FALSE PRETEXTS in LIBYA intervention called out by IRAQ WMD lies Whistle-Blower

Distant Observer

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Sat Apr-09-11 08:13 AM
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FALSE PRETEXTS in LIBYA intervention called out by IRAQ WMD lies Whistle-Blower

Edited on Sat Apr-09-11 08:38 AM by Distant Observer

Richard Nathan Haass advised General Coin Powell at the State Department as Director of Policy and Planning under G.W. Bush. As such he is very familiar with the techniques used for creating rationales for war. He resigned publicly in protest over what he called false pretext for War in Iraq.

Now in calm, methodological testimony before congress, he pull the covers of the false pretexts used in Hilary Clinton’s State Department argument for intervention in Libya.

1. There were no real “massacres” of civilians in Libya prior to the call for intervention.
2. There was no reasonable evidence that civilian “massacre” would have occurred in Benghazi without coalition intervention.
(most “evidence” was based on out-of-context clips from Gaddafi threats directed explicitly at a small group of insurgents and that was accompanied by offers of unconditional amnesty and political reforms.)
3. The actions of the Libyan government and the destruction that came with the conflict was typical of a State’s response to armed insurrection.

http://www.cfr.org/africa/perspectives-crisis-libya/p24602

Perspectives on the Crisis in Libya

Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations

April 6, 2011
Richard N. Haass testifies before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

http://www.cfr.org/africa/perspectives-crisis-libya/p24602

ANALYSIS MUST BE RIGOROUS. In two critical areas, however, I would suggest that WHAT HAS BEEN ASSERTED AS FACT WAS IN REALITY CLOSER TO ASSUMPTION.

First, it is not clear that a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

There had been no reports of large-scale massacres in Libya up to that point, and Libyan society (unlike Rwanda, to cite the obvious influential precedent) is not divided along a single or defining fault line.

Gaddafi saw the rebels as enemies for political reasons, not for their ethnic or tribal associations. To be sure, civilians would have been killed in an assault on the city – civil wars are by their nature violent and destructive – but there is no evidence of which I am aware that civilians per se would have been targeted on a large scale.

Muammar Gaddafi’s threat to show no mercy to the rebels might well have been just that: a threat within the context of a civil war to those who opposed him with arms or were considering doing so.
. . .
Multilateralism is not a reason for doing something. . . . multilateral support does not make a policy that is questionable on its merits any less so. To think otherwise is to confuse ends and means.
. . .
There is little reason to conclude that the Libyan opposition will any time soon be able to defeat the Libyan government. It appears to lack the requisite cohesiveness and skill.

THE COMBINATION OF A NO-FLY ZONE, BOMBING, and arming might, however, have the effect of leveling the playing field and prolonging the civil war, LEADING TO MORE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN THE PROCESS.