UPDATE: 7:19 PM, April 2, 2011.
" We, the people, were never consulted when millions of dollars of arms were sold to Gaddafi by the US or the UK; as we, the people, were never consulted when the UNSC resolution 1973 was ratified. So why must we be put in a position to condone or denounce the US-led invasion of Libya?
We are not, have never been, in a position to decide. But we are, and we remain, in a position to bear witness, to judge, and to act accordingly – and what we are witnessing from one continent to another is first and foremost a moral rebellion, and thus the persistence to call it for what it is, for "dignity".
Vox Populi
Holding our grounds as moral agents, for us, the people – Libyans, French, British, or Americans, etc. – the US and its European allies and Gaddafi are the losers in this game, sooner or later. Triumphant will remain the democratic will of the Libyan people that will overcome this debacle.
The question is how. Gaddafi has bloodied this democratic uprising, and that cannot be allowed to mar and maim the post-Gaddafi choices.
The Libyan people, which cannot be reduced or limited to those who have taken up arms and must be extended to the civic foregrounding of a democratic future must think of enduring institutions beyond the obscenity of a doctorate in democracy bought and paid for at the London School of Economics for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the man who would be king.
Cliché and outdated forms of solidarity or opposition no longer make sense. Neither blind solidarity without an eye towards the formation of enduring institutions of democracy, nor the degeneration of opposition to adventurous imperialism into suspicion of democratic uprisings will find a way into the texture and contour of this long awaited revolutionary moment.
We need to keep our eyes on the ball – which is the democratic will of people, vox populi – rising to demand and exact enduring institutions of civil liberties and social justice.
The UN is the diplomatic arm of the US and its European allies. The US lacks any moral authority to pretend to be on the side of these democratic uprisings. NATO is abusing Gaddafi's slaughter of his own people to reclaim the Mediterranean Sea and environ as its theatre of operation.
...What ever the will to dominate and exploit might be, it will lose to the infinitely superior will to defy and reclaim peoples' destiny. Tyrannies might be as conniving as the octogenarians ruling the Islamic Republic or as reckless as Gaddafi's Libya. But they will both fold facing these rises of democratic wills.
These revolutionary uprisings are realities sui generis, legitimate by what and where they are, and they must not be reduced to losing agential autonomy, and thus finding and losing legitimacy by the hypocritical and opportunistic attempts of military powers to embrace or repress them.
What Egyptians have achieved in Tahrir Square in particular re-conceives the very notion of "democracy"."
Above quote From: "
Moral bankruptcy in Libya war
Foreign intervention in Libya is fuelled by ulterior motives, not goodwill" by Hamid Dabashi Aljazeera , April 1, 2011
Photo: Aljazeera.net The US lacks any moral authority to pretend to be on the side of these democratic uprisings [AFP]
Is Hillary Clinton and other members of Obam's Regime delusional or no longer able to differentiate between facts and Propaganda as they spread their pro-elitist anti-democratic Neo-Liberal Bankrupt Ideology of The Selfish and the Greedy.
:
Photo Aljazeera Hillary Clinton apparently did not get the memo about the current situation in Libya when, on the topic of Bahrain, she said, 'Violence is not the answer, a political process is' [GALLO/GETTY]
"The upshot is this. An event that we Americans were led to believe was an autonomous rising on the model of Egypt turns out to have been deeply compromised from the start, and compromised by American meddling. And the president himself, far from having been balked in mid-decision because he is a man of skeptical and hesitant mind, took a long time to decide because he was face to face with a moment such as John Kennedy recognized at the brink of the Bay of Pigs invasion, whose 50th anniversary the U.S. will mark on April 17. After three days of ill-fated support for the anti-Castro rebels, President Kennedy drew back from that disaster. Eventually, he made a public apology to the country."
Quote from:
The CIA, the Libyan Rebellion, and the President by David Bromwich, Huff Post,April 1, 2011
Rebel fighters prayed at the grave of fellow rebels who were killed in what they say was a coalition air strike [Reuters] APhoto rebels at graves of dead comrades
Pro-democracy forces in Libya say at least 10 of their fighters have been killed in a NATO air strike on the outskirts of the eastern town of Brega, as the battle rages on for control of the oil port.
NATO said on Saturday that it is investigating reports that a coalition warplane struck pro-democracy forces near the front line of the battle with fighters loyal to the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Burnt out hulks of at least four vehicles, including an ambulance, were seen by the side of the road near the eastern entrance to the oil town on Saturday, the Reuters news agency reported. Men prayed at freshly dug graves nearby as they buried their colleagues.
