Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

Sure, I've been using that since Egypt kicked off at the start of the year.

that's cool. there are lots of good links on the liveblogs and twitter feeds. just saying that if i was pointing you toward info about the arab spring, i wouldn't point in the direction of the university of michigan.

Ha, fair point. He's not my only source.

cole is an american version of hitchens in that he can't help but inject his outsized ego into the topic. at the end of the day, you learn as much or more about hitchens as you do about the middle east.

i mean, sympomatic of juan cole: his wikipedia entry, which lists him as a "kahlil gibran expert" is longer than kahlil gibran's wikipedia entry.

I think Cole's a bit more humble than Hitchens, but that's not saying much. Obviously if one has time, it's best to read a variety of sources. Speaking of which, on the current transition and comparisons to Iraq:

From Reuters:

For months a handful of Western advisers has worked with the NTC, based in the eastern city of Benghazi, on plans for a power transition that would avoid the disasters of Iraq.

Intentions are one thing, implementation another.

From Washington Post:
Among the first waves of rebels to storm Tripoli this week was a small team whose members carried smartphones along with their weapons. Under a well-rehearsed plan, they blasted Arabic text messages that would appear on tens of thousands of cellphones throughout the city.

“Don’t destroy public buildings,” one read. “These are for the future of Libya.”

Libyan novelist Hisham Matar's POV

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/26/libya-revolution-hisham-matar-edinburgh?CMP=twt_fd

this is over a month old but i don't think its being talked about at all?

http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/2011/07/17/lynching-in-benghazi/

The treatment of black Africans is a horrible element of all this - I have seen it mentioned but not much, that's true - but what's with the final paragraph?

We ask our readers to contact news organisations to demand they cover this story and to contact politicians to ensure that the rebels, amongst whom are clearly a significant faction equivalent to Al Qaeda /the Ku Klux Klan, are not supported in taking control of any further population centres.

Doesn't seem like an impartial human rights group to me. Other stories on that site include one claiming that not buying oil from Syria will amount to infanticide: "The move has been supported by Human Rights Watch, who seem to have forgotten the lessons of the Iraqi sanctions, or perhaps are so wedded to US foreign policy that they don’t care." Weirdly they don't seem to care at all about the human rights of demonstrators murdered by Assad.

Obviously there is a horrifying and dangerous and racist propaganda and violence campaign against sub-saharans happening as part of this. Otherizing the enemy is a sad and awful and predictable part of a war.

That said, I do find it interesting that HRI came into existence on 4/21, a month after Odyssey Dawn started. HRI has reported almost exclusively on Libya, and has fielded accusations of being Gaddhafi-funded. Things that make me go hmm, to say the least.

Interesting piece from a pro-intervention Marxist:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/27/1010769/-Who-really-beat-Qaddafi?via=blog_511082

Gist: "Much of the anti-war movement, short on analysis and driven by reflex, came out opposed to NATO. They took a counter-revolutionary stand with regards to the Libyan revolution."

cf hitch

"your analysis is lacking" was always my fave marxist-to-marxist zing

I love Marxist v Marxist beef. I like "counter-revolutionary" as an unashamedly old school put-down.

Hell, I'm a 'pro-intervention Marxist' - I hope we're not so rare that it's a gimmick. And I hope that other Marxists write better articles than that one - it's kind of repetitive.

marxists were the o.g. interventionists

Man, this is just awful:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/28/libya.gadhafi.nanny/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

And I hope that other Marxists write better articles than that one - it's kind of repetitive.

haha

On a lighter note:

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-72187.html

Beginning of one strange porn sequence, surely.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/a-qaddafi-family-photo-album/

The Algerian foreign ministry said Gaddafi's wife Safiya, daughter Aisha and sons Hannibal and Mohammed and their children had entered Algeria at 8.45am on Monday, according to the state-run APS news agency.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/29/gaddafi-family-escape-libya-algeria

Algerian authorities earlier this year crushed an attempt to create a Tunisian-style uprising in Algiers

There's lots of blad blood in Algeria; brutal war for independence, election results in '91 that would have put Islamists into power were nullified and subsequent civil war...

kind of bummed this didnt result in an interview:

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqrbf4ALy81qk7pano1_500.png

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/2011831151258728747.html

I managed to smuggle away some documents, among them some that indicate the Gaddafi regime, despite its constant anti-American rhetoric – maintained direct communications with influential figures in the US.

I found what appeared to be the minutes of a meeting between senior Libyan officials – Abubakr Alzleitny and Mohammed Ahmed Ismail – and David Welch, former assistant secretary of state under George W Bush. Welch was the man who brokered the deal to restore diplomatic relations between the US and Libya in 2008.
Papers and files were strewn about the offices of Libya's intelligence agency [Evan Hill/Al Jazeera]

Welch now works for Bechtel, a multinational American company with billion-dollar construction deals across the Middle East. The documents record that, on August 2, 2011, David Welch met with Gaddafi's officials at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo, just a few blocks from the US embassy.

