its in Benghazi Announces Signing of others who can still be done openly.

From the sound of it, this Benghazi-origin document was signed by everyone near and dear to the regime itself. It would take some serious finding out to verify this interpretation. And again, it was only five dozen names, east and west, that were gathered at the end of it. Yet Levy continues and closes:

All the tribes of Libya, I repeat, present here.

All have, through one of their chiefs, ratified the manifesto.

The myth of Libya cut in half has lived.

The cuts, more accurately, no longer geographically separating the free tribes of the East than in West always be based on which the regime: it is political, internal to the tribes themselves, which when not clear to have or be on track to have an allegiance to the National Transitional Council, at least, outstanding leaders are here.

There will, very soon, that Libya - expressed through the text I am pleased and honored to make public today.

Bernard-Henri Levy

Leonor in Libya

May 8 2011

I was just tipped off to a valuable "critical view" well worth sharing here. A Spanish blogger named Leonor, writing from inside Libya. She has been on-line since 2008, but only took off with insane posting levels following the conflict's outbreak. The blog archive says:
► 2008 (5)
► 2009 (27)
► 2010 (6)
► 2011 (415)
http://leonorenlibia.blogspot.com/

And she's got a lot of followers and a lot of great stuff, as far as the auto-translation lets me read it. Just to give a taste, the two most recent posts, auto-translated.

USA AND THE UN IS NOT GOD

I just read an article in the espectador.com in which the UN says will not stop "to defend the Libyan people" to remove this government Moaamr al-Ghadafi.

It is clear that if you can say this and the comments accompanying the article on the "good" they are doing to Libya will be because they have no one to make the counter and tell the truth about what they are doing. This cynicism in his words, these lies so exaggerated and repeated with as little diplomacy are due to the widespread ignorance about Libya and the real situation and its real history and not told by their worst enemy: USA.

I can not believe in anything, I feel that we can not trust anyone when they continue the lies and massacres as newspapers and broadcasters to "condemn Ghadafi "... To justify this atrocity?. What reminds me of Iraq?.

It is very easy for people to either look the other way and thinking that goes with them while they are still killing and destroying the country and brag about it over and do not think stopping as if his words show that they have every reason to go to another country to steal a coup to kill and brag about it.

Hopefully not too late when we wake up and see what is really happening and the difference with what we have.

Increasingly Gaddafi WANTED

Contrary to what NATO says, the tribes, the people and the Libyan government to protect their leader Moammar Ghadafi as the safety and unity.

It's ridiculous that just two days after the end of the meeting of the Libyan tribes that have said very clearly that Ghadafi is a red line that can not even play. With total cynicism NATO says that every day he is more isolated.

From now and like the militias called "rebels", we must be clear that any statement it makes, is actually the opposite. Or at least check it because thus far do nothing but lie, supported by their faithful servant of USA's TV Aljazeera.

The Strike that Killed Seif

Sunday, May 1 2011
Last update May 8, 

It's been reported by Libyan government that a NATO strike on Saturday in Tripoli has somehow killed three young children, all grandchildren of leader Muammar Gaddafi, along with the leader's youngest son, Seif (or Saif) al-Arab al-Gaddafi, age 29. (Not to be confused with older son and heir apparent Saif al-Islam). Further, says Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, the same strike nearly killed the leader himself and his wife, who were in the building that was struck by three missiles.

This post will seek to work out how and why this happened. First, al Jazeera's live blog for April 30 gives the apparent time of the NATO strike as about 9pm local time.

8:50pm
The Reuters news agency quotes witnesses who say they heard loud explosions in the capital, Tripoli.

"Missiles appeared to fall behind the Rixos Hotel, which is near a major conference centre, opposite the palace Muammar Gaddafi uses to host visiting dignitaries and not far from his Bab al-Aziziyah compound. It was not immediately clear what the target was," the news agency reported.

Then, and until the --- is from a Los Angeles Times report:

[T]he possibility that the strike had killed civilians could deepen splits within the alliance and at the United Nations about the goals of the air campaign. 

Turkey, Germany and several other alliance members are deeply worried that NATO is moving toward a war aimed at overthrowing the Kadafi government, a goal that they insist was not authorized by the U.N. resolution allowing military action to protect civilians in Libya.

NATO for the moment has been unable to confirm who was killed in the strike. They insist they only target "command, control, and communication centers" or C3, coordinating the government's military response to the NATO-backed insurrection. Or, as phrased by NATO, "attacking civilians." As usual, they deny trying to assassinate the leader, which is expressly forbidden under international law.

