NATO hits rebel forces in Libya

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_LIBYA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-06-18-16-45-47

BRUSSELS (AP) -- NATO says it has accidentally hit a column of Libyan rebels in an airstrike two days ago.

The alliance gave no figures on casualties but said Saturday it regrets "any possible loss of life or injuries caused by this unfortunate incident."

NATO says its forces saw a column of military vehicles on Thursday in an area where forces loyal to leader Moammar Gadhafi had recently been operating. The alliance says it believed the vehicles posed a threat to civilians and hit them.

NATO says the vehicles were later confirmed to be part of an opposition patrol.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Press TV from Friday

which was largely ignored. :shrug:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=4887650

[sad sally]

2. Numbness starts to set in or just plain old ignoring all the wars the US is engaged in.

Out of sight, out of mind.

10 Years of War in Afghanistan - Coalition for Peace Action event:

On Friday, October 7, the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan War, CFPA will hold a rally at the Trenton State House steps from 12 Noon - 1:00 PM to protest the longest war in American history. There are over 20 media outlets at the State House, so this is our best chance to get our our message that it's time to end this war. Join us!

http://www.peacecoalition.org/component/content/article/39-cfpa/254-afghanistan10.html?du

[xchrom]

4. many are ignoring the wars they protested and are now silent on -- for very good reasons.

still sucks being that hypocritical.

[xchrom]

3. maybe if we had some pictures of some famous people dicks in these reports? nt

[tabatha]

5. There were no casualties.

Just their vehicles were taken out.
This was a mistake for which they have apologized.

I have yet to see any outrage from you about the 17,000 killed intentionally by Gaddafi.
No apologies yet from Gaddafi.


The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wrong - they inflicted harm.
The war by Gaddfi is wrong - he is inflicting harm.
NATO for once is trying to prevent harm.
But these differences seem to escape everyone. They are all put into the same box.

[xchrom]

6. Fail. The EU is under serious financial threat.

The u.s. Is under serious financial threat.
We can't even take care of our own unemployed.

There's capital for bombs but austerity & unemployment for Greeks & Americans.

There are tin pot dictators every where you turn.
Imposing our power is 'helping' in few of those incursions & costing us blood & treasure.

[tabatha]

7. The Libyan undertaking has cost the US about $756 million.

The NTC of Libya has offered to pay the US $1billion.

What is "fail" about that?

And the Greeks have nothing to do with the Libyan war.

As for the situation in Europe - I don't know enough to talk about it.
But I have read in a few places that the costs are covered. How, I don't know.

[dipsydoodle]

9. Unsound reasoning

The Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund belongs to the Libyan people - even the Gaddafis would tell you that.

The NTC are not in a position to promise anything on behalf of the Libyan people until such time as fair elections are held.

[xchrom]

11. +1

[tabatha]

12. I did not say promise. I said "offered".

The offer speaks to an intent, that has been quoted by many Libyans grateful for the intervention.
I am quite sure it would be put to a vote, as I am sure it would pass.

As for the comment below, you have to be joking.
"The Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund belongs to the Libyan people - even the Gaddafis would tell you that."

The Gadaffis have for 41+ years siphoned the profit into their personal hidden accounts.
The Gadaffis have never thought that anything belongs to the Libyans - rather it belongs to the Gaddafis who in their largesse have allowed a few dinars to be paid to their population; most of it going to other African countries to buy influence.

"Yet even among some senior officials close to Gaddafi there is sense of gloom, regret, and even inevitability, which is compounded by the day as the last of the regime’s “friends” – leaders from the continent who have enjoyed its largesse – abandon Libya. “All that money we spent on Africa?” said one official. “We really should have spent it at home.”"
http://feb17.info/news/tripoli-bides-time-as-gaddafi-support-ebbs-away-2/

Btw, there is a lot of good intent by the TNC. Just check their website. They cannot do anything until Gaddafi is out.

Faulty interpretation about what I said and faulty assertion about the Gaddafis.

[inna]

24. unfucking believable. where do you even get this garbage? it would be really comical it

if it wasn't so sad.

[tabatha]

29. Please explain what you mean.

Then I can answer. Right now I have no clue what you are talking about.
Please go ahead - I would love to go toe-to-toe with you on the facts.
(But I guess that won't happen - the srpouter of one sentence nonsense.)

