COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, April 07, 2011

NATO in Hearts and Minds Strike Number Three in Libya

The intervention in the Libyan civil war will be a long and dirty business. That was predictable. This video fairly represents the current public disillusion of the situation in Libya. The rebels thought that NATO air support will end in a rapid collapse of Ghadaffi. Guess who will be blamed.



Libyan rebels near Ajdabiya 'killed in Nato air strike'

Rebels in eastern Libya say their forces have been mistakenly hit in a Nato air raid.

Doctors in Ajdabiya told the BBC 13 rebel fighters had been killed by the strike on a rebel tank position.

The BBC's Wyre Davies reports chaotic scenes on the outskirts of Ajdabiya, with rebel forces in retreat reporting being hit by Nato air strikes.

It is the third such incident in recent days involving international forces deployed to protect Libyan civilians.

One rebel commander told the BBC he saw at least four missiles land among rebel fighters.

Many people have been killed and many more have been injured, he said.

The rebels had been taking a group of tanks, armoured vehicles and rocket launchers near the front line between the towns of Ajdabiya and Brega in more than 30 transporters.

Ambulances were seen heading in the opposite direction, towards the hospital in Ajdabiya, following the apparent Nato hit.

There is considerable anger among rebel troops after what appears to have been a terrible mistake, our correspondent says.

Rebel forces in the area began retreating on Wednesday after heavy bombardment from government forces.

They had been calling for more Nato air strikes in recent days

There has been no confirmation from Nato over the incident yet.

22 comments:

  1. No on topic but is it not funny as all get out about how many have died in Syria this week and not a PEEP out of the main stream media?

    And there were those "two" tourists that got nailed by a missile in Sudan, they were there on the new Hamas/Hezbollah buy nerve gas and mustard gas weapons vacation plan...

    Let's all raise a glass of booze and toast all those islamists that are now raisins in heaven.

    Libya? Who really cares if the "rebels" get whacked, after all both sides really suck...

    ReplyDelete
  2. WASHINGTON

    Several weeks ago, when President Obama reportedly assured congressional leaders that America's intervention in Libya would involve "days, not weeks," skeptics mistakenly worried about mission creep. They should have feared mission gallop.

    Or perhaps mission meander. At about this point in foreign policy misadventures, the usual question is: What is Plan B? Today's question is: What was Plan A? When Obama inserted America into what was, and ostensibly still is, a pre-emptive war to protect Libyan civilians from Libya's government, he neglected to clarify a few things, such as: Do the armed rebels trying to overthrow that government still count as civilians?

    That is, however, irrelevant if the assumption is that no Libyan is safe as long as Moammar Gadhafi is in power. If so, regime change is a logical imperative of humanitarian imperialism.

    Now the administration must decide how to characterize those on whose behalf we have gone to war. They are rebels, and America, born in rebellion and culturally disposed to skepticism about authority, is inclined to think kindly of rebels.

    But not all rebels are admirable, so when the administration said there would be no American boots on the ground in Libya, it left room for American shoes worn by CIA operatives. Evidently some are now among the insurgents, humming a Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein tune:

    "Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.

    "Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me."

    ________________________________

    Read more: Does the U.S. have R2P? - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_730983.html#ixzz1IqChEOMg

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  3. Perhaps the CIA operatives should have stayed home and talked to some senators who seem to know what's what.

    Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., refers to the Libyan rebels as part of a "pro-democracy movement." Perhaps they are. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., must think so. Serving, as usual, as Sancho Panza to Sen. John McCain's Don Quixote, Graham said last Sunday (on "Face the Nation"), "We should be taking the fight to Tripoli."

    But not (yet) to Yamoussoukro, capital of the Ivory Coast. Members of the Congressional Libyan Liberation Caucus -- it does not formally exist (yet) -- presumably subscribe to the doctrine "R2P." That is the accepted shorthand for "responsibility to protect." This notion is central to humanitarian imperialism, a project that certainly promises to provide steady work.

    The Libyan venture is coinciding with a humanitarian disaster in the Ivory Coast, where corpses are piling up by the hundreds and the fighting is producing displaced persons by the hundreds of thousands. They will have to make do with U.N. and French interveners until America's humanitarian imperialists can get around to them.

    Obama's inability, or reluctance, to say clearly why we are involved in Libya or under what conditions the mission might be said to have been accomplished has occasioned comparisons with Iraq. A more apposite comparison is to Jimmy Carter's invasion of Iran -- a nation twice as large as France -- with eight helicopters. This became emblematic of a floundering president out of his depth.

    As Calvin Coolidge, who knew his depth, was leaving the presidency in March 1929, he said, "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business." Before an administration can do that, it must define its responsibilities and competence with sufficient modesty to acknowledge that some things are not its business.


    _____________________
    Read more: Does the U.S. have R2P? - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_730983.html#ixzz1IqDMkUrS

    ReplyDelete
  4. John Effin Kerry, Crash McCain and Linseed Graham.

    - I rest my case

    ReplyDelete
  5. More Importantly:

    -Lawyers acting for Dr. Conrad Murray claim Michael Jackson committed suicide as he was facing financial ruin.

    -Katrina Bowden has won Esquire magazine's 'Sexiest Woman Alive Madness' poll.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Silent Cal must have been a great man.


