{"id":1141,"date":"2011-04-30T07:19:58","date_gmt":"2011-04-30T14:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/?p=1141"},"modified":"2011-04-30T07:37:03","modified_gmt":"2011-04-30T14:37:03","slug":"shock-and-awe-in-libya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/?p=1141","title":{"rendered":"“Shock and Awe” in Libya"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nSad to see that Canada’s NDP and The Green Party did not foresee the inevitable mission creep in Libya when they both supported the bombing mission in Libya.<\/p>\n

The following is a good article I found on the subject of this type of mission. <\/p>\n

April 27, 2011
\nwww.consortiumnews.com<\/p>\n

Trying ‘Shock and
\nAwe’ in Libya [ http:\/\/www.consortiumnews.com\/2011\/042711.html ]<\/p>\n

By Robert Parry <\/p>\n

[Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the
\nAssociated Press and Newsweek.]<\/p>\n

Having laughed off Libyan government peace feelers, Official Washington is
\nnow beating the drum for a new round of “shock and awe” bombings and
\nclose-combat air strikes to “finish the job” of ousting Col. Muammar Gaddafi.<\/p>\n

Typically, this Washington debate is being framed as a series of choices for
\nPresident Barack Obama and NATO: one, abandon the current campaign of air
\nstrikes and let Gaddafi prevail; two, continue the conflict at its current
\npace and accept a stalemate; or three, commit more military resources to
\n“win.”<\/p>\n

The neoconservative-dominated opinion circles of Washington are almost
\nunanimous in their determination to push Obama and NATO to adopt option
\nthree. It is a consensus not seen since almost all these same Serious People
\nsupported George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, which started off with
\nthe “shock and awe” bombing that was supposed to solve everything.<\/p>\n

Left out of today’s Libyan debate is any consideration of building on the
\nAfrican Union’s proposal for a ceasefire and a transition to democracy with
\nGaddafi on the sidelines. Gaddafi’s embattled regime agreed to those terms,
\nbut the plan was spurned by anti-Gaddafi rebels and doesn’t even rate a
\nmention when the “options” are listed in the Big Media.<\/p>\n

Besides taking a page from Bush’s “shock and awe” playbook, the Smart Talk
\nin Washington also suggests modeling “regime change” in Libya after NATO’s
\nbombing of Serbia in 1999.<\/p>\n

Those NATO strikes against the capital of Belgrade inflicted hundreds of
\ncivilian deaths, with estimates ranging from about 500 to more than 1,200,
\nincluding the killing of 16 people working at the Serb TV station.<\/p>\n

NATO generals justified their bombing of Serb TV on the premise that “enemy
\npropaganda” is a legitimate target in wartime, even if the station’s
\npersonnel were unarmed and defenseless. Since then, the intentional
\ntargeting of civilian TV and radio stations has become part of Western
\nmilitary doctrine when trying to overthrow Arab and Third World regimes.<\/p>\n

The Serbian model is now being applied to Libya with the blessings of senior
\nmilitary officials who participated in that campaign. For instance, Gen.
\nJohn P. Jumper, who commanded U.S. Air Force units over Serbia, told the New
\nYork Times that bombing high-profile institutional sites in Belgrade proved
\nmore effective than the destruction of Serbian tanks and other military
\ntargets.<\/p>\n

“It was when we went in and began to disturb important and symbolic sites in
\nBelgrade and began to bring to a halt the middle-class life in Belgrade,
\nthat [Serbian President Slobodan] Milosevic’s own people began to turn on
\nhim,” Jumper said.<\/p>\n

Now, Jumper said a similar approach is being pursued in Libya. This week,
\nNATO planes bombed Libya’s capital of Tripoli briefly knocking Libyan TV off
\nthe air and blasting Gaddafi’s personal residence (although NATO insisted
\nthat the raid wasn’t an assassination attempt, wink-wink).<\/p>\n

In other words, the anti-Serb air campaign, which was estimated to kill four
\nSerb civilians for every Serb soldier slain, is now becoming the model for
\nNATO’s military strategy in Libya.<\/p>\n

Contradicting a Mandate<\/p>\n

One might think the application of the Serbian model to Libya would raise
\nred flags in the U.S. news media since it suggests that NATO may end up
\nkilling large numbers of civilians under a United Nations mandate to protect
\ncivilians.<\/p>\n

However, led by the Washington Post and the New York Times, major U.S. news
\noutlets have ignored this obvious contradiction. Instead, there’s a renewed
\nexcitement over the prospect of a new “shock and awe” bombing of an “enemy”
\ncountry that’s been stripped of its air defenses.<\/p>\n

