Western nutjobs destroyed Libya - another of their wrecks. Here are the results

[BADecker]

Gaddafi was a bad guy. But he DID bring a certain amount of tranquility to Libya. Libyan rebels killed him. Not Western nutjobs.

[galdur]

Peter Sutherland: Unlimited immigration into Europe from Africa is a benefit

I was wondering who is this Peter Sutherland guy.... then I noticed this:

Peter Sutherland chairman of Goldman Sachs International

No need to read the rest of the article. I know exactly what are his intentions and what was he trying to imply there. Goldman Sucks.... the cancer of the world.

Yep, those nutbags get their marching orders from their corporate owners obviously - as always. So, it´s policy and most policy is made by people that nobody voted for in any "elections" and then rubber stamped by the corporate assets. You know the drill I´m sure.

[bryant.coleman]

Libyan rebels killed him. Not Western nutjobs.

Wow... really nice way to escape from the responsibility. The rebel factions were instigated, supported, and armed by the NATO. Without the NATO airstrikes, these rebel factions would have been wiped out by the Libyan army. Rebels were just a smoke screen. It was the NATO which killed Muammar Gaddafi.

[BADecker]

Nice way to get around the fact that it was Gaddafi's own people who wanted him gone. The infusion of funds by the banks was simply made legal by the Western governments saying he was bad. So it was the banks who loaned the rebels the money. But it was the rebels that did the job.

[galdur]

Tony Blair’s US trip to 'broker' £1bn Libya terror deal that left British families with nothing

By Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter 9:12PM BST 24 Oct 2015

Tony Blair has ignored a deadline to explain to MPs his alleged role in a deal that deprived British victims of Libyan terrorism millions of pounds in compensation

Tony Blair made a secret trip to the White House to broker a deal on behalf of Muammar Gaddafi that deprived British victims of Libyan terrorism of millions of pounds in compensation.
Mr Blair acted as a go-between in negotiations between Gaddafi and President George Bush over payments to terror victims, according to a senior source.
“You will find that Mr Blair called on Mr Bush in Washington in February 2008. I do know there was a meeting between Mr Blair and Mr Bush subsequent to one of Mr Blair’s visits to Libya"
Source close to terror deal
The disclosure came as Mr Blair ignored a deadline to explain his role to a parliamentary committee investigating the deal.
Mr Blair was invited to respond by Friday October 23 but instead sent a letter at 6pm on the day of the deadline, asking when the deadline was.


The deal between the US and Libya led to American victims receiving about £1 billion while British victims were left out of the agreement, including hundreds of victims of IRA terrorism, who were killed or maimed using plastic explosives supplied by Libya.
The source said that Mr Blair travelled to Washington to intervene on behalf of Gaddafi in February 2008, after first meeting the dictator in Libya.
The new evidence suggests Mr Blair, who had quit as prime minister less than a year earlier, had played an important role in negotiations between Bush and Gaddafi.



At the time, Libya was being sued through the US courts for committing terror atrocities and billions of pounds of Gaddafi’s assets were at risk of being frozen as part of the law suits.
The deal struck by Bush and Gaddafi led to US victims receiving £1 billion out of a compensation fund but in exchange all court cases were dropped under an act of Congress.
But British victims, who had brought cases in the US, including almost 200 families of IRA terrorist attacks, were not included in the deal. It meant that, for example, the relatives of an American citizen killed in the bombing of Harrods in 1983 received about £5 million while British victims, including the families of four police officers killed in the attack, were left without a penny.
The source said: “You will find that Mr Blair called on Mr Bush in Washington in February 2008. I do know there was a meeting between Mr Blair and Mr Bush subsequent to one of Mr Blair’s visits to Libya.
“There was no deliberate plan to exclude Britons from the deal but that was a consequence. It was certainly the effect. The Libyans had taken fright at the number of court judgments and that led to the negotiations and the setting up of the US compensation fund. It’s regrettable that the US didn’t allow British citizens to make a claim on the fund.”
In a letter dated February 27 2008, Mr Blair wrote to Gaddafi following his visit to Tripoli and then on to Washington. In the letter, which was discovered after Gaddafi was overthrown but whose significance can now be disclosed, Mr Blair wrote: “Dear Muammar” and concluded: “I also raised some of our conversation with president Bush and would be very happy to let you know how those talks went, With my best wishes, yours ever Tony.”
"On USA/Libya, TB should explain what he said to President Bush ... to keep his promise to Col Q [Gaddafi] to intervene after the President allowed US courts to attach Libyan assets"
Sir Vincent Fean in email to Mr Blair's office
The source has made it clear that those talks included discussions about compensation.
A month before Mr Blair met Bush, in January 2008, the US Congress had passed a new law allowing victims of state-sponsored terrorism to collect court-awarded damages by either seizing the terror state’s assets or taking money from companies doing business with them.
Gaddafi was so concerned about this - not least it would jeopardise oil and gas deals with US companies - that he appears to have enlisted Mr Blair’s help.
Mr Blair’s involvement is currently the subject of a parliamentary inquiry by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. Concern over Mr Blair’s role was prompted by an email obtained by The Sunday Telegraph which was written by Sir Vincent Fean, the then British ambassador to Libya, to Mr Blair’s office in June 2008.
In the email, sent ahead of another visit to Tripoli by Mr Blair, Sir Vincent wrote: “On USA/Libya, TB should explain what he said to President Bush ... to keep his promise to Col Q [Gaddafi] to intervene after the President allowed US courts to attach Libyan assets.
“He [Blair] could express satisfaction at the progress made in talks between the US and Libya to reach a Govt to Govt solution to all the legal/compensation issues outstanding from the 1980s.”
Laurence Robertson, the committee’s chairman, wrote to Mr Blair asking for a written explanation by October 23.
Mr Blair then set a letter back on October 23, saying he would like to respond and asking for a ‘timeframe for its submission’.
A committee source said: “It is school boyish of Mr Blair in the deliberate misreading of the the letter.”



