Gord's Notebook : Obama Silent On Yemen Massacres & US Media Censors Libyan Rebel Commander Khalifa Hifter's Connection to USA and CIA Glenn Greenwald Legality Of Libyan Intervention

UPDATE: 5:09 PM, April 1, 2011.

Today's Menu

*Obama's Wars
* Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now Yemen US military involvement in Yemen
killing insurgents dissidents
*President Obama following in George Bush's madness ?
*Glenn Greenwald and the legality of arming the Libyan Rebels
*Rebel leader Khalifa Hifter 's Connection to the CIA and US government
*Libyan intervention humanitarian mission or American Imperialism
*Why Libya: oil, military bases, hegemony , power

" The road to imperial barbarism in Iraq began with ‘sanctions’, progressed to ‘no fly zones’, then de facto partition of the north, invasion and foreign occupation and the unleashing of sectarian warfare among the ‘liberated’ Iraqi death squads. "

...Demons and angels aside, this conflict began as a civil war between two sets of Libyan elites: An established paternalistic, now burgeoning neo-liberal autocracy with substantial popular backing versus a western imperialist financed and trained elite, backed by an amorphous group of regional, tribal and clerical chiefs, monarchists and neo-liberal professionals devoid of democratic and nationalist credentials – and lacking broad-based mass support.

From: "The Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics " By James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya March 30, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -

US Media accused of Censorship by refusing to disclose information (which in fact is readily available outside the USA) on the new Rebel commander in Libya Khalifa Hifter -

In the case of Khalifa Hifter, this responsibility “not to publish” extends beyond the concealment of the documentary evidence of American war crimes and diplomatic conspiracies uncovered by WikiLeaks. The American media is withholding from the American public basic facts about the war in Libya, widely reported overseas and easily available to those who know where to look. There is no other word for this but censorship.

Libyan Rebel Leader Spent Much of Past 20 Years in Langley Virginia By Chris Adams McClatchy via ICH ,March 30, 2011

Members of Congress have expressed anxiety about U.S. government activities in Libya. Some have recalled that weapons provided by the U.S. and Saudis to mujahedeen fighting Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s later ended up in the hands of anti-American militants.

There are fears that the same thing could happen in Libya unless the U.S. is sure who it is dealing with. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, said on Wednesday he opposed supplying arms to the Libyan rebels fighting Gaddafi "at this time."

"We need to understand more about the opposition before I would support passing out guns and advanced weapons to them," Rogers said in a statement.

From: "Obama Authorizes Secret Support for Libya Rebels" By Mark Hosenball Reuters Via Information Clearing House March 30, 2011

The real question is the wisdom of this escalated involvement. How many times do we have to arm one side of a civil war -- only for that side to then become our Enemy five or ten or fifteen years later -- before we learn not to do that any more? I wrote earlier on Twitter, ironically, that one good outcome from arming the Libyan rebels is that it will lay the foundation for our new war 10 years from now -- when Commander-in-Chief George Prescott Bush or Chelsea Clinton announce that we must wage war to stop the Libyan faction from threatening its neighbors and supporting Terrorism (with the weapons we provided them back in 2011). One of the most reliable ways that the posture of Endless War has been sustained is by our flooding the world with our weapons, only to then identify various recipients as our new (well-armed) enemy. Whether this is a feature or a bug, it is a very destructive outcome of our endless and always-escalating involvement in military conflicts around the world. From: " The Wisdom and Legality of Arming Libyan Rebels " by Glenn Greenwald Salon.com via CommonDreams.org, March 30,2011

Obama administration supports Yemen government with arms.
and when necessary the US does the bombing
Jeremy Scahill & Joshua Foust on the U.S. Policy & Covert War in Yemen

Lybia : US arming Rebels connected to Al Qaeda -note they don't mention the CIA connection to the rebels .

Libyan Rebel Leader Spent Much of Past 20 Years in Langley Virginia By Chris Adams McClatchy via ICH ,March 30, 2011

McClatchy" -- WASHINGTON - The new leader of Libya's opposition military spent the past two decades in suburban Virginia but felt compelled — even in his late-60s — to return to the battlefield in his homeland...