[Dokkie]

71. +1000

[former9thward]

8. Where is your 17,000 number coming from?

[tabatha]

14. There have been various estimates.

In April, there was a range of between 10,000 and 30,000.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/libya-death-toll-could-be_n_854582.html

17,000 is the last I remember hearing/reading about at that posting.
(I need to find that source - but I read and hear so much it is difficult to keep track of it all.)

Since then I have seen the interview below, where over 13,000 is stated.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/06/20116178921373319.html

People in Libya are compiling lists of known dead and missing.
There are several thousand people arrested and in the Tripoli jail - and it is not known if they are alive or not.
Additionally, the FFs have come across bodies of Gaddafi's troops that have been shot/burned for not following orders to kill Libyans.

Accurate numbers are impossible now - only ballpark figures, and different people may include different categories.

[Distant Observer]

23. War promoters concocted the reason for intervention and now blame the "enemy" for all death caused

It is the usual MO

[tabatha]

28. Really?

The UN resolution demanded that Gaddafi stop killing Libyans.
He did not.
End of story.

[former9thward]

61. Not the end of any story.

We don't take orders from the UN and never have. And the UN didn't order anyone to do anything. This is a voluntary war.

[Brianboru]

13. Bogus argument

Hussein and the Taliban killed their own people. Saddam used poison gas on his own people!. Kadaffy is a brutal dictator.

But if you justify our going into a country that poses no threat to the US "to prevent harm" the US should be in Iraq, Afganistan, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Somaolia, Syria.....

Lets try peace for a change.

[tabatha]

15. This is the first operation under R2P by the UN.

I think you should read this article to answer you own charges which are a common refrain, repeated blindly and without understanding.

"Is It Better to Save No One?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03kristof.html?_r=1&ref=nicholasdkristof

If you understand what he is saying - then I need say no more.

[War Horse]

17. Thanks, tabatha

Nobody knows what will come out of Libya. But people (left and right) keep insisting on conflating, well, EVERYTHING!

[Brianboru]

18. Saddam was a brutal dictator.

He used chemical weapons on his own people. Bush had a larger international force to go into Iraq. And Bush got Congress to authorize the use of force.

Bush's intentions of helping an opressed people were just as noble as 0bama trying to help those poor souls in Libya.

Iraq and Libya pose(d) no threat to the United States. Where do we stop intervening? We have proven that "nation building" is a dream that turns into a nightmare.

[tabatha]

27. You and I both know that the Iraqi excursion was

for Cheney and Halliburton.

Saddam could have been handled differently.

[sad sally]

20. How many starving people of the world could be saved if the US spent taxpayer

and borrowed dollars in ways other than bombing and waging war?

In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"

Every year 15 million children die of hunger

For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years

Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.

Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.

[tabatha]

25. I agree with you completely.

Please check this chart. The Libyan cost is minuscule in comparison to Iraq. Iraq should never have happened. If Libya pays for the effort by NATO, where is the harm?

[Prometheus Bound]

19. The rebels said 16 of their fighters were injured.

http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFLDE75H0AN20110618

[tabatha]

30. Yes. There were no deaths.

But please just ignore the thousands that Gaddafi has killed.

[Prometheus Bound]

37. But you said there were no casualties. Why?

[tabatha]

42. Casualties to me means dead.

My fault. I guess I should look for the word fatalities.

[Prometheus Bound]

49. I see.

[tabatha]

56. Check this BBC report

Nato has flown more than 10,000 sorties since operations began, including almost 4,000 strike attacks against government targets across Libya.

On Saturday, Nato admitted its aircraft had mistakenly attacked rebel forces in eastern Libya during an air raid on Thursday.

Nato said it had hit a column of military vehicles near the oil town of Brega, and that the rebels had said there were injuries but no casualties.

[Prometheus Bound]

57. I said I understood.

I wasn't being sarcastic.:-)

[tabatha]

58. OK. Just wanted to support my understanding.

[Distant Observer]

22. If you instigate a CIVIL WAR the blood and death and destruction is your reward

The Libyan Gov. did not seek this war. The poor conscripts did not ask to be blown to kingdom come.

The profound immorality of this war shows through the most pervasive propaganda.