The committee will want to know why Mr Blair ‘intervened’ on behalf of Gaddafi. The former prime minister is thought to have visited Libya at least six times after leaving Downing St in 2007 as he tried to build up his business and philanthropic interests. Mr Blair has since built up a fortune estimated at £60 million, based on a consultancy business that includes advising foreign governments.
Mr Blair is understood to have attempted to put together a number of deals during his trips to Libya.
Kate Hoey, a Labour MP and committee member, said: “The more we hear from witnesses, the more Tony Blair’s name crops up. It is extremely likely our committee will wish to interview him and see him in person.”
Mr Blair has always insisted he had “nothing whatever to do with any compensation legislation signed by President Bush”.
However, Jason McCue, of McCue & Partners, the law firm that represented almost 200 British victims and their families in a law suit in the US, questioned Mr Blair’s role.
Mr McCue said: “If Mr Blair met President Bush as early as February 2008, this should have given the British Government ample time to ensure that the UK victims’ claims were included.
“Did Mr Blair advise the Government what he was doing? This vital query makes it all the more necessary for Mr Blair to give full account to the Committee of his involvement and what actually went on.”
Mr Blair’s spokeswoman said: “Mr Blair did not have any involvement with the terms of compensation, nor any discussion with President Bush on the matter. The email you reference merely expresses government policy at the time which was to re-engage with the Libyans after they gave up their WMD programme and chose to co-operate rather than sponsor terrorism.”
Sir Vincent has told the inquiry that he knew of three occasions on which Mr Blair had visited Tripoli during his stint as ambassador. Sir Vincent confirmed details of the email in which he also discussed British arms deals with Libya.
Sir Vincent, who has since retired, told MPs the US decision to exclude British victims from the compensation fund was “sad and negative” and said he was not party to the decision taken in Washington.
“The United States had a large amount of influence at the time and indeed now, and joining with them would have increased the chances of success,” he said. “But the United States for reasons I do not fully understand did not wish to associate the UK victims with the US victims.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11953214/Tony-Blairs-US-trip-to-broker-1bn-Libya-terror-deal-that-left-British-families-with-nothing.html

[bryant.coleman]

Nice way to get around the fact that it was Gaddafi's own people who wanted him gone. The infusion of funds by the banks was simply made legal by the Western governments saying he was bad. So it was the banks who loaned the rebels the money. But it was the rebels that did the job.

Bullshit. Do you have any proof to support your claims? At least a slightly reliable opinion poll which claims to show that the Libyans hated Gaddafi? Also, if the Americans are so keen to "bring democracy" to the countries which are under dictatorships, then why don't they do it in nations such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait? Why don't you arm the rebel and pro-democracy groups in Saudi Arabia?

[galdur]

TRUMP: WORLD WOULD BE 100 PERCENT BETTER WITH HUSSEIN, GADHAFI IN POWER

by TRENT BAKER 25 Oct 2015

GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper on the Sunday broadcast of “State of the Union” that the world would be “100 percent” better if former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and former Libya prime minister Moammar Gadhafi were still in power today.

“People are getting their heads chopped off,” Trump explained. “They’re being drowned in cages. Right now it’s far worse than ever under Saddam Hussein or Gadhafi.”

“Iraq used to be no terrorists,” he continued. “Now it’s the Harvard of terrorism. If you look at Iraq from years ago — I’m not saying [Hussein] was a nice guy — he was a horrible guy, but it was a lot better than it is right now. Right now Iraq is a training ground for terrorists.”

Trump also added that there is no longer Iraq or Libya, saying they are “all broken up,” and they “have no control.”