But command and control is a slippery term. If they had known Gaddafi was there, it would have been okay to strike, as it was most definitely commanding military forces.

In a statement, the Canadian commander of the NATO operation in Libya said the alliance had attacked "a known command-and-control building" in Libya. 

The NATO officer would not discuss the intelligence that led to the attack or whether the alliance knew Kadafi was in the building when it was attacked [...but he] suggested that the Libyan leader may have surrounded himself with members of his family even as he was communicating with his military forces. "If Kadafi had people in the building he was using to conduct command and control, we have no way of knowing they were there," said the officer

They now believe col. Gaddafi himself - not a real colonel and really more of a figurehead - was personally controling the military operations. As if he'd have no staff of professionals to manage these things!

They should be expected to have proof of this, but I suspect rather they received intel that the leader was there, and then "decided" he might be controlling things from there, and struck, only to learn he'd surrounded himself with "human shields" as he did so.

It could be the case, but it just ... seems unlikely. But once it's done, this discovery the leader was staying where those orders had come from might serve as a useful "proof" for NATO's leaders. If Muammar Gaddafi is running things militarily, it could be argued he is a viable ("command and control") target. I'd presume there is little or no precedent for this, so it's hard to say if that argument would stick.

What it comes down to is two questions:
1) Was Mr. Gaddafi in fact inside the building that was struck?
2) Were there in fact war commands coming from that same building?

A lot rides on this supposed knowlege. As the Times notes:

The assertion by NATO that the facility was involved in coordinating Kadafi's military attacks is an important one because, if true, it would make the compound a legitimate military target.

Again, the unnamed NATO officer said:

"We know to a great extent how the chain of command worked [past tense in original] and how they are controlling their attacks on innocent civilians [present tense in original]. This compound we attacked is a building that is involved in the command and control of attacks on civilians."

So if they know so much, why is there confusion over just where this building is? Again as above, the LA Times.

There also appeared to be conflicting versions as to the exact location of the strike.

NATO officials said a compound in an area of Tripoli called Bab Azizia, which has been bombed previously, was the target. Libyan officials, meanwhile, took journalists to a destroyed house in a different, wealthy residential area of Tripoli, Reuters news agency reported. At least three missiles hit that house.

State television showed scenes of heavy damage to a structure. Webs of reinforcing metal were seen hanging inside the damaged building, poking through chunks of concrete. Journalists and others were seen walking through the rubble and, at one point, handling what appeared to be a missile half-covered in dust and debris.

Why the disconnect? Or is there really one? This is the main question I'll return to later with more information. A map might help.
---
Further information:
Al Jazeera's live blog for May 1 provides a minute-by-minute timeline (be sure to double-check anything really critical where an anti-Gaddafi bias might slant things).

4:04 am Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from Tataouine in Tunisia, says the Libyans she's been talking to are not celebrating the reported death of Gaddafi's son.
"They simply don't believe this news," she says. "They think it's a rumour manufactured to make it seem that NATO has gone beyond its mandate".

Some elaborate hoax, if so. They blew up a whole separate building in a separate neighborhood. The Tripoli Post carried a nicely balanced and informative piece:

Seif al-Arab Al Qathafi, 29, was hosting a gathering of family and friends when three missiles struck his house just after 8 p.m., causing huge explosions that could be felt more than two miles away.

The Libyan leader and his wife, Safiyah, were also there, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said, describing the attack as an assassination attempt.
[...]
Ibrahim said the attack was neither permitted under international law nor morally justifiable, and that it contravened NATO’s mandate under Security Resolution 1973 to protect Libyan civilians. Intelligence about Al Qathafi’s whereabouts or plans must have been leaked to NATO, he said.

“We ask the world to look into this carefully, because what we have now is the law of the jungle,” he said. “How is this helping in the protection of civilians?’’

Hours earlier, Al Qathafi had called for a cease-fire and negotiations with NATO but refused to surrender power. Even as he spoke, alliance warplanes struck a government complex in the capital. Ibrahim said NATO’s response was proof that it was not interested in peace or in protecting civilians. “We renew our call for peace and negotiations,” he said.

Reporters were taken to the house in Tripoli’s upscale Gharghour neighbourhood. One building had been turned into a wreck of shattered concrete and twisted metal, with an unexploded missile lying in the rubble, and a huge crater that had unearthed what looked like an underground cellar or bunker.

