"Cleaning Up Hillary’s Libyan Mess"---Robert Parry, April1, 2016

[bvar22]

Cleaning Up Hillary’s Libyan Mess

"Hillary Clinton’s signature project as Secretary of State – the “regime change” in Libya – is now sliding from the tragic to the tragicomic as her successors in the Obama administration adopt increasingly desperate strategies for imposing some kind of order on the once-prosperous North African country torn by civil war since Clinton pushed for the overthrow and murder of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The problem that Clinton did much to create has grown more dangerous since Islamic State terrorists have gained a foothold in Sirte and begun their characteristic beheading of “infidels” as well as their plotting for terror attacks in nearby Europe.

<snip>

Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger.

Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations."


(Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.)

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/01/cleaning-up-hillarys-libyan-mess/

Before Hillary "helped" them, Libya was the most advanced, mostly secular country in North Africa. Women had many rights. They could own their own money, own and sell property, own cars, drive cars, run businesses, attend the University, wear blue jeans, dance at clubs, and go where they wanted, but not anymore since Hillary helped the rebelsBlack Flag Terrorists with our Freedom Bombs. The new ruling faction has imposed Sharia Law.
NOW, these Bill Boards have appeared all over Libya dictating how women MUST dress:

” For all his dictatorial megalomania, Gaddafi is a committed pan-African - a fierce defender of African unity. Libya was not in debt to international bankers. It did not borrow cash from the International Monetary Fund for any "structural adjustment". It used oil money for social services - including the Great Man Made River project, and investment/aid to sub-Saharan countries. Its independent central bank was not manipulated by the Western financial system. All in all a very bad example for the developing world.”

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD27Ak01.html

("Pan-African" means African Resources for Africans...NOT Wall Street, the IMF, or Western Banks)

[polly7]

1. +1,000,000. and that billboard is so sad to see. :( nt.

[KoKo]

11. ...!

Can't add more to what you say.

[Autumn]

2. That was a horrible mistake “regime change” never works out well for the people over there

When it comes to her foreign policy ideas this is another huge clusterfuck under her belt

[amborin]

3. she represents reckless regime change; in Libya's case, surely banks were involved, too

[bvar22]

27. Gadaffi had repeatedly blocked the IMF from making predatory "loans"

..to African nations collateralized by their natural resources.
He used his oil money to make interest free loans to the countries in need.

He was also going to produce a gold backed African currency that would compete with the Dollar, especially in the Oil market. The Western Banks couldn't have allowed that.

[amborin]

29. exactly

[CanadaexPat]

4. His point about Syria is a good one.

[Tarc]

5. Khadaffi had zero redeeming qualities

Any situation where he is no longer in charge, Libya is better off than it was before.

This is one of the sickest political attacks the Sanders camp has mustered yet.

[AgerolanAmerican]

6. Are you kidding?

Saddam Hussein had zero redeeming qualities too, so I suppose you're all in favor of us having conducted that war as well?

[Octafish]

7. Gaddafi shared the oil wealth with all Libyans.

Gaddafi used the nation's wealth to help sub-Saharan countries, among the poorest nations in the world.

"Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects."

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/component/acymailing/archive/view/listid-3-alerts-precis/mailid-74-three-little-words-wikileaks-libya-oil.html

Mohammad Gaddafi shared the oil wealth with the Libyan people, not just the one-percent Wall Street types.

For over four decades, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.

-- http://www.globalresearch.ca/libya-from-africas-wealthiest-democracy-under-gaddafi-to-us-nato-sponsored-terrorist-haven/5482974

While little reported in the USA, Libya's former leader also used the wealth to better life throughout the poorest nations of Africa.

''War on Libya is War on Entire Africa.''

In 2010 Gaddafi offered to invest $97 billion in Africa to free it from Western influence, on condition that African states rid themselves of corruption and nepotism. Gaddafi always dreamed of a Developed, United Africa and was about to make that dream come true - and nothing is more terrifying to the West than a Developed, United Africa.
-- http://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/7869956-war-on-libya-is-war-on-entire-africa-

Wall Street-on-the-Potomac prefers to do business with those it can relate to: greedy types who don't like to share.

[KoKo]

12. Facts face Fantasy Propaganda designed to lead us into never ending WAR.

Truth is:

Wall Street-on-the-Potomac prefers to do business with those it can relate to: greedy types who don't like to share.

