Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

ha. but if you check lenin's tomb today, he says: "Qadhafi is finished, as I rashly predicted he would be." so he's covered all the bases.

"It wasn't very long ago that most news articles highlighted the fractious, poorly armed, badly trained, indisciplined character of the opposition, and the territorial gains made by Qadhafi."

Yes, including articles by, er, this guy.

"Reuters FLASH: Libyan state TV goes off air, rebel spokesman says state TV HQ is now under rebel control"

Actually only true when TV comes back on air again, but still. Interesting to see how quickly this is "professional" -- by local standards -- as that's a sign of how smoothly the state TV functionaries have switched sides.

From the Washington Post:

As rebels in Libya continued to establish their control of Tripoli on Monday, senior NATO officials they were startled by the speed with which Moammar Gaddafi’s defenses have collapsed.

Washington Post grammar typo

my -- utterly uninformed guess -- is that the apparent stalement in fact allowed time for a LOT of undecideds to conclude that, while they wouldn't head any charges against any gun emplacements any time soon, they would, if push came to shove, quietly open doors for the rebels and fail to return gaddafiist phonecalls. So that people who -- when caught by surprise four months ago -- would have reluctantly defended the pre-rebel status quo, had now had plenty of time to grasp that the pre-rebel status quo was not at all a given.

The BBC's Tripoli correspondent, Rana Jawad, who has been unable to report openly since March, says people in her neighbourhood in eastern Tripoli were woken by the imam at the local mosque singing the national anthem of the pre-Gaddafi monarchy.

http://www.juancole.com/2011/08/top-ten-myths-about-the-libya-war.html

i don't know anything about the pre-g monarchy but that is a kind of rad bit of reporting

report fails to mention that the pre-gaddafi anthem was sugar, sugar by the archies

Related and depressing

I think Cole's been OTM throughout this. I can forgive him a little smugness today.

"lead from behind" supporters also feeling smug:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/revisiting_leading_from_behind031709.php#

right now watching an AJA doc on metal in the islamic world -- still have hopes my tripoli fellow upthread will have his fandom identified

i was trying to spot him but didn't see which one you were talking about! i saw a dude with a red shirt that i thought might have been the guy you meant, but then i thought "red? death metal??"

on the back of his T he had a kind of gothy screamy face with dark hatched scribbles all round it like a cowl: he was walking away -- hence seeing his back -- alongside the car

and yes, it was white on black not red

all the saif body-doubles now playing silly buggers w/world's media: is it me or is it him? which one got the phd at the lse?

Gaddafi has an honorary degree from the State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics in Belarus:

http://www.bsuir.by/online/showpage.jsp?PageID=87178&resID=100229&lang=ru&menuItemID=115808

i totally want one of those guys to get my old video so the picture shows on my new TV

I realize the rebels are in Tripoli, whatever that means, but I could have sworn this thing has been close to over several times already. There are still loyalists shelling and shooting. Gaddafi and his sons are still at large. And regardless, there's a looming power vacuum ready to kick in, and as soon as NATO/US pulls support what's to stop civil war? Or will this be another permanent Western military engagement?

i don't know anything about the pre-g monarchy

I know Gaddafi overthrew King Idris, but no explanation of how a Welshman ended up being king of Libya in the first place.

It looks like the rebels might be trying to bring as much of the existing state infrastructure along with them as possible, rather than taking a new broom approach. The statement yesterday was that everyone in the police, civil service and security apparatus was being asked to turn up for work as usual. Might be one way of avoiding the kind of massive destabilisation we've seen in Iraq.

Yes, de-Ba'athication (or whatever the equivalent) is not the way to go.

I don't know why the default should be pessimism, Josh. To talk about a power vacuum and civil war as the only alternative to permanent western presence is to treat the Libyans as idiots. Of course it's hard to replace a dictator who has had the system in place for over 40 years - doesn't mean it's impossible.

how a Welshman ended up being king of Libya in the first place.

lol @ history

I could have sworn this thing has been close to over several times already

Only if you believe the Western news media, bowing before the holy monstrance of NATO air power.

tbh i haven't been reading pravda too closely of late, but i was not under the impression this was close to over. the media was telling me that it was in stalemate.

