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Ear to the Ground

Western Leaders Say Gadhafi’s Got to Go

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Posted on Apr 14, 2011
Wikimedia Commons / DefenseImagery.mil

Although he’s probably gotten the hint right now, three heads of state—from the U.S., Britain and France—have signed a joint letter expressing their shared wish that tenacious Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi relinquish his power, stat. Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy, respectively, also called on NATO to keep the heat on by continuing to battle forces loyal to Gadhafi in his country.  —KA

BBC:

To allow him to remain in power “would be an unconscionable betrayal” of Libya’s people, they argue, and would make Libya both “a pariah state [and] a failed state”.

“So long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds,” the letter continues.

“Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders.”

The letter holds out the prospect of reconstruction for Libya with the help of the “UN and its members”.

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By California Ray, April 15, 2011 at 9:49 pm Link to this comment

Don’t we have the UN Security Council to make these calls?

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By Cliff Carson, April 15, 2011 at 8:41 pm Link to this comment

Why he has to go to suit the Big 3, what was it Bush called some other three countries ?  Oh yes “Axis of Evil”.

I know why they want him to go :  Two Reasons.

He had the gall to fund his own country and not play Financial footsie with the Financial Cabal that runs the World and he attempted to rub it in their face by trying to get other countries to join him and reason number two see oil and water.

The US., Britain, and France have never given a damn about civilian casualties.

Just today if you noticed the Television media was flush with the story of those god awful cluster bombs he is using.

Anybody remember how many cluster bombs with motion sensitive fuzes that Israel dropped on Lebanon before pulling out?  It was 3 million.

The sub-munitions are particular attractive to little children.  And they will lay where they fell for years until picked up - then they explode.

A case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Did the US Britain and France complain about that want to bomb Israel, etc?

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By diamond, April 15, 2011 at 6:24 pm Link to this comment

“See how powerful the airwaves are?”

Do I need airwaves to understand that this man is a dictator who used to hang people in the street and hasn’t held an election for 42 years? I can use my own brainwaves to work out that this man is a complete nutcase who never had a democratic thought in his life. The fact that Britain and America played footsie with him for years is not in the least unusual. They played footsie with Saddam Hussein for years too, until he started fooling around with the oil price - at which point he had to go so America could control Iraq’s oil, as it now does. Yes, Libya has oil too but the main motivation here is to support those demanding democracy in Libya. I would have thought that was an obvious thing to do. There can be no democracy of any kind in Libya until Gaddafi and his hideous sons and the rest of his family are out of Libya and out of power. And it’s only right that Gaddafi’s assets should be frozen since he and his family have stolen billions from the Libyan people during their reign of terror. The mistake he made was to allow a generation to arise that is one of the best fed and best educated that Libya has ever seen. I recall something similar happened in the west in the sixties. A generation like that won’t be fobbed off with dictatorship and torture and Gaddafi should not be allowed to use his military to crush them.

I don’t need airwaves to tell me what will happen to them if their uprising fails. And they’re smart enough to know what Gaddafi will do to them if they don’t overthrow him. Gaddafi was always going to go from day one, the only question was how many cities would he destroy and how many of his own people would he kill before he went. The English chopped of Charles the First’s head for ‘making war on his own people’ and they obviously still don’t think it’s acceptable behavior and America certainly can’t demand democratic governments in the Middle East and then allow those who rise up and fight and die for them to be slaughtered.

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By expat, April 15, 2011 at 1:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

upside down world !

the UN, which was to prevent arbitrary wars of aggression and choice,

now has become the vehicle and the excuse for it!


But at least history has a great sense of Irony:
when it is allowing Japan to nuke the US
to the point that everyone in US will have some kind
of cancer within 3 years
and will die off within 5 to 10.

Aquarius is coming, but there will first be enormous travails.

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By John Poole, April 15, 2011 at 1:01 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I’m surprised that “my little black queen”  (Qaddafi to Rice) hasn’t come out with a
mushroom cloud dire scenario if Daffy isn’t captured and removed from power -
oops forgot that Qaddafi gave up his WMD. I was in Tripoli last June and noticed
American companies lining up to offer their services. Tom Ridge was there ten
feet from me going into a restaurant most likely pitching his “security services”
operations to Daffy.

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Robert's avatar

By Robert, April 15, 2011 at 10:42 am Link to this comment

U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan


By Amiram Cohen

25.08.03


The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.

