Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

dont know why so many of you have opinions about this, seems a lot easier to sit back and form an opinion later after its clear whos right

― max, Monday, March 21, 2011 3:07 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

overlooked truth bomb

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/26/111109/new-rebel-leader-spent-much-of.html

"Libyan rebel leader spent much of past 20 years in suburban Virginia"

Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C. Badr said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself, and that Hifter primarily focused on helping his large family.

keep thinking "you know who else lived in northern VA? HIFTER!"

overlooked truth bomb

― patrice wil$on is my favorite rapper (history mayne), Thursday, March 31, 2011 2:35 PM (39 minutes ago)

i think like 3 people itt have expressed opinions tbf

huh i wonder was mr hifter was doing in suburban virginia? cant really think of any major institutions or complexes located there

i know it's funny and everything but let's not get crazy with this CIA stuff just because an asylee lives in northern virginia

just a bit of spycraft, lets be cool

i mean, i wouldn't be surprised, but come on

In 1975, during the Fall of Saigon, Nguyễn fled South Vietnam. He moved to the United States, and opened a pizza restaurant at Rolling Valley Mall, in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Burke, Virginia. In 1991, Nguyễn was forced into retirement when his identity was publicly disclosed. Photographer Eddie Adams recalled that on his last visit to the pizza shop, he had seen written on a toilet wall, "We know who you are, fucker".[5]

Taking the position that Libya could not possibly become any worse than it was, say, just six months ago is not credible ... this quote shows no grasp of the possibilities for bloody mayhem now that bombs and bullets have been added to the mix.

of course im aware libya post-uprising could likely be worse in the short term, or hell, even long-term, than libya under gadaffi. that's the same with pretty much every revolution ever, american, french, whatever. you and tracer are saying no-one should ever have one, afaict. im very much aware of the possibilities for bloody mayhem, but the bullets, for the millionth time, were added to the mix by gadaffi. he had unarmed protesters shot.

i take it that in your view they should not have protested, because a violent response was inevitable? would be really interested to know what, from your vantage point in the post-revolutionary west, the libyans who rose up should have done instead.

― patrice wil$on is my favorite rapper (history mayne), Thursday, March 31, 2011 7:54 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

invoking revolution is misleading here. events in libya stopped being revolution (in the context you're talking about) when the u.n. got involved. it then became a sort of assisted insurrection, with the focus on the nations trying to oust q/gfi, not on the presumed 'revolutionaries'

dont know why so many of you have opinions about this, seems a lot easier to sit back and form an opinion later after its clear whos right

― max, Monday, March 21, 2011 3:07 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

overlooked truth bomb

― patrice wil$on is my favorite rapper (history mayne), Thursday, March 31, 2011 6:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can't recall the famous quote max's post paraphrases (sorry bad syntax etc). but good quote and good post.

don't worry Moammar, Louis' has got yr back!

j@gg3r?

well him too

I still can't tell if that "wait and see" truthbomb is supposed to be a joke or note.

best to wait and see

Don't Worry Jagger (Moammar's Only Looking For Your Hand in the Snow)

I still can't tell if that "wait and see" truthbomb is supposed to be a joke or note.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, March 31, 2011 11:19 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

basically = 'boy im glad i didnt have to make that decision' right

i feel like NATO is helping the rebels just enough for this to go on for fucking years.

Speaking of Bosnia, their slightly odd ethno-political system still causing problems : http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/12933096.stm

Coalition air strike 'killed seven civilians'

.. in rebel held territory, so assume the doctor is not pro-Gadaffi?

A small price to pay for freedom. Freedom isn't free! Had they not been killed, Qaddafi may have killed them.

An aide to one of Q's sons defected to the UK.

And since its Friday, I believe there were more protests in various parts of the world after services, in Syria:

Al-Jazeera, and other media, report that so far, the government is using only tear gas, water cannon and people in plainclothes armed with sticks to try to subdue the protesters

The new kinder and gentler Syria

http://images1.cpcache.com/product/109943681v2_480x480_Front.jpg

xp: 'killed seven civilians'

Note the airstrike hit a pro-Gaddafi ammunition truck. The secondary explosion destroyed two nearby houses. Not entirely comparable to cluster bombing Kosovo refugees by accident.