He went on to explain his position to Tapper, but made sure that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad wasn’t included among Hussein and Gadhafi.

Exchange as follows:

TAPPER: The world would be better off with Saddam Hussein…

TRUMP: A hundred percent.

TAPPER: … and Gadhafi in power?

TRUMP: A hundred percent.

TAPPER: If they were…

TRUMP: Now, as far as Assad is concerned…

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: What about the human rights abuses and…

TRUMP: Let’s talk — well, you don’t think they’re happening now? They’re worse now than they ever were. People are getting their heads chopped off. They’re being drowned. They’re — right now, they are far worse than they were ever under Saddam Hussein or Gadhafi.

I mean, look what happened. Libya is a catastrophe. You look at our ambassador, as an example, OK? Libya is a disaster. Iraq is a disaster. Syria is a disaster, the whole Middle East. And it all blew up around Hillary Clinton and around Barack Obama. It all blew up.

Now, one thing about Assad, not a good guy. I understand that, but we’re backing and spending billions and billions of dollars on backing rebels that we have no idea who they are. And a lot of people think they’re ISIS. I happen to think they’re ISIS, but who knows?

But we’re spending billions of dollars to get Assad out with people that we have no idea who they are. I don’t think that is smart. We have to rebuild our country. Our country is falling to pieces. We have $19 trillion in debt. We have infrastructure that is a disaster, our roadways, our airports, our schools, everything.

We have to start thinking about ourselves. We are pouring trillions of dollars into the Middle East, and we have nothing for it. We have nothing.

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/10/25/trump-world-would-be-100-percent-better-with-hussein-gadhafi-in-power/

[galdur]

Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya

In his new book, Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra offers a thorough analysis of how a disastrous foreign policy led to Libya becoming a failed state on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Now serving as the Shillman Senior Fellow with the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Hoekstra details how America’s tragic intervention in the North African country turned an island of relative stability into a nexus of radical Islamist terrorist training, ideology, and weapons transfers; sowed the seeds of ISIS in Syria and Iraq; and led to the humanitarian crisis in Europe.
Hoekstra reflects on the truth behind former Secretary of State Clinton’s shifting claims before the House Select Committee on Benghazi and whether a spontaneous anti-Muslim video or well-coordinated al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists were behind the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. facility. Drawing upon insider sources and a depth of experience, Hoekstra offers a penetrating look at how a naïve foreign policy resulted in catastrophe.

http://www.heritage.org/events/2015/11/architects-of-disaster

[kydranel]

i thought muammar guadaffi was dead?

[galdur]

i thought muammar guadaffi was dead?

Why would you ask others whether you thought the guy was dead? Try asking your own dumb head first. 

[galdur]

Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:53am EST Related: WORLD, LIBYA
Heavy fighting in Libya's Benghazi, 16 killed: official
BENGHAZI, LIBYA

At least 16 people have been killed in heavy fighting in the Libyan city of Benghazi between forces allied with the official government and Islamic State fighters, a military commander said on Wednesday.

Benghazi, caught up in fighting for more than a year, is just one front in Libya's multi-sided war involving two competing governments -- an official one in the east and a self-declared one controlling Tripoli -- and the loose coalitions of armed factions backing them.

Battles involving air strikes erupted on Tuesday between Gen. Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) forces, and militants allied with Islamic State, military spokesman Milad Zwei told Reuters.

"Our special forces are making progress and have recaptured the air defense camp between Mash'hash and Sidi Faraj districts. The camp was captured last year by Islamic State," he said.

Haftar declared war on Islamist fighters in Benghazi more than a year ago and he was later named commander in chief for the official government. But his campaign has failed to sweep out militants from the city.

Both sides have alternately held the upper hand in the fighting. Islamic State fighters are also increasingly in the battle, including foreign jihadists.

Four years after former Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi fell in a civil war, Libya still has no national army. The two competing governments have forces loyal to them but these often answer to regional, tribal or local commanders first.

(Reporting by Ayman Al-Warfalli; Writing by Patrick Markey

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/11/us-libya-security-idUSKCN0T010V20151111

[zenitzz]

Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:53am EST Related: WORLD, LIBYA
Heavy fighting in Libya's Benghazi, 16 killed: official
BENGHAZI, LIBYA

At least 16 people have been killed in heavy fighting in the Libyan city of Benghazi between forces allied with the official government and Islamic State fighters, a military commander said on Wednesday.

Benghazi, caught up in fighting for more than a year, is just one front in Libya's multi-sided war involving two competing governments -- an official one in the east and a self-declared one controlling Tripoli -- and the loose coalitions of armed factions backing them.

Battles involving air strikes erupted on Tuesday between Gen. Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) forces, and militants allied with Islamic State, military spokesman Milad Zwei told Reuters.