The Western news media taking the rebels at their word yesterday re the capture of Gadhafi's son are today asking more questions.

But yes various political figures and NATO people were saying the Gadhafi regime was nearly finished at various times over the past weeks.

i only watched on al-jazeera on sunday night -- don't know if that counts as "western news media" -- and they were pretty gung-ho about it all, even if they only showed the same three-minute clip of rebels stamping on a gadaffi-carpet in endless loop about a thousand times

also: it was pretty hard to listen to the translations and sound quality of muammar g's broadcasts and be feeling "this is a man with a clear grip on events"

no don't you see the western media is lying to you because they're always lying about everything and any second now Capital Q is going to surge back to power with a crack army of mercenaries and dedicated loyalists who will plunge the country back into a protracted civil war that is going to turn into a morass, dragging NATO and the US into an interminable war that will just prolong the suffering of the Libyan people and waste billions of dollars in resources on a horribly misguided colonialist adventure. or something.

I know a NATO-assisted rebel victory would be horribly inconvenient for you, Morbius. Let's hope Gaddafi fights back and wreaks a bloody revenge just to prove you right.

no don't you see the western media is lying to you because they're always lying about everything and any second now Capital Q is going to surge back to power with a crack army of mercenaries and dedicated loyalists who will plunge the country back into a protracted civil war that is going to turn into a morass, dragging NATO and the US into an interminable war that will just prolong the suffering of the Libyan people and waste billions of dollars in resources on a horribly misguided colonialist adventure. or something.

yeah well never say never

just being a "realist" dontchaknow

way to bet: horrible old murderous bastard is replaced by others.

love this btw:

With his 42-year rule appearing to crumble, to whom did Colonel Qaddafi turn for a sympathetic ear?

Apparently, to his old chess buddy.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the head of the World Chess Federation, claims to have spoken to the embattled -- and still unaccounted for -- Colonel Qaddafi by phone, according to Russia's Interfax news agency. Mr. Ilyumzhinov said the Libyan leader was still in Tripoli.

FIDE head Ilyumzhinov says he talked to Gaddafi on phone, he is in Tripoli with his eldest son Mohammed, no plans to leave Libya.

This account could not be verified, though it is not entirely from left field. Colonel Qaddafi and Mr. Ilyumzhinov met in Tripoli for a chess match staged for the Libyan state television cameras in June.

Of course, as The Lede pointed out then, Mr. Ilyumzhinov has a reputation for being something of an eccentric, believing, among other things, that chess is "a gift from extraterrestrial civilizations."

Morbz keepin hope alive

He's our very own little ray of sunshine

people in libya don't know wtf is going on so i'd take it all pretty circumspectly for another few months at least

I bet Bam can remake the world into paradise with lots more bombing. What a wonderful world it would be.

it's weird how everything is so black and white with you. like there's no "worse" or "better" there is only "BEST" and "WORST" and no in between

blame the nuns, I guess

I didn't even realise Morbius had a BEST

man if i was godawfly i'd have rigged that whole compound with bombs out the ass and would be sitting on a couch in algeria right now with my remote control blowing that whole place up the minute it got stormed

Tweet of the day, from Eli Lake of the Washington Times:

Worth noting. President Birth Certificate has done what Reagan and W could not: end Gadhafi’s reign and kill bin Laden.

to be fair reagan did manage to kill his adopted daughter

bam's bombs may have contributed but they didn't start it -- this was a genuine generational uprising also: as ditto across all arab world

you know your army is awesome when the uniform is "chicago bulls shorts"
http://media.timesleader.com/images/Mideast%20Libya_Acco(2).jpg

isn't that the Miami Heat?

yep