The obvious conclusion is that the American media is keeping silent in order to deprive the American people of information that would help clarify the nature of the US military intervention in Libya—and trigger opposition to it. The selection of a longtime CIA collaborator as commander of the rebels makes nonsense of the official claim that the United States is intervening militarily in Libya to protect civilian lives, rather than taking sides in a civil war in order to gain control of Libya’s oil assets and strengthen the position of American imperialism in the region.

Two words that were notably absent from Obama’s Monday night speech on national television were “rebels” and “CIA.” Both the Obama administration and the US intelligence apparatus want to downplay their role in the direction of the rebel ground forces. For the American media, that amounts to a direct order, to which the editors of the Times, Post, etc., salute and say, “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

In the case of Khalifa Hifter, this responsibility “not to publish” extends beyond the concealment of the documentary evidence of American war crimes and diplomatic conspiracies uncovered by WikiLeaks. The American media is withholding from the American public basic facts about the war in Libya, widely reported overseas and easily available to those who know where to look. There is no other word for this but censorship.

"Khalifa Hifter was once a top military officer for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but after a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s, Hifter switched to the anti-Gadhafi opposition. In the early 1990s, he moved to suburban Virginia, where he established a life but maintained ties to anti-Gadhafi groups.

Rebel commander Khalifa Hifter worked for Qaddafi as a commander in the Libyan backed forces in the civi war in Chad but he has lived in USA the past 20 years and is connected with the CIA and the US government though repoted by media outside the USA the America media doesn't carry the whole story.

"American Media Silent on CIA Ties to Libya Rebel Commander" By Patrick Martin via ICH

March 30, 2011 "WSWS" - -It has been six days since Khalifa Hifter was appointed the top military commander for the Libyan rebel forces fighting the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. His appointment was noted by reporter Nancy Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers, a US regional chain that includes the Sacramento Bee and the Kansas City Star.Two days later, another McClatchy journalist, Chris Adams, wrote a brief biographical sketch of Hifter that left the implication, without saying so explicitly, that he was a longtime CIA asset. It headlined the fact that after defecting from a top position in Gaddafi’s army, Hifter had lived in northern Virginia for some 20 years, as well as noting that Hifter had no obvious means of financial support.

There is no credible explanation for this silence from the standpoint of journalism. There is no security reason to keep the name of the Libyan commander secret—it was publicly announced by the Transitional National Council in Benghazi, and Hifter is certainly well known to Gaddafi, who employed him as a commander of Libyan-backed forces in the civil wars was his purpose in life."

"Obama Authorizes Secret Support for Libya Rebels" By Mark Hosenball Reuters Via Information Clearing House March 30, 2011

"Reuters" -- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the matter.

Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and the White House declined immediate comment.

...In 2009 Obama gave a similar authorization for the expansion of covert U.S. counter-terrorism actions by the CIA in Yemen. The White House does not normally confirm such orders have been issued.

Because U.S. and allied intelligence agencies still have many questions about the identities and leadership of anti-Gaddafi forces, any covert U.S. activities are likely to proceed cautiously until more information about the rebels can be collected and analyzed, officials said."The whole issue on (providing rebels with) training and equipment requires knowing who the rebels are," said Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA Middle East expert who has advised the Obama White House.

Riedel said that helping the rebels to organize themselves and training them how use weapons effectively would be more urgent then shipping them arms.

According to an article speculating on possible U.S. covert actions in Libya published early in March on the website of the Voice of America, the U.S. government's broadcasting service, a covert action is "any U.S. government effort to change the economic, military, or political situation overseas in a hidden way."

... ARMS SUPPLIES

The article, by VOA intelligence correspondent Gary Thomas, said covert action "can encompass many things, including propaganda, covert funding, electoral manipulation, arming and training insurgents, and even encouraging a coup."U.S. officials also have said that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose leaders despise Gaddafi, have indicated a willingness to supply Libyan rebels with weapons.

Members of Congress have expressed anxiety about U.S. government activities in Libya. Some have recalled that weapons provided by the U.S. and Saudis to mujahedeen fighting Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s later ended up in the hands of anti-American militants.

There are fears that the same thing could happen in Libya unless the U.S. is sure who it is dealing with. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, said on Wednesday he opposed supplying arms to the Libyan rebels fighting Gaddafi "at this time."

"We need to understand more about the opposition before I would support passing out guns and advanced weapons to them," Rogers said in a statement.