National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan’s consent and that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its territory. The minister noted, however, that “due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel.” “

~~~~~~

Click on link for details…Hmmm…Is Iraqi oil flowing to Israel…very nice “bonus”...if it is?

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/u-s-checking-possibility-of-pumping-oil-from-northern-iraq-to-haifa-via-jordan-1.98134

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3rd party voter's avatar

By 3rd party voter, April 15, 2011 at 8:44 am Link to this comment

someone down there said: “he’s a narcissistic psychopath”

See how powerful the airwaves are?

Hey poster, if someone bombed your house and killed your daughter what would your reaction be?

The US was “doing business” with this “narcissistic psychopath” for awhile now.

And what exactly are “leaders” that drone bomb wedding parties?

This country is filled with narcissistic morons who can’t pull themselves away from the propaganda long enough to think.

Disgusting.

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By tony_opmoc, April 15, 2011 at 8:33 am Link to this comment

Most people fell for it, right at the start including me. I can remember writing after reading the very first reports that “Libya was bombing its own people…”

Yet the truth was already being reported even from the New York Times as Alan J. Kuperman writes in the Boston Globe…

Tony

http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-14/bostonglobe/29418371_1_rebel-stronghold-civilians-rebel-positions

Extract

EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.

But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.

Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.

Obama insisted that prospects were grim without intervention. “If we waited one more day, Benghazi … could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.’’ Thus, the president concluded, “preventing genocide’’ justified US military action.

But intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents.

Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.’’

If bloodbath was unlikely, how did this notion propel US intervention? The actual prospect in Benghazi was the final defeat of the rebels. To avoid this fate, they desperately concocted an impending genocide to rally international support for “humanitarian’’ intervention that would save their rebellion.

On March 15, Reuters quoted a Libyan opposition leader in Geneva claiming that if Khadafy attacked Benghazi, there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda.’’ Four days later, US military aircraft started bombing. By the time Obama claimed that intervention had prevented a bloodbath, The New York Times already had reported that “the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda’’ against Khadafy and were “making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.’’

It is hard to know whether the White House was duped by the rebels or conspired with them to pursue regime-change on bogus humanitarian grounds. In either case, intervention quickly exceeded the UN mandate of civilian protection by bombing Libyan forces in retreat or based in bastions of Khadafy support, such as Sirte, where they threatened no civilians.

It also emboldened the rebels to resume their attacks, briefly recapturing cities along the eastern and central coast, such as Ajdabiya, Brega, and Ras Lanuf, until they outran supply lines and retreated.

Each time those cities change hands, they are shelled by both sides — killing, wounding, and displacing innocents. On March 31, NATO formally warned the rebels to stop attacking civilians. It is poignant to recall that if not for intervention, the war almost surely would have ended last month.

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By FRTothus, April 15, 2011 at 8:23 am Link to this comment

The fact that Gadhafi has used Lybia’s oil revenue to
better the lives of Libyans is simply intolerable to
Western “leaders”.  Lybia’s “threat” is that of a
good example for other nations that want to extricate
themselves from the top-down elite rule, of, by, and
for Western fascists and war-mongers.  It is the same
“threat” Vietnam posed, the same “threat” that Cuba
poses, the same threat Venezuela poses, the same
threat that Iraq posed, the same “threat” any nation
which refuses to be a whore to the dictates of
Western imperialism poses.

The West lies when it talks about human rights. 
Western leaders are liars and hypocrites.  No one
should take anything they say seriously.

“Throughout the twentieth century and into the
beginning of the twenty-first, the United States
repeatedly used its military power, and that of its
clandestine services, to overthrow governments that
refused to protect American interests. Each time, it
cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national
security and liberation. In most cases, however, it
acted mainly for economic reasons-specifically to
establish, promote and defend the right of Americans
to do business around the world without
interference.”
(Stephen Kinzer)

“Look, if you think any American official is going to
tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear
that? - stupid.”
(Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Public Affairs, 1965)

“[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and
their enemies are the people, the people at home and
the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who
wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use
the surplus value of society for social needs rather
than for individual class greed, that’s their enemy.”
(Dr. Michael Parenti)

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A Khokar's avatar

By A Khokar, April 15, 2011 at 7:50 am Link to this comment

Ghadafi is not a lesser or greater Evil than all the other members of western backed—‘The Arab Dictators Club’ head by Saudi King. Ghadafi is an odd man out as he did not accept to become a member of the club and is noted as defiant…a mad dog of Arab.