[tabatha]

31. If the Libyan Govt did not ask for this war

why did they not heed the UN resolution that asked them to stop killing protesters?

[malaise]

50. People were killed

Check BBC

[Poll_Blind]

10. Maybe we're just trying to cover all the bases.

:shrug:

PB

[malaise]

16. One more clusterfuck

Oh the humanity!

[U4ikLefty]

21. ...and up through the ground came a-bubblin crude

sweet crude that is...black gold. Libyan Tea.

[tabatha]

33. It has nothing to do with oil.

Iraq had everything to do with oil.

[PurityOfEssence]

38. Just plain silly.

How do you explain the Transitional Government's threat to the Western Powers that if they didn't recognize them, they would be remembered for future business deals?

How do you explain France's anger at having their 50% take reduced to 27% at the threat of nationalization?

How do you explain the Wikileaks cables?

We are simply NOT in the business of helping the downtrodden in a general sense.

Obama is NOT who you think he is, and history is already bearing this out. Cling as you may to this image, you are sadly very mistaken. All of us who have problems with these actions are not "heartless" or racist, we simply see the very obvious imperialist resource theft for what it is: the cynical heartstrings-tugging of a very minor uprising to justify massive corporate greed, and the willingness to freely spill the blood of others to secure our access to other people's property.

Had we not intervened, this mess would probably have long since ended, but I don't know that for a fact. The interventionists are the ones in full possession of all certain "future facts", like the numbers who would have been exterminated in Benghazi.

The continuance of this Civil War is specifically and wholly the fault of the interventionists; this blood is on their hands, and keen as they may about their moral superiority, they're the ones who have violated a nation's sovereignty and thrown things into blood-spattered chaos.

Claiming the moral high ground is hyperbolic hypocrisy of gargantuan proportions.

[tabatha]

41. What Wikileaks cables?

I would love to read them.

It is not about oil for the US - they were very reluctant to get into the Libyan conflict and they got out as fast as they could.

[Distant Observer]

26. The defenseless rebels always seem to be the ones ATTACKING and refusing to negotiate

Does not surprise that from the Air it looks like the rebels are the dreaded "Gaddafi forces."

If NATO was truly defending civilians they would likely be bombing the "rebels" at least half the time.

[tabatha]

32. The rebels are fighting the Libyan forces

that have taken over people's homes, killed the occupants, and are otherwise shooting grad rockets into innocent civilian's homes.

I guess you call defending attacking.

[Distant Observer]

34. I appreciate your innocence. Some of us have seen this PROPAGANDA OPPERATION before

[tabatha]

35. I don't appreciate your distortion of the facts.

The news that I read comes out too fast to be propaganda.

The only source of propaganda is Libyan TV where they lie all the time.

[inna]

36. ahem, Libyan TV is not the only place where they lie all the time

[tabatha]

39. Well, bowl me over with a feather.

I agree with you. I'll even quote myself from a Libyan thread, when I got a little too heated:

"We live in a country where 3/4th of TV information is crap; where politicians can get up on stage and lie through their teeth. It is not arrogance, it is tiredness and despair with false statements. People just believe what they want, make as much shit up as they want. I see it on all blogs. There was a topic on one blog where about 10 people gave opinions about something, and the one small little voice actually typed up the actual facts. It was like 10% of the posts was correct."

[Distant Observer]

40. So Defence and Intel was lying when they said intervention was NOT JUSTIFIED before bombs started

[tabatha]

43. Do you have a link?

[Distant Observer]

44. You know this is CLOSED TESTIMONY, but it is the reason why support in Congress is weak

You should have some of the public doc. You just prefer to believe the propaganda.

-----

Council on Foreign Relations
Senate Testimony

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

Richard Hass, CFR President:

" 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. "
------------
James Clapper, the Director of National Inteligence, concurred with this assessment

[tabatha]

53. This is one person's opinion.

"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."

The first and third sentences contradict each other:

"Analysis must be rigorous"
"First, it is not clear that a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi."
Where is the rigorous analysis that leads to the conclusion that "it is not clear that a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent".