"Our special forces are making progress and have recaptured the air defense camp between Mash'hash and Sidi Faraj districts. The camp was captured last year by Islamic State," he said.

Haftar declared war on Islamist fighters in Benghazi more than a year ago and he was later named commander in chief for the official government. But his campaign has failed to sweep out militants from the city.

Both sides have alternately held the upper hand in the fighting. Islamic State fighters are also increasingly in the battle, including foreign jihadists.

Four years after former Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi fell in a civil war, Libya still has no national army. The two competing governments have forces loyal to them but these often answer to regional, tribal or local commanders first.

(Reporting by Ayman Al-Warfalli; Writing by Patrick Markey

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/11/us-libya-security-idUSKCN0T010V20151111

The GOP supporters of America have collected how much money for Benghazi in donations? Surely Benghazi is on the top of their list to save.

[galdur]

First nutcases authorize themselves to destroy this country now the same nutjobs urge parties to endorse, sign deal for unity government on the ruins. Typical.

----------------------------------------------

7 November 2015 – Concerned over Libya's ongoing political, security and institutional crises and the rising threat of terrorism, the United Nations Security Council today urged all Libyan stakeholders to endorse and sign the recent UN-facilitated political deal and to move swiftly towards forming a Government of National Accord.

“The Political Agreement for the Government of National Accord finalized by the Libyan parties in October offers a real prospect for resolving the situation,” said the members of the Council in a statement issued earlier this afternoon, in which they also noted that the agreement had been reached after comprehensive and broad consultations within the framework of the Libyan-led and Libyan-owned dialogue process facilitated by the UN.

Welcoming expressions of support by the Libyan parties plus a wide range of Libyan groups for the agreement and for the formation of a Government of National Accord, the Security Council urged all Libyan dialogue participants to endorse and sign the Political Agreement.

The Council called on all Libyan stakeholders to work swiftly towards the formation of a unity government “which will work for the benefit of all Libyans,” and expressed support for an inclusive process “that listens to and integrates Libyans from all communities and all parts of the country.”

The members of the Security Council encouraged the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) to advance relevant efforts for co-ordination of international assistance to the future Government of National Accord.

Expressing concern about activities which could damage the integrity and unity of the Libyan State financial institutions and the National Oil Company, the Council also highlighted the importance of these institutions continuing to function for the benefit of all Libyans. blah blah and bleh

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=52489#.VkOuuXbhDUI

[galdur]

U.S. officials: Chief of Islamic State in Libya thought to be killed in airstrike

A U.S. airstrike is believed to have killed the leader of the Islamic State affiliate in Libya, Pentagon officials said Saturday, in a mission that did not appear to be related to the terror attacks claimed by the group in Paris.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the strike took place on Friday and targeted Wisam al Zubaidi, also known as Abu Nabil al-Anbari, who commands what is the Islamic State’s strongest branch outside of Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The former Iraqi police officer was dispatched to Libya in 2014 by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to build up the group’s affiliate there.

Before going to Libya, Zubaidi was a senior Islamic State operative in Iraq. Like Baghdadi, he spent time in a U.S. prison in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In a statement, Cook said that Zubaidi may have been the spokesman in a gruesome video that showed the killing of 21 Egyptian Christians on a beach in Libya this year.

Defense officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation, said the attack involved two U.S. F-15 aircraft that struck a small compound outside of Derna, a militant stronghold in eastern Libya. Several other people were in the same building at the time of the strike, officials said. .....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-officials-leader-of-islamic-state-in-libya-believed-killed-in-us-airstrike/2015/11/14/b42cb714-8af0-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html

[galdur]

The United Arab Emirates shipped weapons to its allies in Libya in violation of a UN resolution and with the apparent knowledge of the US government, according to leaked Emirati emails shared with the New York Times this week. -

See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/leaks-show-uae-shipped-weapons-libya-violated-un-resolution-1712843977#sthash.uxmGSzug.dpuf

Another news story called them "favored belligerents". Wonder if that´s code for ISIS. Obviously it can´t be mentioned in polite company that such great friends and weapons buyers of U.S.. Britain and France as Emirates and Saudi Arabia and other dictatorships there at the Gulf are funding and supporting the bogeyman.

[Nemo1024]

The West is so hell-bent on the "Assad is a bad guy" narrative... Did anyone in the West interview Assad, get his point of view. Or is asking the opinion of the other party undemocratic?