"Some of Gaddafi's forces sneaked in among the rebels and fired anti-aircraft guns in the air," Mustafa Ali Omar, a pro-democracy fighter said. "After that the NATO forces came and bombed them."
The Libyan government, meanwhile, has produced a video said to show civilians, including women and children, in a Brega hospital. They are believed to have been wounded as they tried to escape the air strikes.
Doctors say more than 240 people have been killed and over 1,000 wounded in Misurata in the last month alone, as a counter-offensive by Gaddafi's troops raised the number of casualties.
Americas Dystopian Nightmare in Iraq and Afghanistasn
Thousands of Iraqis throwing shoes to protest against the Malakai Regime which they claim is not democratic but is repressive and beats, tortures and kills any opponents including those who are peaceful in their protsts.
Iraqis protesting for the reform of America's Puppet Regime in Iraq.
Shoe thrower targets Iraq's PM
In the clip below former US State dept. spokesman Crowley in his defense of the Obama administration illustrates the hyocrisy of American foreign policy .
Crowley should know better since he was forced to resign because he dared to criticize the Obama administration for its abusive treatment of alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning.
I say alleged but in America once officials incarcerate someone no matter the alleged is now treated as guilty.
They reason that if one is therefore an enemy of the STATE than the STATE can do what it wishes to such individuals. Besides Manley is just one of thousands abused and tortured and denied due process in America's Kafkaesque Judicial System which allows for spying and arresting individuals without warrants .
And Obama and his gang of thugs disingenuously claim that the US government
has never committed crimes against humanity or War Crimes. Like George W. Bush , Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Condi Rice facts are mere inconveniences which they just ignore.
They refuse to recognize facts which do not support their theories, ideology , world view or any stray thought which crosses their minds.
Crowley like Obama or Hillary Clinton or Robert Gates doesn't bother to talk about the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the USA-illegal brutal and bloody invasion & occupation of Iraq & Afghanistan-
They deny the reality on the ground in these occupied territories of the hundreds of thousands murdered in the name of LIBERTY -but whose liberty ???
Neither state has or will benefit from these incursions on their national sovereignty.
Like most Americans he seems to actually be delusional in claiming the USA has always been in favor of democratic reforms and even the re-distribution of wealth in these countries-
Sorry was this AlJazeera's April Fools joke.
Hillary Clinton as we saw was quite gungho about ousting the popular democratically electe president of Hoonduras to be replaced by yet another Military Junta and the Super-wealthy-
Clinton herself is one of the super wealthy so we shouldn't be surprised when she and other wealthy Americans get very nervous when a leader in a nation starts to even talk about real reform. The America idea of reform is that of holding bogus elections in which many of the opposition are not allowed to participate equally with other parties.
And according to the Bush/Obama/ Clinton doctrine anyone criticising and calling for the ouster of one of America's puppet brutal pro-free market regimes is by definition an enemy of the united States of America and by extension pro-terrorist-(you are either with us or against us)
Pace of events in Middle East unprecedented, says Crowley
AlJazeeraEnglish on Mar 28, 2011
PJ Crowley, the former US state department spokesman, has denied that there was a split between the Pentagon and the State Department over the military action in Libya.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Crowley said officials have found it challenging to construct an approach that strikes the right balance between military action and diplomacy in Libya.
But he said the uprisings in the Middle East are unfolding at an unprecedented speed - making it very difficult to predict outcomes.
Libya: Politics of humanitarian intervention
The process of implementing the UN resolution on Libya was a poorly executed farce with no long-term foresight. by Mahmood Mamdani, Aljazeera, March 31, 2011
Iraq and Afghanistan teach us that humanitarian intervention does not end with the removal of the danger it purports to target.
It only begins with it. Having removed the target, the intervention grows and turns into the real problem. This is why to limit the discussion of the Libyan intervention to its stated rationale – saving civilian lives – is barely scratching the political surface.
The short life of the Libyan intervention suggests that we distinguish between justification and execution in writing its biography. Justification was a process internal to the United Nations Security Council, but execution is not.
In addition to authorising a "no-fly zone" and tightening sanctions against "the Gaddafi regime and its supporters", Resolution 1973 called for "all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi." At the same time, it expressly "excluded a foreign occupation force of any form" or in "any part of Libyan territory".