...

On the floor of the intelligence chief's office lay an envelope addressed to Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam. Inside, I found what appears to be a summary of a conversation between US congressman Denis Kucinich, who publicly opposed US policy on Libya, and an intermediary for the Libyan leader's son.

It details a request by the congressman for information he needed to lobby US lawmakers to suspend their support for the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) and to put an end to NATO airstrikes.

According to the document, Kucinich wanted evidence of corruption within the NTC and, like Welch, any possible links within rebel ranks to al-Qaeda.

holy shit

kooch fights dirty, yo.

When you want grits, you go to the grocery. When you want dirt on somebody, you go to their enemy. This is how a practical pol thinks.

never would i have called kooch practical.

and yet!!!!!!!!!!!

gr8080, your wish is granted. LA road-trip dude interviewed:

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/road-trip-american-student-joins-rebels-in-fight-for-muammar-qaddafis-hometown

The tent glowed with morning. A scuffle of noise approached. I got up and pulled on my cargo shorts. The men entered, the tall one first. Three excitable akhii were behind him.

"We found your phone charger, Chris Jeon," he said. "It was behind the latrine."

"Gross," I said.

On the floor of the intelligence chief's office lay an envelope addressed to Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam. Inside, I found what appears to be a summary of a conversation between US congressman Denis Kucinich, who publicly opposed US policy on Libya, and an intermediary for the Libyan leader's son.

Worth taking with a pinch of salt. There was a similar situation with 'conveniently accessible' documents found by Telegraph reporters in the Iraqi intelligence ministry linking George Galloway with all sorts of dodgy stuff. It's widely accepted that they were false and put there deliberately to discredit him. Not sure who by, though.

the when and the what of this so-called conversation would seem to be pertinent also, since the gadaffis were persona NON non grata with the "international community" until early this year...

"It is the end of my summer vacation, so I thought it would be cool to join the rebels," said Chris Jeon, a 21-year-old university student from Los Angeles, shrugging cooly.

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu216/le_bateau_ivre/zi7hd.gif

hipstercenaries

It's widely accepted that they were false and put there deliberately to discredit him.

is it? the tele lost its libel action because a comment piece that called him a "traitor" demolished the public interest defence they were trying to use, by making it a partisan attack rather than an impartial presentation of evidence. galloway certainly did make use of oil-for-food cash in the mariam appeal, which paid for his travel and political campaigning in a way that makes the issue of personal gain a very fine one. the commons standards and privileges committee judged that the telegraph docs were authentic, and that the reporter's account of finding them was genuine.

Yes, perhaps 'widely accepted' was a bit strong. It's certainly true that there's always been a significant amount of doubt about the authenticity of the documents although there's little doubt that they were believed to have been genuine by the Telegraph's reporter and there was never a question of deception on his part.

the commons committee got the forensics expert which galloway had hired for the libel action (whose work wasn't finished because the case wasn't going to hinge on authenticity) to complete the analysis of the documents. his report said:

"In my opinion the evidence found fully supports that the vast majority of the submitted documents are authentic. In my opinion the submitted documents are not all forgeries created at a later time. Whilst I cannot totally exclude the theoretical possibility that all the submitted documents were created during the time that they state but by a non-authentic source such as a 'shadow office', I consider that this is extremely unlikely.

"Given that the vast majority of the submitted documents are authentic then, in my opinion, there is a high probability that all the disputed Telegraph documents are also authentic. I find no evidence that any are forgeries or altered and I consider this possibility to be extremely unlikely."

can't really imagine why anyone would behave the way galloway behaved if it wasn't for money.

The story about the American student terrifies me. I can't understand how someone could act that way, and I'm inclined to think he's unhinged.

You're saying that's an atypical American mindset?

I can't understand how someone could act that way

Thinks he's Hemingway

that's the thing tho - there is obviously a precedent for young men setting off to join foreign wars, plenty of Irish went to Spain at the same time as Hemingway (fighting on both sides). I can understand that, same as I can understand those guys who left the UK/US to join various jihads (this is probably still going on). There are also Irish-Libyans who have left here to fight.

But this guy by his own account has neither any connections to, nor even any strong understanding of the conflict (which is pretty complex). Plus he paid his own way - one-way. Imo he's either a lunatic or a spy/agent provocateur (could be both of course).

hmmm a lot of parentheses in that post

He's damaging the cause by setting himself up to be used in government propaganda--not just in Libya, but elsewhere in the Arab world--as proof that the rebel movement is a front for US interests.

yep

to be fair to hemingway, he served with the red cross in WW1 (when he was actually a teenager): he was in his late 30s when he want to spain

don't forget Orwell

*remembers orwell*

the rebel movement is a front for US UCLA interests.

Their math dept obv a major, though obscure, player in international intrigue