Here is an interesting article in a trustworthy Russian publication "Arguments and Facts" (they've been around for several decades and provide platform for all oponion as proper free press should, a concept, forgotten by the Western press), an interview with Asma, Assad's wife:

http://www.aif.ru/politics/world/plecho_asada

"Assad's shoulder. For what Syrians love their First Lady"



A few quotes:

When in 2013 the terrorists stormed the Headquarters, which are next to the presidential home, the international media were quick to report that "Damascus has fallen." Exploding shells could be heard from the house of the president, the eldest son is a student, and decided that he will not do to classes because of this. And was surprised when his mother started to collect his books: "Do you not love me? There's shooting there! I can get killed! "-" You will go to school just because I love you. I do not want for my son to grow up as a coward, you have to be educated, and not like the ones that are trying to destroy us."

Syria, which before the war was called the Eastern Fairytale, famous for the fact that there coexist more than 20 confessions. The history of this land goes back thousands of years.

In that Syria is almost like Russian Federation, where about 200 nationalities, speaking almost as many languages and belonging to a dozen confessions live together.

When Sergei Stepashin, the head of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS) visited Syria last year, Bashar Assad asked him to convey to President Vladimir Putin, that he is not Yanukovych. "I will not run. I'll stay until the end, "- said Assad, noting that if the Russian language in Ukraine is excluded from the school curriculum, in Syria, Russian is a compulsory subject. And the eldest son of President, Hafez, can already speak a little Russian. "At a meeting with the first lady we met with Hafez - says Milla Zhukovsky. - The eldest son of the president is named in honour of his grandfather, father of Bashar al-Assad. We had prepared a special gift for the teen - models of Russian fighter jets, which his grandfather piloted. The young man immediately determined that it is "MiG" and said in Russian: "Great!"



The first lady herself speaks English, French and Spanish. She was born in London, where her mother worked in the Syrian embassy, and his father was a cardiologist. During the holidays the parents came home, where as a child she met with Bashar al-Assad, who is 10 years her senior. Then she admitted: "Children's friendship grew into love."

In 2000, Bashar Assad became president of Syria, and soon the pair played the wedding. The family of the President has many children, the couple raising two sons and a daughter.

"Desert Rose", so translates the name of wife of President Assad - has become an example of resistance to the Syrians. All the years of the war, she did not leave the tormented Syria ready to share the fate of her people.

[galdur]

Yeah, unfortunately he and other western nutjobs that destroyed Lybia are a little late in figuring this out.

----------------------------------------------------------

PARIS - Lybia´s main armed factions will be committing suicide unless they stop fighting each other and take on Islamic State's growing presence in the North African country, France's defense minister said on Sunday.

Islamic State militants have tightened their grip on central Libya and carried out summary executions, beheadings and amputations, the United Nations said last week, in a further illustration of the country's descent into anarchy.

"Libya preoccupies me very much," French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Europe 1 radio, nine days after Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris.

Libya has slipped deeper into chaos with two rival governments, each backed by a multitude of armed factions, which has allowed Islamic State jihadists to gain a foothold. They also control larger areas of Iraq and Syria.

"Daesh (Islamic State) is in Libya because it can exploit the internal rivalries ... If we reunite these forces, Daesh will cease to exist," Le Drian said.

Le Drian called for a international summit bringing together neighboring countries as soon as possible to get some kind of political agreement in Libya.

http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Libyans-need-to-fight-Islamic-State-not-each-other-French-defense-minister-says-434931

[galdur]

Why France Was So Keen to Attack Libya

by Soeren Kern

March 23, 2011 at 5:00 am

Even before allied forces unleashed a "shock and awe" barrage of cruise missile attacks against Libya on March 19, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was quick to take the credit, saying France had "decided to assume its role, its role before history" in stopping strongman Muammar Gaddafi's "killing spree" against people whose only crime was to seek to "liberate themselves from servitude."

Sarkozy's newfound concern for Libyan democracy contrasts sharply from only three years ago, when Sarkozy welcomed Gaddafi with open arms during an extravagant five-day state visit to France. On that occasion in December 2007, Gaddafi breezed into Paris in his Bedouin robes, accompanied by an entourage of 400 servants, five airplanes, a camel and 30 female virgin bodyguards, and then proceeded to pitch his heated tent on the grounds of the palatial Hôtel de Marigny, just across the street from the Elysée Palace.

At the time, Sarkozy ridiculed critics of Gaddafi's visit by saying: "It is rather beautiful the principle that consists in not getting yourself wet, not taking risks, being so certain of everything you think while you're having your latte on the Boulevard Saint-Germain." He also asked: "If we don't welcome countries that are starting to take the path of respectability, what can we say to those that leave that path?" Meanwhile, Sarkozy's chief diplomatic advisor, Jean-David Levitte, insisted that Libya had a "right to redemption."

Nor did Sarkozy express much support for the recent uprisings in the Arab world, which deposed long-time friends of Paris, including Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

In the case of Tunisia, Sarkozy reluctantly fired his loyal foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, after it emerged that she borrowed a private jet from a Tunisian businessman linked to Ben Ali in order to work on her suntan in the Tunisian seaside town of Tabarka during the height of the political upheaval in Tunisia. According to the French newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, Alliot-Marie also offered Ben Ali the "know how" of France's security forces to help him quash the fighting in Tunisia just three days before he was removed from office.