UN conflicts
The UN process is notable for two reasons. First, the resolution was passed with a vote of 10 in favour and five abstaining.
The abstaining governments – Russia, China, India, Brazil, Germany – represent the vast majority of humanity.
Even though the African Union had resolved against an external intervention and called for a political resolution to the conflict, the two African governments in the Security Council – South Africa and Nigeria – voted in favour of the resolution.
They have since echoed the sentiments of the governments that abstained, that they did not have in mind the scale of the intervention that has actually occurred.
They have since echoed the sentiments of the governments that abstained, that they did not have in mind the scale of the intervention that has actually occurred.
The second thing notable about the UN process is that though the Security Council is central to the process of justification, it is peripheral to the process of execution.
The Russian and Chinese representatives complained that the resolution left vague "how and by whom the measures would be enforced and what the limits of the engagement would be."
Having authorised the intervention, the Security Council left its implementation to any and all, it "authorised Member States, acting nationally or through regional organisations or arrangements."
As with every right, this free for all was only in theory; in practise, the right could only be exercised by those who possessed the means to do so. As the baton passed from the UN Security Council to the US and NATO, its politics became clearer
Money trail
When it came to the assets freeze and arms embargo, the Resolution called on the Secretary-General to create an eight-member panel of experts to assist the Security Council committee in monitoring the sanctions.
Libyan assets are mainly in the US and Europe, and they amount to hundreds of billions of dollars: the US Treasury froze $30bn of liquid assets, and US banks $18bn. What is to happen to interest on these assets?
The absence of any specific arrangement assets are turned into a booty, an interest-free loan, in this instance, to US Treasury and US banks.
Like the military intervention, there is nothing international about the implementing sanctions regime. From its point of view, the international process is no more than a legitimating exercise.
If the legitimation is international, implementation is privatised, passing the initiative to the strongest of member states. The end result is a self-constituted coalition of the willing.
War furthers many interests. Each war is a laboratory for testing the next generation of weapons. It is well known that the Iraq war led to more civilian than military victims.
The debate then was over whether or not these casualties were intended. In Libya, the debate is over facts. It points to the fact that the US and NATO are perfecting a new generation of weapons, weapons meant for urban warfare, weapons designed to minimise collateral damage.
More Obama hypocrisy he should first call for an independent investigation into War Crimes and Crimes against humanity committed by the Bush/Cheney Regime and of those in US government still committing such crimes before getting all self-righteous insisting on Qaddafi being tried for war crimes
That being said he should also go after Israel for its war crimes or Crimes against humanity and its attempts at ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Then he would have to confront at least a dozen of America's allies such as the UK
But the problem is that the USA is itself guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity stretching back at least to the first Gulf War in which US forces mercilessly killed thousand of Iraqi soldiers retreating from Kuwait -killing members of a retreating army is considered a war crime.
These side-show barkers , snake-oil salesmen , hucksters , con-men are selling another war for the oil, business opportunities to create more American military bases as they plan their attacks on other North African and Middle Eastern nations.
Sometime it appears that the American nightmare would begin with nations around the globe deciding to look after their citizens -food, shelter, healthcare education etc. rather than purchasing more armaments from America which has become its lifeblood. Eisenhower pointed this out in 1960 as George Orwell and George Bernard Shaw, Martin Luther King, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain and so on would also chime in on
What is also troubling is that Obama is almost as delusional as George W. Bush . Does he not see that these activities will only further embolden anti-American and anti-Western sentiment in Muslim communities around the globe.
US government uses humanitarian aid as a ruse to oust Qaddafi and to bring into power a more compliant US installed puppet regime ala Iraq and Afghanistan .
Will America ever produce an honest government which favors the mass of Americans over the corporations and other vested interests.
So it is no wonder that the Obama administration is no more in favor of sovereign states achieving independence and some democratic reforms such as freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, fredom of the press and to take complete control of their natural resources including labor and demanding a fair price for these natural resources and manufactured goods and that foreign corporations even American, Canadian, British and German and French be made to respect workers rights to pay them a fair wage to no longer employ children as if they were slaves or to hunt down and kill those who defend the rights of the people of the country. This is of course not what the American government and its Corporate allies will ever stand for ; they believe that they have the military power to sign agreements that are in their favor and not that of the sovereign nation they are dealing with.
It is becoming more obvious that Qaddafi was not compliant enough in taking a more vigorous part in the so-called war on terror which has had nothing to do with manner of governance in Libya.