[Octafish]

25. ''Money trumps peace'' seems to be a Buy Partisan Thing.

Exhibit A. A trained monkey and his captive press corpse:

Exhibit B. The late Harold Pinter on Truth and War in his Noble Prize lecture:

[Tarc]

23. Yes, he bribed many nations while he tortured and killed political opponents at home

While financing terrorism abroad. Great guy you're propping up there.

[Octafish]

24. Nice smear. Telling the truth about him does not make one his proponent.

Meanwhile, America's leaders lied the nation into making war on Iraq twice.



“To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

SOURCE: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/02/the-rise-of-a-democratic-fascism/

[bvar22]

28. Hillary's Freedom Bombs brought more terrorism to that reigon

than 100 Qaddafis could have done, not to mention the destruction of the most modern city in North Africa. The people of Libya, especially women, had more rights in Libya than they do in our ally, Saudi Arabia.

Thanks to our regime change, Libya has been plunged back into Sharia Law, and is being run by people worse than the Taliban. Like Saddam, Qaddafi kept the radical Islamists OUT of Libya. He killed far less Libyans than we did in our bombing, and now Libya is in far worse shape than before Hillary "helped" them. Public beheadings and torture are being carried out in public in today's Libya.

I am not Pro-Qaddafi. I am merely able to connect the dots of the last 60 years of USA interventions in the Middle East. There were no good reasons for bombing the Libyans, or invading Iraq.

[KoKo]

31. Indeed...the Freedom Bombs destroyed the lives of Thousands/Millions

when the final count will ever be revealed.

[polly7]

33. Are you talking of his support for 'terrorist' Mandela? nt.

[Tarc]

34. No, about his support for the Lockerbie bomber

So, when you decide to slam Hillary for the millionth time over Libya, give a thought or two to the Pan Am 103 relatives, if you're old enough to remember that.

[rhett o rick]

9. No one is claiming that Khadaffi had redeeming qualities. But why are we involved in regime change?

The people are not better off and it's sick for you to think that their suffering is nothing.

We need to get out of the regime change game that is intended to push American Exceptionalism at the cost of thousands of lives.

Clinton has been on the wrong side of most of her foreign relation bungles.

[KoKo]

16. When one is tied to Kissinger and Albright for your views...

What Could Go Wrong?

Well ...it means Endless Wars Across the Globe while Thousands Die and the Independent Contractors and Media/Military/Industrial Complex THRIVE!

UNTIL they Bleed Us Dry?

[frylock]

19. Easy to say sitting behind a keyboard.

This must be that 'privilege' that I've been reading so much about lately.

[Zambero]

8. More like NATO's Libyan mess

The U.S. as NATO member signed on, supported by Obama and both parties in Congress, PROVIDED there were no "boots on the ground" as lead-in to another long-term military occupation. And what did we hear from Republicans at the time? "There goes Obama, leading from behind as is always the case". Yes, there were partners aplenty represented by European NATO allies. And Hillary was a proponent. But she had LOTS of company and in any event as SOS was in an advisory capacity and not as a final decision maker.

[amborin]

10. totally false; HRC ignored wise advice from everyone--Gates, Biden, etc. Obama was very reluctant

to get involved in Libya. Bombing Libya was ALL HRC's idea. And she took full credit for it in some of the
released emails.

The NY Times exposed her leading role in bombing Libya:

NY Times Top Story: Hillary Pushed Obama to Bomb Libya, Leaving It A Failed State & ISIS Haven

This is how Hillary pushed Obama---against his better inclination----to bomb Libya. Part of her neocon perspective, and no doubt influenced by Kissinger, her self-proclaimed role model.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

New York Times Feb 28, 2016


Hllary Clinton's Smart Power and A Dictator's Fall


President Obama was deeply wary of another military venture in a Muslim country. Most of his senior advisers were telling him to stay out. Still, he dispatched Mrs. Clinton to sound out Mr. Jibril, a leader of the Libyan opposition. Their late-night meeting on March 14, 2011, would be the first chance for a top American official to get a sense of whom, exactly, the United States was being asked to support.