In Egypt, it emerged that French Prime Minister François Fillon and his family had accepted a free holiday from Mubarak, complete with a private plane and Nile River boat, just weeks before the Egyptian president was removed from office. Facing accusations that France cozies up to dictators, Sarkozy said that in the future, his government ministers should take their holidays in France.

So what explains Sarkozy's about-face vis-à-vis Libya? His sudden support for the anti-Gaddafi rebels can be attributed to two main factors: opinion polls and the closely related issue of Muslim immigration.

Sarkozy's sudden zeal for the cause of democracy in Libya comes as his popularity is at record lows just thirteen months before the first round of the 2012 presidential election. With polls showing that Sarkozy is the least popular president since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, he is betting that French voters will appreciate his efforts in Libya to place France at the center of the world stage and reinforce what Charles de Gaulle once famously called "a certain idea of France" as a nation of exceptional destiny.

Further, Sarkozy's main rival is not Gaddafi, but rather Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new leader of the far-right National Front party in France. A new opinion poll published by Le Parisien newspaper on March 8 has Le Pen, who took over from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in January, winning the first round of next year's presidential election.

The survey gives Le Pen 23%, two percentage points ahead of both Sarkozy and Socialist leader Martine Aubry. On the basis of this opinion poll, Le Pen would automatically qualify for the second round run-off with one or other of the two mainstream party leaders.

Le Pen, who appeals to middle class voters, is riding high on voter dissatisfaction with the failure of the mainstream parties to address the problem of Muslim immigration. Since taking her post three months ago, Le Pen has single-handedly catapulted the twin issues of Muslim immigration and French national identity to the top of the French political agenda. In recent weeks, Le Pen has been a permanent fixture on prime-time television to discuss the threat to France of a wave of immigrants from Libya.

Gaddafi has already pledged that Europe will be "invaded" by an army of African immigrants: "You will have immigration. Thousands of people from Libya will invade Europe. There will be no-one to stop them any more," he warned on March 6 in an interview with the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

During a visit to Italy in August 2010, Gaddafi demanded €5 billion a year from the European Union to stop illegal immigration which "threatens to turn Europe black." At the time, Gaddafi asked: "What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans? We don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion. We have to imagine that this could happen, but before it does we need to work together."

Furious Europeans have compared Gaddafi's demands for cash to stop illegal immigration to a "Mafia extortion racket." But since the revolt in Tunisia in January, nearly 15,000 boat people (more than the total for all of 2010) have arrived on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, a 20-square-kilometer island that traditionally has been a major gateway for illegal immigration into the European Union.

On March 14, Le Pen upstaged Sarkozy by visiting Lampedusa and telling undocumented migrants on the island that they were not welcome in Europe. "I have a lot of compassion for you, but Europe cannot welcome you," Le Pen said. "We do not have the financial means."

On March 2, the French minister for European affairs, Laurent Wauquiez, warned that up to 300,000 illegal immigrants could arrive in the European Union from North Africa during 2011. The influx of immigrants from Libya is a "real risk for Europe that must not be underestimated," he said.

Threatened by Le Pen's rising popularity, and in urgent need of a political boost, Sarkozy is now using the Libya intervention both to play the role of the respected statesman on the international stage and to address French concerns over mass immigration from North Africa.

During a March 21 interview with France 24, however, Le Pen dismissed Sarkozy as "a French president who is no longer running anything, who is governing on impulse or emotion, depending on the circumstances."

As an angry Gaddafi threatens to turn the "entire Mediterranean into a battlefield," it remains to be seen whether Sarkozy's gamble in Libya will pay off. With the French economy stalled, and unemployment stuck at 9.6%, any political bounce for Sarkozy is likely to ebb the longer the military campaign against Gaddafi lasts.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1983/france-libya-attack

[galdur]

I don´t know, maybe they should have listened to the man....This was written in 2011, the rest is history. I guess 5 billion euros is pocket change compared to the costs they face now. The nutjobs doubled down in Syria and then some.

-----------------------------------------------------

During a visit to Italy in August 2010, Gaddafi demanded €5 billion a year from the European Union to stop illegal immigration which "threatens to turn Europe black." At the time, Gaddafi asked: "What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans? We don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion. We have to imagine that this could happen, but before it does we need to work together."

Furious Europeans have compared Gaddafi's demands for cash to stop illegal immigration to a "Mafia extortion racket." But since the revolt in Tunisia in January, nearly 15,000 boat people (more than the total for all of 2010) have arrived on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, a 20-square-kilometer island that traditionally has been a major gateway for illegal immigration into the European Union.