We are now getting a cleare picture of the rebel forces in Libya made up of true democratic reformers and Islamist and Al Qaeda terrorists.
While Hillary Clinton and Obama bemoan human rights violations of the Qaddafi government they do all they can to cover-up Saudi Arabia's on going human rights violations compounded now by using its military might to quash any reform movement in Bahrian including the use of lethal force on unarmed civilians .
Once again the American machivellian approach is sold as a humanitarian aid project while the Saudi snipers kill unarmed citizens on its own soil and in Bahrain.
Meanwhile the USA in Afghanistan and Iraq have left behind them their own "Killing Fields" in which both nations were invaded and then made into free fire zones .The Obama administration like the Bush administration is out to expand America's Imperial reach and merely tries to cover-up its real agenda by appealing calls for reform and humanitarian aid and the spreading of democratic principles , Again looking at America's track record over the past ten years America has ousted international agreements in favor of unilaterialism. This unilaterialism is at times given a veneer of legality and morality while America continues to comits war crimes and crimes against humanity believing as Bush did that all that matters is using superior force to reshape the world according to American interests.
The New Great Game continues as US makes back room deals with the Sharia loving mysogynist Saudis to allow the Saudi military to attack popular uprising in Bahrain in exchange for Saudi backing of US military intervention in Libya.
For all their talk about democracy Obama, Gates and Hillary Clinton are against any protest or popular uprising for democratic reform in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain.
Of course we can add other nations to the list of countries in which the US does not support such calls for reforms such as Syria, jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Algeria , Egypt, Yemen and so on .
To be completely cynical one could add Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, Maine and so on.
But what can one expect by the wealthy and political elites in America.
Hillary Clinton being a champion of Wal-Mart is not overall in favor of workers rights as opposed to the rights of corporations .
US-Saudi Deal on Libya Exposed: Obama OK'ed Bahrain Invasion in Exchange for 'Yes' Vote on "No-Fly Zone"
First there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution. by Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, via Alternet.org, April 1, 2011
You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes" vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.
The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."
As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to "seduce" three other members to get the vote.
Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.
Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.
Profiteers rejoice
Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.
Whatever they say won't alter the facts on the ground - the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There's no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League's Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya - even the water. And we're not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.
Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that's just a "kinetic military action".
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Robert Naiman argues that it is not in his view right to keep the war raging in Libya and allow for the deaths of thousands just so one at the end of the day can take the moral high ground and insist Qaddafi be tried for War Crimes at La Hague.
It's very much like the deal Saddam tried to make before the 2003 invasion in which he said he and his family would go into exile for some large sum of money which could have been negotiated and the USA and other nations could then help with the transitional Regime Change but Bush and the gang wanted to annex Iraq to its Empire and were unconcerned about the deaths of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Qaddafi has a right to be fearful since once incarcerated he might be abused and tortured and then put before a Kangaroo Court and treated without any respect that is as a human being instead the trial would be a farce at the end of which his enemies would attend the execution as if it were a mere sideshow as was notoriously done to Saddam by the US government and its puppet regime in Iraq.
By doing so the US including Bush and co. showed their lack of respect for the rule of law.
Over and over again they had for the sake of convenience tossed out the rule of law as being as they said "QUAINT"
But this was not surprising since we know when Bush was governor of Texas whenever an execution took place he threw a party - he and his GOP buddies seemed to get a kick out these executions
as we know later he and Cheney and Rumsfeld got their kicks out listening on the phone or watching on video the torture sessions of accused terrorists-Torquemada would have been proud.
"How Many Should Die to Send Qaddafi to the Hague?" by Robert Naiman,CommonDreams.org ,April 1,2011
Here is a question I would like pollsters to ask American voters about the Libya War:
Is sending Qaddafi to the International Criminal Court a military objective worth having American troops "fight and possibly die" for?
I haven't seen any pollster ask this question. Indeed, the fact that sending Qaddafi to the Hague is a de facto military goal of the United States in Libya isn't even being clearly acknowledged yet in the U.S. media.
However, we can make an educated guess what he response might be, because a Quinnipiac University poll recently asked some questions that are closely related.
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David Bromwich in his article argues that Obama has made many promises and yet does not follow through because he seems to be under the impression that once he speaks about taking action in his mind this means the action was taken but if it failed he ignore the fact or blames others.