In influential U.S. opinion circles, it’s pro-war propaganda all the time.
\nIndeed, the New York Times seems to publish only editorials and essays
\nfavoring an expanded conflict.<\/p>\n

Dominating the Times op-ed page on Tuesday was a call from retired Army Lt.
\nGen. James M. Dubik to “finish the job” in Libya.<\/p>\n

Dubik, who served in the Iraq War and is now a senior fellow at the
\nInstitute for the Study of War, framed the debate in a way to make
\nescalation and victory the only “responsible” choice. He also projected a
\nlong-term U.S. and NATO presence in Libya after Gaddafi’s defeat.<\/p>\n

“If Colonel Qaddafi falls, the United States and NATO will have a
\nresponsibility to help shape the postwar order, including providing security
\nto prevent a liberated Libya from sinking into chaos,” Dubik wrote.
\n“Washington must start planning and preparing for this complex and expensive
\ncontingency and muster the substantial political will required to see it
\nthrough.”<\/p>\n

In other words, we’re looking at another U.S.\/NATO occupation of a
\n“liberated” Arab or Muslim country.<\/p>\n

What’s also clear from the U.S. news coverage is that the Times editors and
\nother opinion-shapers are engaged in Dubik’s important first step, building
\nthe “political will” for this new war and future occupation by excluding any
\nserious questions about the wisdom of the desired course.<\/p>\n

The Times on Wednesday published another pro-war op-ed \u00ad focusing on
\nGaddafi’s supposed failure to provide quality milk to his countrymen.
\nMeanwhile, there has been zero reexamination of a key rationale for U.S.
\nparticipation in the war, Gaddafi’s alleged guilt in the Pan Am 103 bombing
\nover Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.<\/p>\n

“The blood of Americans is on [Gaddafi’s] hands because he was responsible
\nfor the bombing of Pan Am 103,” declared Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, after
\na recent trip to rebel-held Benghazi during which McCain joined the call for
\na larger U.S. military role.<\/p>\n

The Times and other leading U.S. news outlets also treat Libya’s guilt as a
\nflat fact, but the case actually remains murky.<\/p>\n

In 2001, a Scottish court did convict Libyan agent Ali al-Megrahi for the
\nbombing which killed 270 people. But the judgment appears to have been more
\na political compromise than an act of justice. One of the judges told
\nDartmouth government professor Dirk Vandewalle about “enormous pressure put
\non the court to get a conviction.”<\/p>\n

Megrahi’s conviction assuaged the understandable human desire to see someone
\npunished for such a heinous crime, albeit a possibly innocent man.<\/p>\n

Reopening a Terror Case<\/p>\n

In 2007, after the testimony of a key government witness was discredited,
\nthe Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission agreed to reconsider the
\nconviction as a grave miscarriage of justice. However, that review was
\nproceeding slowly in 2009 when Scottish authorities released Megrahi on
\nhumanitarian grounds, after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.<\/p>\n

Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to gain the early release, but that
\ndoesn’t mean he was guilty. He has continued to assert his innocence and an
\nobjective press corps would reflect the doubts regarding his conviction.<\/p>\n

The Scottish court’s purported reason for finding Megrahi guilty \u00ad while
\nacquitting his co-defendant Lamin Khalifa Fhimah \u00ad was the testimony of Toni
\nGauci, owner of a clothing store in Malta who allegedly sold Megrahi a
\nshirt, the remnants of which were found with the shards of the suitcase that
\ncontained the bomb.<\/p>\n

The rest of the case rested on a theory that Megrahi put the luggage on a
\nflight from Malta to Frankfurt, where it was transferred to a connecting
\nflight to London, where it was transferred onto Pan Am 103 bound for New
\nYork, a decidedly unlikely way to undertake an act of terrorism given all
\nthe random variables involved.<\/p>\n

Megrahi would have had to assume that three separate airport security
\nsystems \u00ad at Malta, Frankfort and London \u00ad would fail to give any serious
\nscrutiny to an unaccompanied suitcase or to detect the bomb despite security
\nofficials being on the lookout for just such a threat.<\/p>\n

As historian William Blum recounted in a Consortiumnews.com article after
\nMegrahi’s 2001 conviction, “The case for the suitcase’s hypothetical travels
\nmust also deal with the fact that, according to Air Malta, all the
\ndocumented luggage on KM180 was collected by passengers in Frankfurt and did
\nnot continue in transit to London, and that two Pan Am on-duty officials in
\nFrankfurt testified that no unaccompanied luggage was introduced onto Pan Am
\n103A, the feeder flight to London.”<\/p>\n