The Wisdom and Legality of Arming Libyan Rebels
by Glenn Greenwald Salon.com via CommonDreams.org, March 30,2011

Whatever one thinks about the U.S. involvement in the war in Libya - some substantial portion of my readers support it, though Republicans are more enthused about the U.S. taking a leading role -- it has unquestionably departed far from the claims that were made about in the beginning. The no-fly zone was established long ago; the focus is now on attacking Gadaffi's ground forces, enabling rebel advancements, and regime change.

Despite claims about Arab League and French leadership, the U.S. has provided the overwhelming bulk of bombs, jet fighters, intelligence and other resources. And now there is what The New York Times calls a "fierce debate" within the administration about whether to arm the Libyan rebels. Two points about all of this:

First, The Washington Post yesterday reported that "the U.S. military dramatically stepped up its assault on Libyan government ground forces over the weekend, launching its first missions with AC-130 flying gunships and A-10 attack aircraft designed to strike enemy ground troops and supply convoys." The Post article aptly explained the significance of this development:

The use of the aircraft, during days of heavy fighting in which the momentum seemed to swing in favor of the rebels, demonstrated how allied military forces have been drawn deeper into the chaotic fight in Libya. A mission that initially seemed to revolve around establishing a no-fly zone has become focused on halting advances by government ground forces in and around key coastal cities. . . . AC-130s were used to great effect during the two U.S. offensives in Fallujah, a stronghold of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq in the early days of the Iraq war.

Moreover:

Military officials consider AC-130s and A-10s well suited to attacks in built-up areas, although their use has led to civilian deaths. Unlike fighter jets and bombers, which typically carry 500- or 1,000-pound bombs, the AC-130s and A-10s deliver more discriminate but still devastating machine-gun fire.

That the war expanded that quickly and that substantially is an obviously significant fact to know. But, as FAIR's Peter Hart notes, the Post knew about this development for at least a week but concealed it from their readers at the Government's request; The article included this sentence: "The Washington Post learned of their deployment last week but withheld reporting the information until their first missions at the request of U.S. military officials."

... Ultimately, though, does anyone really think these legal niceties will matter at all if the U.S. decides it wants to arm the Libyan rebels (and yesterday on Democracy Now, University of Trinity Professor Vijay Prashad claimed that one of the key rebel leaders lived in the U.S. -- in Vienna, Virgina -- for the past 30 years, "a 10-minute drive from Langley, and returned to Benghazi to, in a sense, I think, hijack the rebellion on behalf of the forces of reaction")? If the U.S. wants to arm the rebels, it will do so regardless of whether it violates any U.N. arms embargo, and few supporters of this war -- most of whom justify it by pointing to these U.N. Resolutions -- will care very much, if at all. Once wars begin, and positions harden, nothing matters less than legalities.

The real question is the wisdom of this escalated involvement. How many times do we have to arm one side of a civil war -- only for that side to then become our Enemy five or ten or fifteen years later -- before we learn not to do that any more?

I wrote earlier on Twitter, ironically, that one good outcome from arming the Libyan rebels is that it will lay the foundation for our new war 10 years from now -- when Commander-in-Chief George Prescott Bush or Chelsea Clinton announce that we must wage war to stop the Libyan faction from threatening its neighbors and supporting Terrorism (with the weapons we provided them back in 2011).

One of the most reliable ways that the posture of Endless War has been sustained is by our flooding the world with our weapons, only to then identify various recipients as our new (well-armed) enemy. Whether this is a feature or a bug, it is a very destructive outcome of our endless and always-escalating involvement in military conflicts around the world.

------------------------
Controversy rages on about the US military intervention in Libya which we were led to believe would consist of various rather limited actions such as a no fly zone or the bombing of purely military targets such as firing on Qaddafi troops outside civilian areas chasing down retreating lightly-armed rebels. In fact the Obama administration decided not just on shooting a few missiles but instead went to the Shock and Awe strategy of firing thousands of tomahawk missiles etc.

Next they'll be using cluster bombs or phosphorus and excuses for bombing the infrastructure as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan leaving the countries devastated and crippled .

But the deal was supposed to be one of limited strikes and no damage to the infrastructure including water and sewage treatment facilities , power stations, roads, bridges, schools , hospitals , houses of worship whether Mosques or churches or temples and so on .

But it appears that we were naive to expect some sort of measured response from the U.S. government which destroyed Iraq and then blamed the turmoil and devastation on the Iraqi people as they have done in Afghanistan blaming the citizens there.