In her suite at the Westin, she and Mr. Jibril, a political scientist with a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, spoke at length about the fast-moving military situation in Libya. But Mrs. Clinton was clearly also thinking about Iraq, and its hard lessons for American intervention.

The Libya Gamble

An examination of the American intervention in Libya and Hillary Clinton’s role in it.

Did the opposition’s Transitional National Council really represent the whole of a deeply divided country, or just one region? What if Colonel Qaddafi quit, fled or was killed — did they have a plan for what came next?

snip

Mrs. Clinton was won over. Opposition leaders “said all the right things about supporting democracy and inclusivity and building Libyan institutions, providing some hope that we might be able to pull this off,” said Philip H. Gordon, one of her assistant secretaries. “They gave us what we wanted to hear. And you do want to believe.”

Her conviction would be critical in persuading Mr. Obama to join allies in bombing Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

In fact, Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, would later say that in a “51-49” decision, it was Mrs. Clinton’s support that put the ambivalent president over the line.

The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven, a place where the direst answers to Mrs. Clinton’s questions have come to pass.

This is the story of how a woman whose Senate vote for the Iraq war may have doomed her first presidential campaign nonetheless doubled down and pushed for military action in another Muslim country. As she once again seeks the White House, campaigning in part on her experience as the nation’s chief diplomat, an examination of the intervention she championed shows her at what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state


snip

Here's what we have in Libya Today:


What We Know About ISIS in Libya

The self-described Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has long been making a push to capitalize on the chaos in Libya.

For over a year, it has carried out terror attacks, taken over territory and released propaganda from its franchise in Libya. Now, a new assessment from the Pentagon states the number of ISIS fighters in Libya has doubled since the fall to over 5,000, spurring fresh debate among security officials over the possibility of foreign intervention.

Analysts and officials worry that Libya is increasingly becoming a sort of fallback option for ISIS as it loses territory and power in Syria and Iraq.

“If we look at the raw numbers, the presence of ISIS is definitely strengthening and growing. I think the security threat they pose is definitely going up,” Riccardo Fabiani, senior North Africa analyst at political risk research firm Eurasia Group, told The WorldPost.

The threat ISIS presents in Libya is different than in other nations, and is related both to the group's changing capabilities and to the country's ongoing instability


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isis-presence-in-libya_us_56b369e2e4b08069c7a6352f
13

and here is more info on France's involvement:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511490184

[KoKo]

17. Good Links for those just coming into the Thread.

[SidDithers]

13. Parry. LOL...nt

Sid

[amborin]

22. NY Times totally aligns with Parry's account

[Ferd Berfel]

14. Clinton's brilliant Foreign Policy acumen

bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran......

neocon chicken hawks will get us all killed

[ucrdem]

15. Look, we backed up Cameron and Sarkozy who were the main players in Libya. Not us, not Hillary.

Yes it was a disaster. No we shouldn't have let it happen. But it was way out of Hillary and Barack's remit to tell the sadists behind it to keep their mitts off of Libya.

[amborin]

18. not accurate; HRC was the leading proponent of bombing Libya; she either mis-read

the intel, or more likely, chose to interpret it in accord with her wishes; Amnesty International condemned HRC's actions and her putative justification for the bombing.

As for France:

More Very Unsavory Data from Clinton Libya Emails: The objective was LIbya's Billions of Dollars






The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a “victory lap.” “We came, we saw, he died!” she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.

But.....Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, “as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain.”


Hillary totally "misinterpreted" the intelligence on Qaddafi, and went against the advice of Biden, Gates, and many otehr senior State Department officials who had in-depth knowledge of Libya (which she sorely lacked):


US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring. As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, “the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as ‘thousands of detainees languish in prisons without proper judicial review,’ and ‘kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant’.”

Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world’s largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.

But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. ......

.......But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the Libyan war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.

snip

Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton’s private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the attorney who defended her husband in the Monica Lewinsky case. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:


Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver . . . . This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).


In a “source comment,” the original declassified email adds:


According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:

1 A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,

2 Increase French influence in North Africa,

3 Improve his internal political situation in France,

4 Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

5 Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa


http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/14/exposing-the-libyan-agenda-a-closer-look-at-hillarys-emails/


The NY Times Documented How Hillary totally owned the bombing and aftermath of Libya:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511362141

[frylock]

20. They don't want to give credit where credit is due.

Libya is an exhibit of Hillary's FP chops that they're usually all so very proud of.