[galdur]

MAR 29, 2011 @ 02:01 PM

France, U.K. Have Differing Motives For Intervening In Libya

This is the second installment in a multi-part series examining the motives and mindset behind current European intervention in Libya. To access the entire series, click here.

France and the United Kingdom have led the charge on the intervention in Libya. For a month, both pushed the international community toward an intervention, ultimately penning U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 authorizing the no-fly zone on March 17.

Paris’ and London’s interests in waging war on Libya are not the same, and Libya carries different weight with each. For the United Kingdom, Libya offers a promise of energy exploitation. It is not a country with which London has a strong client-patron relationship at the moment, but one could develop if Moammar Gadhafi were removed from power. For France, Tripoli already is a significant energy exporter and arms customer. Paris’ interest in intervening is also about intra-European politics.
France
Paris has been the most vociferous supporter of the Libya intervention. French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it his mission to gather an international coalition to wage war on Libya, and France has been at the vanguard of recognizing the legitimacy of the Benghazi-based rebels.

French interests in the Libya intervention fall into two categories: domestic politics and intra-European relations.



The domestic political story is fairly straightforward. At the onset of the unrest in the Middle East, Paris stalled on recognizing the protesters as legitimate. In fact, then-French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie offered the Tunisian government official help in dealing with the protesters. Three days later, longtime Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country. It was revealed later that Alliot-Marie spent her Christmas vacation in Tunisia; during the trip, she used the private jet of a businessman close to the Ben Ali regime, and her parents were negotiating a business deal with the same businessman. Needless to say, the whole episode was highly embarrassing for Paris both internationally and domestically, and Sarkozy was essentially forced to fire Alliot-Marie and replace her with the veteran Alain Juppe. Additionally, Paris has its own Muslim population to consider, including a sizable Tunisian minority — though nowhere near as large as its Algerian minority — of around 600,000 people. This audience had a particularly negative reaction to Paris’ handling of the revolution in Tunisia.

The French intervention is more than just overcompensation for an initially disastrous handling of what Europe now perceives as a groundswell of agitation for democracy in the Arab world. Rather, Sarkozy has a history of using aggressive foreign relation moves to gain or maintain popularity at home. In August 2008, for example, he attempted and succeeded in negotiating a Russo-Georgian cease-fire without being invited to be a peacemaker. After the September 2008 financial crash, he called for a new “Bretton Woods.” While to the rest of the world “Super Sarko” seems impulsive and perhaps even arrogant, at home these moves boost his popularity, at least among his existing supporters. Sarkozy could use such a boost, as the French presidential election is barely more than a year away and he is trailing not just the likely Socialist candidate, but also far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. His supporters are beginning to gravitate toward Le Pen, who has worked hard to smooth over her father’s hard-right image. This could prompt Sarkozy’s party to choose a different candidate before it is too late, particularly as his own prime minister, Francois Fillon, gains ground.

There is more at play for France than just domestic politics, however. France also is reasserting its role as the most militarily capable European power. This has become particularly important because of developments in the European Union over the past 12 months. Ever since the eurozone sovereign debt crisis began in December 2009 with the Greek economic imbroglio, Germany has sought to use the power of its purse to reshape EU institutions to its own liking. These are the same institutions France painstakingly designed throughout and immediately after the Cold War. They were intended to magnify French political power in Europe and later offer Berlin incentives that would lock united Germany into Europe in a way that also benefited Paris.

Germany has worked to keep France appraised of the reforms every step of the way, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel huddling with Sarkozy before every major decision. However, this has not concealed the reality that Paris has had to take a backseat and accept most of Germany’s decisions as a fait accompli, from the need to pursue severe austerity measures, which caused widespread rioting in France in October 2010, to largely giving Berlin control over the new bailout mechanisms being designed to support lagging eurozone member states. This shift has not gone unnoticed by the French public, and criticism has been leveled against Sarkozy of having been reduced to Merkel’s yes-man.

The intervention in Libya therefore is a way to reassert to Europe, but particularly to Germany, that France still leads the Continent on foreign and military affairs. It is a message that says if Europe intends to be taken seriously as a global power, it will need French military power. France’s close coordination with the United Kingdom also is an attempt to further develop the military alliance between London and Paris formalized on Nov. 2, 2010, as a counter to Germany’s overwhelming economic and political power in the European Union.

In asserting its strength, Paris may cause Berlin to become more assertive in its own right. With the very act of opposing the Franco-British consensus on Libya, Berlin already has shown a level of assertiveness and foreign policy independence not seen in some time. In a sense, France and the United Kingdom are replaying their 19th century roles of colonial European powers looking to project power and protect interests outside the European continent, while Berlin remains landlocked behind the Skagerrak and concentrates on building a Mitteleuropa.