    In the good news for AlQaeda department, their boys have stolen some
    SA-7s from Qadafi's eastern weapons depots, according to latest reports. This is not our fault but we will be on the receiving end.
    I don't see how the Libyan thing can end in anything else than an ongoing conflict and an eventual split.
    The rebs are a minority, no?, and can't run the whole country without a massive repression, and they don't have the capacity. Likewise if they are aided a little
    Qaqdafi doesn't seem able to prevail. Everyone seems to hate everyone else's guts. Not a bad outcome.

    Anything weakening an islamic land being a good thing. We ought to break up Afghanistan, perhaps, instead of trying to make the whole place a functioning state.

    a/bakadwr

    ReplyDelete
  7. Heroic Freedom Fighting Rebels Score Student Bus:

    Teen critically hurt in attack

    Initial reports say anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hits student bus from Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council; 16-year-old boy critically injured, man sustains light wounds in leg.
    IDF bombs Gaza, killing one, Palestinians say
    Full Story . . .

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Anything weakening an islamic land being a good thing.
    We ought to break up Afghanistan, perhaps, instead of trying to make the whole place a functioning state.
    "

    ---

    Afghanistan is rather inconsequential compared to Pakistan.
    ...we managed to push the Taliban, AQ into Pakistan, and then paid Pakistan to do our dirty work.
    As if they could.
    This has ground to a stop as Pakistan fears a takeover.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Funny Deuce would post

    "Getting to know you, getting to know all about you."

    Just this morning I was thinking about all the warnings, mainly from Brits, that we lacked intel on Afghanistan necessary to be successful.

    Instead, our magnificent Special Forces quickly learned all we needed to know.

    Now, after years of meddling by the truly ignorant in DC, we have proven the Brit critics correct:

    Our ignorance gaurantees our defeat.

    ReplyDelete
  10. So, elements of the Libyan rebels that have been said to be made up of radical Islamoids have been hit by NATO air strikes.

    Depending upon which "rebel" elements were struck, it may have been a home run rather than a strike out.

    If those "rebels" with Iraqi experience happened to be hit by "friendly fire", that's two birds in hand, for the price of one.

    If those CIA operators are doing their job, well, there is Hope.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Too bad we didn't have some friendly fire incidents on the rebel Freedom Fighters in Waziristan back when it would have done some good.

    Trish was horrified by the prospect.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I had read that

    NATO had informed the rebels that attacks upon civilians would not be tolerated. The rebels now have compelling evidence that NATO could easily target their forces, if it needed to.

    Spreading an optimized "Lesson Learned" amongst the Libyan populous.

    With the partition of Libya, along tribal lines, the real whirled outcome.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Heroic Freedom Fighting Rebels Score Student Bus:

    Teen critically hurt in attack

    Initial reports say anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hits student bus from Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council; 16-year-old boy critically injured, man sustains light wounds in leg.



    Sorry that doesnt COUNT, only actual successful murders are counted by the Israel-hating crowd, otherwise it's just "noisemakers"

    ReplyDelete
  14. The fake nationalistic people that call themselves "palestinians" and more specifically the arab squatters that squat in Gaza are quite in a pickle...

    It seems that tricky Jews in Israel have installed an Iron Dome system, thus making many years of rocket and missile research go, shall we say, up in smoke.

    Israel, once again, has deployed a DEFENSIVE tools that prevents the savages, opps, did I SAY SAVAGES??? MY BAD, the Islamists a easy way to "kill" (actually murder, but they dont believe that cutting the head of a Jew is murder, it's Jihad) Israelis.

    "It's not fair" said one Hamas spokesperson, asking not to be identified as he did not wish his skateboard to blow up by the much feared Mossad, we spend almost a decade, smuggle in 3000 tons of weapons thru terrible tunnels, pay off Egyptians, use Iranian cash to brides the Sudanese and for what? The rockets, missiles and mortars are now even more ineffectual than before! Allah be praised, we shot 20,000 rockets, mortars and missiles in 5 years and barely could kill 14 of them and NOW THIS!!

    The Iron Dome is horrible, it shoots our rockets out of the sky, this is why we are now starting anti-tank and knife attacks!

    Thier trickery for Satan will not stop us from cleansing the lands of the Jews."


    Poor Hamas....

    yawn

    ReplyDelete
  15. Some residents reported Thursday seeing the new Iron Dome defense system intercept a Grad rocket.

    Eyewitnesses told Ynet they saw the rocket explode in midair and realized that the system had intercepted its first rocket.

    Moshe Ben Hemo, a resident, said, "I was in the street and I heard a strange sound, like someone pushing the gas pedal of a car. Then I saw the rocket fly through the air and explode. Immediately I realized that it was Iron Dome..."

    ReplyDelete
  16. Can we put them all against the wall ?
    The housing industry will be hurt if the government shuts down? What was the government doing up till the housing problem started but fanning the flames? What have they done since the collapse? Stopped the foreclosures?

    Shut the Mike Foxtrot down!

    __________________________
    WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A shutdown of the federal government could have a serious and negative impact on the nation’s housing market and homeowners, a top Obama administration official said Thursday.

    Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told a Senate subcommittee that the Federal Housing Administration could not endorse more loans during a shutdown, adding that this might induce a loss of confidence in the lending community.

    ReplyDelete
  17. The reason these enormous bailout sums increase the likelihood of a default is because they are Tony Soprano bailouts – not a cent goes the countries themselves, but straight to their creditors, European banks and, increasingly, US hedge funds. It is a repeat of the loathed bank bailouts seen across the world, this time on the international stage. Taxpayers in the so-called "peripheral" economies are bailing out Europe's biggest banks. Britain's banks are also beneficiaries, with nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland at the head of the queue.

    ReplyDelete
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