The walls of an adjacent building were partly destroyed. In one room, a television was still turned on, and a pile of PlayStation games lay on a sofa, including Modern Warfare 2 and FIFA Soccer 10. A pair of Homer Simpson slippers was half buried in the dust.

Ibrahim did not identify the children who were killed but said they were all under 12 years old.
[...]
In Tripoli, Al Qathafi supporters took to the streets, waved the green flags of the regime and fired guns in the air. The crowd swelled at Bab al-Aziziyah, Al Qathafi’s compound, where hundreds of people gather every night to express their support for their leader and offer themselves as human shields.

Guns were also fired in the air in the eastern city of Benghazi, the de facto capital of the opposition, but in celebration rather than in defiance. Young men took to the streets, waving their arms in the air and displaying the flag of the opposition, the skies lit up with tracer fire.
[...]
A rebel spokesman said he knew that Al Qathafi would use the deaths to paint the NATO operation as a mission to kill him rather than save civilians. [...] “He’ll milk it for all he can,’’ said Jalal el Gallal, a rebel spokesman in Benghazi. “Now he knows how the Libyans feel and it’s a shame they didn’t get (Muammar Al Qathafi) . . . We need this to be over and done with and, frankly speaking, this is the easiest way.’’

At left is a useful image of the compound at Bab al-Aziziya and a map, from the UK telegraph. Below, right, a graphic I made showing the same areas highlighted - the embassies and the compound (named differently), plus the Ghargour neighborhood were Seif was killed nearly a mile away.

The BBC covered how the strike could backfire badly for NATO. It aslo claims a slight expansion of the C3 concept to C3I.

Third, and most important, air strikes began to target command, control, communications and intelligence networks (known, in military parlance, as C3I). The Bab al-Aziziya compound includes all three such networks, and it was presumed that their disruption would disorient regime soldiers on the front line, cut off field commanders from Tripoli, and sow confusion in the ranks.
[...]
[however], this is no longer a conventional war in which top-down direction is crucial. Pro-Gaddafi forces in both the besieged western city of Misrata and in the east have adapted to Nato's air power and are using increasingly unorthodox tactics.

They need not rely on a stream of detailed orders from Tripoli, and can cause considerable harm to civilians without this guidance.

The Guardian has photos of Libyan civilians (not the one's we're protecting) holding pictres of the slain son of their leader and looking rather sad. Others have gotten angry, and that's causing its own problems vis-a-vis embassies in Tripoli and fire safety. European concerns the out-of-line strike(s) backfired - or even will be perceived as such - have been quickly offset by this new Gaddafi violation. NATO's leaders seem to be using that to ensure the assassination attempt backfires against Tripoli even worse than against themselves.
---
Update, May 8:
A lot of details of the scene of the bombing. Everything about it, from the neighborhood to the pet deer killed outside suggests full residential use, we have some confirmation for Saif's death, and the children have been named, born to multiple Gaddafi children, all babies.

Officials said it killed 29-year-old Seif al-Arab Gadhafi, who had survived a 1986 U.S. airstrike on his father's Bab al-Aziziya residential compound. Also killed were 2-year-old Carthage, the daughter of Gadhafi's son Hannibal; six-month-old Mastura, daughter of Gadhafi's daughter Aisha; and 15-month-old Seif Mohammed, son of Gadhafi's son Mohammed.

Dr. Gerard Le Clouerec, a French orthopedic surgeon who runs a private clinic in Tripoli, inspected the bodies of an adult and two infants at Tripoli's Green Hospital on Sunday.

He told reporters that the adult's face was intact and that "in relation to a photo we have seen most probably was the son of Gadhafi." He said the adult had a thin mustache and a full beard.

The two children had been badly disfigured, the doctor said.

The complex targeted Saturday, hidden from view by blast walls and tall trees, contained three one-story buildings and a large yard with lawns, geranium flower beds, a woodshed, a swing and a table soccer game. A dead deer and a twisted bathtub lay on the debris-strewn grass.

A kitchen clock, knocked from the wall, had stopped a 8:08 and 45 seconds, the time of the explosion. Cooking pots with food, including stuffed peppers, noodles and a stew, had been left on the stove, covered with aluminum foil. Thick gray dust covered crates of onions and lemons in the pantry.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/may/08/ml-libya/

And American sources say Norway had a role in this notorious raid, which Norway's Defense Minister has not confirmed.

Some of the further reactions to the apparent assassination attempt are collected here.