There also were problems with Gauci’s belated identification of Megrahi as
\nthe shirt-buyer a decade after the fact. Gauci had made contradictory IDs
\nand had earlier given a physical description that didn’t match Megrahi.
\nGauci reportedly received a $2 million reward for his testimony and then
\nmoved to Australia, where he went into retirement.<\/p>\n

In 2007, the Scottish review panel decided to reconsider Megrahi’s
\nconviction after concluding that Gauci’s testimony was unbelievable. And
\nwithout Gauci’s testimony, the case against Megrahi was virtually the same
\nas the case against his co-defendant who was acquitted.<\/p>\n

However, after Megrahi’s conviction in 2001, more international pressure was
\nput on Libya, which was then regarded as the archetypal “rogue” state.
\nIndeed, it was to get onerous economic sanctions lifted that Libya took
\n“responsibility” for the Pan Am attack and paid reparations to the victims’
\nfamilies even as Libyan officials continued to deny guilt.<\/p>\n

Yet, despite these doubts about the Pan Am 103 case, the U.S. news media
\ncontinues to treat Libya’s guilt as a flat fact.<\/p>\n

A Defector Questioned<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, there was some excitement over the possibility that
\nGaddafi would be fingered as the Pan Am 103 mastermind by a high-level
\ndefector, former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa, who was believed to
\nbe in charge of Libyan intelligence in 1988.<\/p>\n

Moussa Koussa was questioned by Scottish authorities but apparently shed
\nlittle new light on the case and was allowed to go free after the interview.
\nVery quickly the press interest over Moussa Koussa faded away.<\/p>\n

Yet, as the clamor now builds in Official Washington for an escalation of
\nU.S. participation in the war \u00ad and as the Pan Am 103 case is cited over and
\nover as justification \u00ad there has been no serious reexamination of the
\nmystery, only the repetition of Libya’s assumed guilt.<\/p>\n

Looking across the landscape of the U.S. news media, it is hard to find any
\nmajor voice suggesting peace negotiations with Gaddafi’s government or even
\nadvocating that the sincerity of its acceptance of the African Union’s plan
\nfor a cease-fire and democratic reforms should be put to the test.<\/p>\n

Instead, virtually all the talking heads are armchair warriors, with the
\nneoconservative editors of the Washington Post and the New York Times again
\nleading the way by condemning Obama’s decision to minimize U.S. military
\nparticipation.<\/p>\n

“If his real aim were to plunge NATO into a political crisis, or to exhaust
\nthe air forces and military budgets of Britain and France,which are doing
\nmost of the bombing, this would be a brilliant strategy. As it is, it is
\nimpossible to understand,” the Post wrote on April 17:.<\/p>\n

“Mr. Obama appears less intent on ousting Mr. Gaddafi or ensuring NATO’s
\nsuccess than in proving an ideological point, that the United States need
\nnot take the lead in a military operation that does not involve vital U.S.
\ninterests.<\/p>\n

“How else to explain his decision to deny NATO the two most effective ground
\nattack airplanes in the world ,the AC-130 and A-10 Warthog , which exist
\nonly in the U.S. Air Force and which were attacking Mr. Gaddafi’s tanks and
\nartillery until April 4?”<\/p>\n

The New York Times has been equally adamant about seeing the AC-130s and
\nA-10 Warthogs put back into action mowing down Libyan troops loyal to
\nGaddafi. “Mr. Obama should authorize [the ground-attack planes] to fly again
\nunder NATO command,” the Times declared on April 14, reiterating a demand
\nthat the editors had made just a week earlier.<\/p>\n

Yet, if NATO’s real goal is to minimize civilian casualties, Western
\ncountries might want to think twice about taking sides in what is shaping up
\nas an ugly tribal war. They might even give peace a chance, rather than
\nreplay the civilian bombings in Belgrade or the “shock and awe” over Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sad to see that Canada’s NDP and The Green Party did not foresee the inevitable mission creep in Libya when they both supported the bombing mission in Libya.<\/p>\n

The following is a good article I found on the subject of this type of mission. <\/p>\n

April 27, 2011 www.consortiumnews.com<\/p>\n

Trying ‘Shock and Awe’ in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1141"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1153,"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions\/1153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.derykhouston.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}