As Malalai Joya has reminded us the occupation forces are no longer welcome in Afghanistan since NATO and U.S. forces now treat all Afghans as the enemy and see all Afghans as duplicitous, liars and terrorists who are fanatically anti-western .

"The Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics " By James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya March 30, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -

The supposedly humanitarian mission of the Obama administration to intervene militarily in Libya is really about a Neo-liberal agenda to replace Qaddafi with a puppet regime which will do America's bidding and thereby accept that American interests its geo-political interests and so on are to come before the interests of Libya or its people.

According to a recent article about the military intervention into Libya the authors James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya analyze what they believe to be the erroneous arguments on both sides that is the right and left or the pros and cons of the intervention .

They are quite skeptical and scathing in their criticisms of the Neo-liberal agenda moderate liberals concerned about human rights etc. or leftists who have been duped into believing the myth that this uprising is pro-democracy and has support from the majority of Libyans

The main reasons and rationalizations and criticisms of the intervention in Libya they break down into six myths each of which they dismantle .

Their argument is that the US Euro intervention is not about oil or humanitarian aid or the defense of a popular pro-democracy broad-based popular uprising or to get rid of a supposedly brutal dictator.

They argue the main reason for US intervention is to take out Qaddafi and replace him with a more cooperative Puppet Regime which will back the creation of more US military bases and the further militarization of the region.

For instance major American and western corporations are already well established in Libya and that the rebel forces are made up of a hodge-podge of various groups including Islamists, monarchist , chauvanist nationalists who are somewhat xenophobic and racist who are anti-pluralists who do not want to extend civil rights and human rights to those whom they consider not to be true Libyans.
If they are right about this then the uprising is similar to that of the Serbian nationalists who believed in the ethnic cleansing of Serbia.

"The Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics " By James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya March 30, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -

... What is much more revealing about the militarist intervention in Libya is that the major countries, which refused to engage in the War, operate via a very different form of global expansion based on economic and market forces. China, India, Brazil, Russia, Turkey and Germany, the most dynamic capitalist countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East are fundamentally opposed to the self-styled “allied” military response against the Libyan government – because Gaddafi represents no threat to their security and they already have full access to the oil and a favorable investment climate. Besides, these economically dynamic countries see no prospect for a stable, progressive or democratic Libyan government emerging from the so-called ‘rebel’ leaders, who are disparate elites competing for power and Western favor.

1. The Six Myths about Libya: Right and Left

...The bombing of Libya has already destroyed major civilian infrastructure, airports, roads, seaports and communication centers, as well as ‘military’ targets. The blockade of Libya and military attacks have driven out scores of multi-national corporations and led to the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Asian, Eastern European, Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern and North African skilled and unskilled immigrant workers and specialists of all types, devastating the economy and creating, virtually overnight, massive unemployment, bread-lines and critical gasoline shortages.

Moreover, following the logic of previous imperial military interventions, the seemingly ‘restrained’ call to patrol the skies via “no fly zone”, has led directly to bombing civilian as well as military targets on the ground, and is pushing to overthrow the legitimate government. The current imperial warmongers leading the attack on Libya, just like their predecessors, are not engaged in anything remotely resembling a humanitarian mission: they are destroying the fundamental basis of the civilian lives they claim to be saving – or as an earlier generation of American generals would claim in Vietnam, they are ‘destroying the villages in order to save them’.

2. War for Oil or Oil for Sale?

The ‘critical’ Left’s favorite cliché is that the imperial invasion is all about “seizing control of Libya’s oil and turning it over to their multi-nationals”. This is despite the fact that US, French and British multinationals (as well as their Asian competitors) had already “taken over” millions of acres of Libyan oil fields without dropping a single bomb.

For the past decade, “Big Oil” had been pumping and exporting Libyan oil and gas and reaping huge profits. Gaddafi welcomed the biggest MNC’s to exploit the oil wealth of Libya from the early 1990s to the present day. There are more major oil companies doing business in Libya than in most oil producing regions in the world.