For instance these days he spends more time criticizing his own supporters especially progressives while at the same time compromising with the GOP, the vested interests, Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Pharmacy and the Health Insurance Industry and the wealthy elite and the Pentagon/Military/National Security complex and the the Ideologically bankrupt Neo-Liberals who are as fanatical over the amoral free-Market place UberCapitalism which is dismissive of the lower classes except at election time when they might promise them the moon.
The CIA, the Libyan Rebellion, and the President by David Bromwich, Huff Post,April 1, 2011
One of Barack Obama's first acts as president was to say that Guantanamo must go. It did not go. Soon after, he said that the Israeli settlements must go. They expanded. Obama made his peace in the end with Guantanamo and the Israeli settlements. He restarted the military tribunals at Guantanamo -- a feature of the Bush-Cheney constitution which he once had explicitly deplored -- and recently went out of his way to defend the Guantanamo-like abuse (compulsory nakedness and sleep deprivation) inflicted on an American prisoner, Bradley Manning, in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico. One had come to think of "X must go" assertions by Obama as speculative prefaces to a non-existent work. His words, in his mind, are actions. When he speaks them once or twice, he has done what he was put here to do. If the existing powers defy his wishes, he embraces the powers and continues on his way.
The Egyptian protest of January and February saw a new siege of wishful commandments and reversals by the president. He told Mubarak to go. Then he told him to stay a while. Mubarak said he would stay, but after a time, he went, and in the mind of Obama, it appears, there was a relation of cause and effect between his initial request and the final result. He was consequently emboldened.
He said that Muammar Gaddafi must go. Gaddafi stayed. When the protest that gathered against Gaddafi would not disperse, the dictator shot at the protesters; and when some of them turned to armed rebellion, he went to war against the rebels. Obama for his part seemed ready to retire from an unpromising scene. His dryly prudent secretary of defense encouraged him to do so.
...Not only is it the case that many in the rebel party fought to kill Americans in Iraq; that Al Qaeda has backed the rebellion; and that even the supreme commander of NATO forces, Admiral Stavridis, has lately been disturbed by "flickers" of an Al Qaeda force within the rebellion.
Those reports alone were sufficiently alarming, and they were confirmed by an omission in Monday's speech, when the president declined to say a word about the identity of the rebel army to which he gave his support. Even then, one might have thought as well-behaved people are taught to think: what does any of us really know? But the Mazzetti-Schmitt story shows beyond any doubt that the Libya adventure from the start was a toxic brew; a commitment to be understood not in the light of the Egyptian protest but of the American activities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.
According to Mazzetti and Schmitt, the CIA and its British equivalent MI6 scoured Libya as far back as 2003, initially in the effort to persuade Muammar Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program. When that effort succeeded, the intelligence operatives went away, or so Mazzetti and Schmitt suggest. When the February protests began and a crackdown followed, the CIA and MI6 went back into Libya and picked up the old connections. What are they doing now on the ground? Arranging targets for air strikes with the help of U-2 spy planes and a Global Hawk drone. Also learning of and creating links between the rebel groups to facilitate enhanced advisory work at a later date. In short, doing everything but fight, it would seem; but Mazzetti and Schmitt add that "dozens" of British special forces accompany the operatives from the CIA and MI6. What do special forces do?
Yet one thing is clear, thanks to Mazzetti and Schmitt. "Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the CIA to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels." It is said that the arms have not yet been sent; but the timing is interesting. The order was signed just about the moment that President Obama was lauding the triumph of non-violence in Egypt. The Times reporters wisely let the serial flat reiterations of "no comment" from leading officials speak for themselves.
The upshot is this. An event that we Americans were led to believe was an autonomous rising on the model of Egypt turns out to have been deeply compromised from the start, and compromised by American meddling. And the president himself, far from having been balked in mid-decision because he is a man of skeptical and hesitant mind, took a long time to decide because he was face to face with a moment such as John Kennedy recognized at the brink of the Bay of Pigs invasion, whose 50th anniversary the U.S. will mark on April 17. After three days of ill-fated support for the anti-Castro rebels, President Kennedy drew back from that disaster. Eventually, he made a public apology to the country.
All the external parties are in Libya for different reasons. Things could not have gotten this far without the CIA. But the president was also heeding pressure from Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron; and what those European leaders wanted was an assured supply of oil for Europe. Italy, meanwhile, is fearful of an influx of refugees. All these things President Obama knew, but he was careful to mention none when he spoke to the nation on Monday. He opened and closed with a salute to American troops. He uttered -- in a truculent manner that was new to him -- a stream of wishful words about American support for freedom everywhere.
and so it goes,
GORD.