As for interests in Libya, France has plenty, but its situation could be improved. French energy major Total SA is involved in Libya but not to the same extent as Italian ENI or even German Wintershall. Considering Libya’s plentiful and largely unexplored energy reserves, French energy companies could stand to profit from helping rebels take power in Tripoli. But it is really military sales that Paris has benefited from thus far. Between 2004 — when the European Union lifted its arms embargo against Libya — and 2011, Tripoli has purchased approximately half a billion dollars worth of arms from France, more than from any other country in Europe. However, the Italian government was in negotiation for more than a billion dollars worth of more deals in 2010, and it seemed that the Rome-Tripoli relationship was overtaking Paris’ efforts in Libya prior to the intervention.

United Kingdom
London has not been as aggressive about pushing for the Libya intervention as France, but it still has been at the forefront of the coalition. For the United Kingdom, the domestic political component is not as strong as its energy interests.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government initially came under strong criticism for being slow to evacuate British nationals from Libya. Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister and leader of the coalition Liberal Democratic Party, was on a ski vacation in Switzerland when the crisis in Libya began and later told a reporter he “forgot” he was running the country while Cameron was on a trip to the Persian Gulf states. Later, the rebels seized a Special Air Service diplomatic security team, dispatched on a diplomatic mission to establish contact with anti-Gadhafi forces in eastern Libya, because they did not announce their presence in the country.

Therefore, the United Kingdom is motivated to recover leadership of the intervention after an otherwise-bungled first few weeks of the unrest. There is also, as with most of the Western countries, a sense that decades of tolerating and profiting from Arab dictators has come to an end and that the people in the United Kingdom will no longer accept such actions.

London has another significant interest, namely, energy. British energy major BP has no production in Libya, although it agreed with Tripoli to drill onshore and offshore wells under a $1 billion deal signed in 2007. The negotiations on these concessions were drawn out but were finalized after the Scottish government decided to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi on humanitarian grounds in August 2009. He was expected to die of prostate cancer within months of his release but presumably is still alive in Tripoli. The Labour government in power at the time came under heavy criticism for al-Megrahi’s release. British media speculated, not entirely unfairly, that the decision represented an effort to kick-start BP’s production in Libya and smooth relations between London and Tripoli. BP announced in 2009 that it planned to invest $20 billion in Libyan oil production over the next 20 years.

The May 2010 Macondo well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has made BP’s — and London’s — Libya strategy even more urgent. The United States accounted for a quarter of BP’s total hydrocarbon production in 2010. The disaster cost BP $17.7 billion worth of losses in 2010, and the company also has had to set up a $20 billion compensation fund. Estimates of potential further spill-related costs range between $38 billion and $60 billion, making BP’s future in the United States uncertain. The disaster also allowed BP’s competitors to complain about its potential future offshore operations, something Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini stressed, arguing that until the investigation into the Macondo well disaster is completed, BP should refrain from drilling off Libya’s shore in the Mediterranean Sea. The complaint was more than likely an attempt by ENI to complicate BP’s Libya operations by questioning its environmental record in North America.

Ultimately, London could gain the most by the removal of Gadhafi or winning the allegiance of a rebel-controlled government in some kind of semi-independent state in eastern Libya. With no oil production in Libya and arms sales that lag those of France and Italy by a considerable margin, the United Kingdom could substantially benefit from new leadership in Tripoli or even just Benghazi.

Exit Strategies
In sum, the United Kingdom and France have two main points to consider in terms of what would be an appropriate strategy to the current intervention. First, how palatable will it be for their publics if Gadhafi remained in power after the considerable vilification that justified the intervention in the first place? It is true that both Paris and London have in recent days stepped back from arguing that the military intervention is supposed to oust Gadhafi, but that tempered rhetoric may have been forced on them by criticism from within the coalition that they have overstepped the U.N. mandate. British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said March 21 that the direct targeting of Gadhafi by coalition forces was a possibility.

Second, will France and the United Kingdom be satisfied with a solution in which Gadhafi withdraws to the west and rebels take control of the east? The United Kingdom and France could live with that solution because they would still benefit from their patronage of the eastern rebels in both new arms deals and energy deals in the oil-rich east. For Italy, the situation is more complex, as it would be left to deal with an indignant Gadhafi across the Mediterranean.
*This report is reprinted with permission of STRATFOR. It may not be reprinted by any other party without express permission of STRATFOR.

STRATFOR is one of the world’s leading private intelligence companies.  Our intelligence professionals provide a global audience of individuals and organizations with unique insights into political, economic, and military developments around the world.  STRATFOR’s independent and in-depth geopolitical and security analysis enables users to better understand international events and risks.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2011/03/29/france-u-k-have-differing-motives-for-intervening-in-libya/