Ironically the man has been made a scapegoat in order to divert and ditch the popular uprising by ‘The Arab Dictators Club with a hope to save their own thrones.

French and Britain are so wrong to lure in groups of dissidents from Benghazi which makes just about 25% of total Libyans and are instigating them to conspire and rebel rouse against 75 % of Libyan masses and the Libyan government called as Pro Ghadafi.

Sure another Dictatorship of western choice to be installed is emerging in Libya.

Anyhow a NATO imposed Ceasefire may not be practical as Ceasefire means Benghazi dissidents will be let loose to go swarm Tripoli streets and carry out all sort of violence in the name of Pro democracy move. Ghadafi may not allow it.

The Libyan defecting generals and soldiers may also not be desirous of ceasefire. As Ghadafi still in power; they fear facing military courts for abetting & conspiring against their own country.

UN and NATO has created a new Fiasco in this region. On the other hand weighing this fiasco on US-EU Defence Industrial scales; every Libyan tank destroyed or Artillary gun silo taken out… it creates atleast ten more jobs at home.

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By Fred LaMotte, April 15, 2011 at 7:44 am Link to this comment

Right on. And the same goes for our own fascist dictator in Bahrain, but you’ll never hear that from these same righteous leaders.

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By tony_opmoc, April 15, 2011 at 6:46 am Link to this comment

Ellen Brown is correct. The outrageous tyrants are the international bankers who control our governments, and the media and the propaganda we consume…

The real truth about Libya….

Its the oil - stupid…

No that’s just a part of it…

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD14Ak02.html

Libya all about oil, or central banking?
By Ellen Brown

Extract…

“One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned ... Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.

“Applying the State Theory of Money, any government can fund with its own currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain full employment without inflation.” The “state theory of money” refers to money created by governments rather than private banks.

The presumption of the rule against borrowing from the government’s own central bank is that this will be inflationary, while borrowing existing money from foreign banks or the IMF will not. But all banks actually create the money they lend on their books, whether publicly owned or privately owned. Most new money today comes from bank loans. Borrowing it from the government’s own central bank has the advantage that the loan is effectively interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by an average of 50%.

And that appears to be how the Libyan system works. According to Wikipedia, the functions of the Central Bank of Libya include “issuing and regulating banknotes and coins in Libya” and “managing and issuing all state loans”. Libya’s wholly state-owned bank can and does issue the national currency and lend it for state purposes.

That would explain where Libya gets the money to provide free education and medical care, and to issue each young couple $50,000 in interest-free state loans. It would also explain where the country found the $33 billion to build the Great Man-Made River project. Libyans are worried that North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led air strikes are coming perilously close to this pipeline, threatening another humanitarian disaster.

So is this new war all about oil or all about banking? Maybe both - and water as well. With energy, water, and ample credit to develop the infrastructure to access them, a nation can be free of the grip of foreign creditors. And that may be the real threat of Libya: it could show the world what is possible.

Most countries don’t have oil, but new technologies are being developed that could make non-oil-producing nations energy-independent, particularly if infrastructure costs are halved by borrowing from the nation’s own publicly owned bank. Energy independence would free governments from the web of the international bankers, and of the need to shift production from domestic to foreign markets to service the loans.

If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watch whether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the nationalized oil industry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and healthcare continue to be free. ”

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By ardee, April 15, 2011 at 5:48 am Link to this comment

Regardless of this rulers fitness or lack thereof to run Libya this is an internal domestic problem I say. It is up to the people of Libya to make their nation what they wish it to be.

Not only does the US, Britain and France ally themselves with a score or more of tyrants they have actually installed them in order to ensure a stable place for investment. This is nothing more,and certainly nothing less, than hypocrisy in action.

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By Nostraden62, April 15, 2011 at 5:46 am Link to this comment

According to the west,Everyone has to go…....

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fearnotruth's avatar

By fearnotruth, April 15, 2011 at 4:19 am Link to this comment

finally - a LEFT/RIGHT common ground - mutual hatred of Gadhafi - of course,
without questioning any single report of the so-called ‘planned’ massacre, or
looking into any report of atrocities by so-called ‘rebels’ against sub-Saharan
guest workers, nor foreign instigation on the ground - this post isn’t in the
Colonel’s defense but rather a challenge to the duped legions of Gadhafi-hating
lemmings - swooning to the Arab Spring lullaby - the global intelligence nexus
(CIA/MI6/MOSSAD) are grateful for your support

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By diamond, April 15, 2011 at 3:24 am Link to this comment

He’s not tenacious: he’s a narcissistic psychopath. Like so many other world “leaders”.

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