[amborin]

21. exactly; her foreign policy "experience" is frightening to behold

[FreakinDJ]

26. Hillary's crony Blumenthal was attempting to do business in Libya

She pushed his agenda to oust Gaddafi

[AzDar]

30. She's thoroughly corrupt, her judgement sucks, and she's a LIAR. HOW can anyone support this?

[amborin]

35. +1000000

[panader0]

32. Kick

[amborin]

36. Ny Times: Hillary's Libya = chaos and ISIS Haven

NYTimes: Part Two: Hillary's Libya = Chaos, Destabilzed ME, Fueled Refugee Crisis, ISIS Haven


This is the 2nd Part of the NY Times' In-depth reporting of Hillary's disastrous judgement. She pushed Obama to bomb Libya, against Obama's wishes, and against the advise of all other wise people including Biden and Gates.

Like Bush, Hillary's Mission Accomplished Moment Is Cringe-worthy and Scary.


Hillary's Libya Gamble: A New Libya, With ‘Very Little Time Left’

t was a grisly start to the new era for Libya, broadcast around the world. The dictator was dragged from the sewer pipe where he was hiding, tossed around by frenzied rebel soldiers, beaten bloody and sodomized with a bayonet. A shaky cellphone video showed the pocked face of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, “the Leader” who had terrified Libyans for four decades, looking frightened and bewildered. He would soon be dead.

The first news reports of Colonel Qaddafi’s capture and killing in October 2011 reached the secretary of state in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she had just sat down for a televised interview. “Wow!” she said, looking at an aide’s BlackBerry before cautiously noting that the report had not yet been confirmed. But Hillary Clinton seemed impatient for a conclusion to the multinational military intervention she had done so much to organize, and in a rare unguarded moment, she dropped her reserve.

“We came, we saw, he died!” she exclaimed.


Two days before, Mrs. Clinton had taken a triumphal tour of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and for weeks top aides had been circulating a “ticktock” that described her starring role in the events that had led to this moment.


The timeline, her top policy aide, Jake Sullivan, wrote, demonstrated Mrs. Clinton’s “leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish.” The memo’s language put her at the center of everything: “HRC announces … HRC directs … HRC travels … HRC engages,” it read.


It was a brag sheet for a cabinet member eyeing a presidential race, and the Clinton team’s eagerness to claim credit for her prompted eye-rolling at the White House and the Pentagon. Some joked that to hear her aides tell it, she had practically called in the airstrikes herself.

But there were plenty of signs that the triumph would be short-lived, that the vacuum left by Colonel Qaddafi’s death invited violence and division.

In fact, on the same August day that Mr. Sullivan had compiled his laudatory memo, the State Department’s top Middle East hand, Jeffrey D. Feltman, had sent a lengthy email with an utterly different tone about what he had seen on his own visit to Libya.

In the ensuing months, Mr. Feltman’s memo would prove hauntingly prescient. But Libya’s Western allies, preoccupied by domestic politics and the crisis in Syria, would soon relegate the country to the back burner.

And Mrs. Clinton would be mostly a bystander as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain....


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/libya-isis-hillary-clinton.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

[bvar22]

37. Some of us at DU saw this coming.

...and posted warnings frequently, predicting exactly this results.
There were also embarrassing daily propaganda posts praising the "rebels" and how they needed our help. (I still remember those screen names. They have never recanted or apologized).

There was NO Libyan Spring, and this was not an uprising of students, merchants, and professional people. The rebels WERE terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda and other fundamentalist groups in the Middle East. Gaddafi was keeping these fundamentalists OUT of the mostly secular areas of Libya.

Like good Disaster Capitalists the IMF and Western Banks piggy-backed on the legitimate Arab Spring to join on ongoing Tribal/Civil War in Libya on the side of the Black Flag terrorists.

I find it frightening that the Western Banks and the IMF have that much control over our military and State Department.

[PufPuf23]

38. Thank you Bvar22. This video clip makes me cringe. rec

[EndElectoral]

39. Have always appreciated Mr. Parry's insightful articles.

[John Poet]

40. KICKED AND R'D!

"Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations."


Ain't that the truth?

[amborin]

41. kick