From my perspective, there are some important items that make it clear that a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent:

- http://youtu.be/hwWwOeZqz6M
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/18/gaddafi-misrata-war-crime-documents?intcmp=239
(Or, to put it more bluntly, he ordered his army to inflict starvation on every man, woman and child in Misrata.)

also
- the ICC evidence that will come out when Gaddafi is on trial in the Hague
- the fact that he wanted to interfere in the Tunisian revolution and conspired with Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the ousted Tunisian President Bin Ali to send 30,000 troops into Tunisia to stop the revolution and keep Bin Ali in power. The only thing that stopped this from happening was the Libyan uprising.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContent/2/8/14481/World/Region/We-would-have-been-in-danger-if-not-for-the-Libyan.aspx

[joshcryer]

55. Haas is historically anti-R2P. His comments are typical.

[Distant Observer]

62. Haas was stating the FACTS to which the head of US Intel concurred

[joshcryer]

64. They were clearly wrong.

[tabatha]

65. What facts?

That was my point - I never saw any convincing rigorous analysis.
If that is the best you've got - well one sentence is not convincing.

[joshcryer]

54. Given the ICC evidence about Misrata it is clear that Haas was *wrong*.

Anyone with any sense would've known that if they followed the reports about Misrata.

Remember, he said he came to Libya when it had a population of 2 million and that he would leave when it had a population of 2 million.

[Distant Observer]

67. Funny. Instigate a conflict and then blame the "enemy" for all the death that results. OH SO SMOOTH!

[joshcryer]

69. Huh? Gaddafi was in the right for cutting off power and water to Misrata and then cluster bombing?

OK.

[joshcryer]

47. Correct.

I've seen my share of lies here about Libya.

[joshcryer]

46. Yes, and propaganda tends to come in ALL CAPS in my experience.

;)

[Distant Observer]

51. Yes PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT TO KILL are so dumb. All the wise promote killing

[joshcryer]

52. I promote peace, Gaddafi started the killing and the ICC recently got proof he ordered Misrata.

I suppose you advocate cutting power and water from a city and bombarding it with mortars as a peaceful solution to an uprising?

[Distant Observer]

59. OH YES, just like we created so much peace in Iraq by killing a million people

[Distant Observer]

60. The Africans are so dumb with their peace proposals. Only the White Man knows how to do peace

Here is the committee to bring peace and stability in North Africa -- so elegant, so arrogant, so ruthless.
Yes, they know all about peace.

?epslanguage=en

[joshcryer]

63. I don't support Iraq and do not see how Iraq is relevant to Libya.

[Occulus]

70. Would you please stop shouting?

We all can see what you type.

[joshcryer]

45. Gaddafi refuses to leave. Would you have backed Mubarak or Ben Ali for refusing to leave?

[malaise]

48. Latest from BBC - two dead

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13826976
<snip>
At least two people have died in an apparent Nato air strike that hit a house in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen was at the scene and he said rescue workers and residents were frantically trying to remove tonnes of rubble.

Our correspondent says a three-storey house was hit in the city's Suq Al Juma residential area.

He says it will raise more questions about Nato's mission in Libya, which began in March.
---------------
Expect the number of dead to increase.
:puke:

[tabatha]

66. Expect it to be another bit of false propaganda.

Evidence is mounting that the house bombed in #AraadaSougAlGoumaa tonight was done by #Gaddafi forces & blamed on @NATO #Libya #feb17

http://twitter.com/#!/RRowleyTucson

[Distant Observer]

68. Wow! the war propagandists calling out the risk of "false info" on twitter

[inna]

72. naturally, false propaganda comes from predictable sources

and btw & fyi, posting random tweets as some sort of hard "evidence" reflects poorly on the credibility of the poster

[tabatha]

73. Depends on the person who does the tweeting.

And more evidence is being received that it was Gaddafi not NATO (from residents and reporters)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1320673&mesg_id=1327068

But evidence means diddly squat to you - I have yet to see a substantive factual post about Libya from you.
It is all personal attacks or meaningless one-liners.

Btw, you are aware of the fact that Gaddafi goons took reporters to a baby in IC and said it was the result of NATO bombing.
Unfortunately, a doctor gave a reporter a note saying that the baby was in the hospital as a result of a car crash.
Two doctors have now been arrested.
If that is the kind of stuff you support, well .....

Libyan TV also lied about shooting down an Apache helicopter. And the lies continue.