4. The Myth of the Revolutionary Masses

...The center of the armed uprising is Benghazi, longtime monarchist hotbed of tribal supporters and clients of the deposed King Idris and his family. Idris, until he was overthrown by the young firebrand Col. Gaddafi, had ruled Libya with an iron fist over a semi-feudal backwater and was popular with Washington, having given the US its largest air base (Wheeler) in the Mediterranean. Among the feuding leaders of the “transitional council” in Benghazi (who purport to lead but have few organized followers) one finds neo-liberal expats, who first promoted the Euro-US military invasion envisioning their ride to power on the back of Western missiles. They openly favor dismantling the Libyan state oil companies currently engaged in joint ventures with foreign MNCs. Independent observers have commented on the lack of any clear reformist tendencies, let alone revolutionary organizations or democratic popular movements among the ‘rebels’.

The anti-Gaddafi force’s lack of any democratic credentials and mass support is evident in their reliance on foreign imperial armed forces to bring them to power and their subservience to imperial demands. Their abuse and persecution of immigrant workers from Asia, Turkey and especially sub-Sahara Africa, as well as black Libyan citizens, is well documented in the international press. Their brutal treatment of black Libyans, falsely accused of being Gaddafi’s “mercenaries”, includes torture, mutilation and horrific executions, does not auger well for the advent of a new democratic order, or even the revival of an economy, which has been dependent on immigrant labor, let alone a unified country with national institutions and a national economy.

The self-declared leadership of the “National Transitional Council” is not democratic, nationalist or even capable of uniting the country. These are not credible leaders capable of restoring the economy and creating jobs lost as a result of their armed power grab. No one seriously envisions these ‘exiles’, tribalists, monarchists and Islamists maintaining the paternalistic social welfare and employment programs created by the Gaddafi government and which gave Libyans the highest per-capita income in Africa.

5. Al Qaeda

The greatest geographical concentration of suspected terrorists with links to Al Qaeda just happens to be in the areas dominated by the “rebels”. For over a decade Gaddafi has been in the forefront of the fight against Al Qaeda, following his embrace of the Bush-Obama ‘War on Terror’ doctrine.

6. “Genocide” or Armed Civil War

Unlike all ongoing mass popular Arab uprisings, the Libyan conflict began as an armed insurrection, directed at seizing power by force. Unlike the autocratic rulers of Egypt and Tunisia, Gaddafi has secured a mass regional base among a substantial sector of the Libyan population. This support is based on the fact that almost two generations of Libyans have benefited from Gaddafi’s petroleum-financed welfare, educational, employment and housing programs, none of which existed under America’s favorite, King Idris.

Since violence is inherent in any armed uprising, once one picks up the gun to seize power, they lose their claim on ‘civil rights’. In armed civil conflicts, civil rights are violated on all sides. Regardless of the Western media’s lurid portrayal of Gaddafi’s “African mercenary forces” and its more muted approval of ‘revolutionary justice’ against Gaddafi supporters and government soldiers captured in the rebel strongholds, the rules of warfare should have come into play, including the protection of non-combatants-civilians (including government supporters and officials), as well as protection of Libyan prisoners of war in the areas under NATO-rebel control.

...Demons and angels aside, this conflict began as a civil war between two sets of Libyan elites: An established paternalistic, now burgeoning neo-liberal autocracy with substantial popular backing versus a western imperialist financed and trained elite, backed by an amorphous group of regional, tribal and clerical chiefs, monarchists and neo-liberal professionals devoid of democratic and nationalist credentials – and lacking broad-based mass support.

Conclusion

If not to prevent genocide, grab the oil or promote democracy (via Patriot missiles), what, then, is the driving force behind the Euro-US imperial intervention?

A clue is in the selectivity of Western military intervention: In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar and Oman ruling autocrats, allied with, and backed by, Euro-US imperial states go about arresting, torturing and murdering unarmed urban protestors with total impunity.

In Egypt and Tunisia, the US is backing a conservative junta of self-appointed civil-military elites in order to block the profound democratic and nationalist transformation of society demanded by the protesters. The ‘junta’ aims to push through neo-liberal economic “reforms” through carefully-vetted pro-Western ‘elected’ officials.

While liberal critics may accuse the West of “hypocrisy” and “double standards” in bombing Gaddafi but not the Gulf butchers, in reality the imperial rulers consistently apply the same standards in each region. They defend strategic autocratic client regimes, which have allowed imperial states to build strategic air force and naval bases, run regional intelligence operations and set up logistical platforms for their ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their future planned conflict with Iran. They attack Gaddafi’s Libya precisely because Gaddafi had refused to actively contribute to Western military operations in Africa and the Middle East.