At least one dead now reported in Syria

If NATO start attacking civilians, will NATO hit NATO with aerial attacks too?

u guys should check this book 'catch 22' its rlly great

you don't have to be crazy to bomb libya, but it helps!

So author Jeremy Scahill (from the far left) is mocking the Libyan rebels as a small ragtag bunch similar to the contras that Reagan backed, while some on the far right are convinced they're all Al queda and will turn on the US next....

Scahill has a long article in the Nation on Yemen and the US battles with Al Queda there. The comment section discusses his disagreements with liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz re Libya.

http://www.thenation.com/article/159578/dangerous-us-game-yemen?comment_sort=ASC#comments

Oh FFS North Africans don't want to start Al Q groups.

I read Scahill's book on Blackwater and admired it and him, until I peeked at his Facebook photos and saw photos of him in the late nineties hanging out with Fidel. Unironically.

US ending air combat role

Whatever that means. Directly, you mean, since I assume we will continue to supply intel and whatnot.

I think it means we aren't gonna fly planes and drop bombs

from the far left (bill o'reilly voice)

Oh FFS North Africans don't want to start Al Q groups.

It was my understanding that there were numerous Libyans w/Al Qaeda in Afghanistan though that was said to reflect the futility of operations in Libya as much as anything.

It was my understanding that "Al Qaeda is secretly running the Libyan revolution/arming them with Islamist strings attached" was basically a unsubstantiated rumor taken seriously by the likes of Alex Jones and George Noory...

yeah i mean no one besides complete idiots believes they're "secretly running" the whole thing or whatever absolute terms you'd like to use - the makeup of the_rebels is still v much unclear tho obv which is (one of the many reasons) why the US is hesitant to arm them

Oh FFS North Africans don't want to start Al Q groups.

― nights of d. cameron (suzy), Friday, April 1, 2011 5:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

eh? dunno how they feel about OG al-q, but violent islamists have been known to inhabit the region (and indeed inspired osama's merry band), and could take on the brand. don't think they are 'running tings' but it's a factor in the equation.

TS: an administration that directly and openly funded terrorism against the west vs a rebellion that may or may not (while accepting aid from the west) end up rebelling violently against the west.

i keep forgetting everything wrt libya fits into these neat binaries

Het, if the world doesn't fit into binaries then those in power acr as if it does, which is kind of the same thing. I mean, any weapons we give the rebels will be be less (or equal) to what Gaddafi would have if he wins.

The US seems more worried about the Al Queda unit (AQAP) operating in Yemen and what will happen if (when at this point, maybe) Yemen's head of state leaves. Scahill thinks that the US' single-minded focus on AQAP without any support for bread and butter economic issues there has backfired for the US.

Will Syria eventually succeed Iran-style in supressing dissent?
From the NY Times:
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities around Syria on Friday to chants of “We want freedom” and security forces responded with tear gas, electrified batons, clubs and bullets, killing at least seven people, according to activists, residents and a Syrian human rights group.

demonstrators had chanted “Freedom is not a foreign conspiracy or call to sectarian division,” in response to the Wednesday speech in which President Assad accused protesters of advancing “an Israeli agenda” against Syria and said they had been “duped” or were conspiring to destroy the nation.

Syrian state media on Friday reported that imams and prayer leaders had repeated President Assad’s warning about foreign conspiracies.

demonstrators had chanted “Freedom is not a foreign conspiracy or call to sectarian division,” i

It probably flows better in Arabic

haha

Do the Libyan rebels want a ceasefire now because they don't expect NATO to be as agressive as the US in bombing?

ABC news:

Coalition forces "captured all of what we may call the low-hanging fruit, the armored columns, those targets in obvious positions on open roads, sitting on open terrain," Shashank Joshi of the British think tank Royal United Services Institute told Reuters.

"What we may now be left with is heavy weaponry on the ground that's more difficult to find and isolate because it is next to urban targets," he said.

Cordesman said the dynamic could pose a challenge for NATO and European militaries which are not as well equipped as the U.S. with aerial surveillance technologies

NATO may have accidentally bombed the rebels. Meanwhile, hundreds of pro-democracy rebels in Ivory Coast massacred for trying to take down their own democracy-resisting strongman. Better keep those jet engines running, right? Especially if we want to keep global cocoa prices down.

All in all, i think it's going pretty well over there.