Robert Parry: On Libya, Now They Tell Us

[marmar]

from Consortium News:




On Libya, Now They Tell Us
September 15, 2011

Exclusive: The Washington Post now admits that the key role of Islamists in Libya’s uprising “went largely unnoticed” before Muammar Gaddafi was toppled last month. But Robert Parry asks whose fault was that, since it was the Post and other Big Media that were acting more as propagandists for “regime change” than honest brokers.

By Robert Parry


During the six-month uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, major U.S. news outlets repeated again and again that the Libyan dictator was behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and they ignored warnings that militant Islamists were at the core of the anti-Gaddafi rebel army.

Indeed, for Americans to get alternative views on these points, they had to search out Web sites, like Consortiumnews.com, which had the audacity not to march in lockstep with the rest of the Western media. Only outside the mainstream press would you find significant questions asked about the certainty over Libya’s guilt in the Pan Am bombing and about the makeup of the rebels.

Now, after the United States and its NATO allies have engineered the desired “regime change” in Libya – under the pretext of “protecting civilians” – those two points are coming more into focus.

The New York Times and the Washington Post on Thursday finally acknowledged that radical Islamists, including some with links to al-Qaeda, are consolidating their power inside the new regime in Tripoli. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/09/15/on-libya-now-they-tell-us/

[bananas]

1. kr nt

[PDJane]

2. The biggest reason for regime change

was that Kaddafi was pushing for an African gold standard currency.

[PurityOfEssence]

5. Certainly a big one

I still contend that oil is now and always has been the biggest bugaboo.

His support of African independence from foreign fleecing is an obvious point, with the telecommunications satellite a sterling example. Then there's the water. Then there's the example of education and housing.

Keeping Libya out of the clutches of the western banking system is huge. It will NEVER be properly expressed in the media.

[On the Road]

3. Weasel Words

...they ignored warnings that militant Islamists were at the core of the anti-Gaddafi rebel army.

They are insinuating that (a) militant Islamicists FORM the core of the army by saying there were such people "at the core," and (b) using "ignored warnings" to imply that the warnings were true without actually saying that.

Two months the criticism was the the rebels had been co-opted by pro-Westerners opening Libya to economic colonization. Now it's the opposite kind of people who have coopted the movement. In truth, it doesn't seem like either one is true -- it's the same people who were out in the streets protesting six months ago.

This kind of thing sours me on every source that comes out with it. Very little difference from Fox.

[applegrove]

4. I think that is why Sarkozy and Cameran flew into Libya today...to try and

reinforce Libyans ties to the greater world rather than just let them turn inward towards radical Islam.

[PurityOfEssence]

6. Well, it may well be a Pottery Barn moment.

They started this; the French and the British with their mutual assistance pact signed last year and their "Operation Southern Mistral" was a direct response to Qaddafi's rewriting the French oil deal--which reduced the amount they could keep of what they pumped from 50% to 27%--by the threat of nationalization. He was a dead man at that point, and they were willing to get into bed with literally anyone to get rid of him.

Fundamentalists play for keeps, which is something that capitalists don't understand: a capitalist has the firm belief that everyone has his price, and this just isn't so with religious zealots.

It's also a very complex tribal melange, and since we want to do this on the cheap, others are constantly in the driver's seat.

Sickening.

Many people predicted this. Many of us also just pointed out the unpredictability of things. Then there's that national sovereignty thing and that constitutionality nuisance.