Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

omg at guardian front page, jesus fuck at how graphic it is

can we call this a success now

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4130/5183688097_59abd84f51.jpg

america is running out of classic boogeymen

thank god we have a slate of republican candidates to fill the gap

whoa at guardian front page

xp: and Joseph Kony

can we call this a success now

nah

Who knows what the future holds but the more prosaic but nonetheless important thing I'm going to start watching in the Maghreb is the elections in Tunisia

so we "lead from behind" going forward y/n?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/21/gaddafi-loyalists-torture-human-rights

The "flawless" performance of the Eurofighter Typhoon in the Libyan war has catapulted the aircraft ahead of its main rival to win one of the most lucrative of defence deals in recent times.

The Indian government has shortlisted both the Dassault Rafale and the Typhoon, both veterans of the Libyan campaign, for a planned £7 billion order of 126 jets for its air force.

The Typhoon was already leading the pack after the jet scored highest in a technical assessment by Indian pilots who flew the aircraft in a series of exercises in 2010.

But it is believed that it will be the Typhoon's performance in the Libyan conflict, where it completed more than 600 combat missions, that will help to clinch the deal, the result of which will be made public before Christmas.

can we call this a success now

I'd say yes, based on two salient facts: Ghaddafi is permanently removed from the picture and the US and NATO are not stationing any troops in Libya as a result (although there may be a fairly small number of military advisors in-country). Also, the Libyan people appear to be accepting of the casualties they suffered in the process of deposing Ghaddafi, as a necessary price and not an excessive one. Given what war is like, that's a success.

What happens next is out of our hands and I prefer it that way.

saif arrested by pro-government fighters

Now why do I suspect the hand of Western governments in this? The ones who wouldn't want him to spill all he knows in The Hague?

?????????

ja, probably the c1a

What kind of dirt do you think Gaddaffi son Saif has?

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/19/world/africa/libya-gadhafi-son/index.html

It's sad he thought he was saif

http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/225833/a-year-later-libya-is-still-a-mess

This piece is written by a Glenn Greenwald endorsed conservative who might be an isolationist. But I also have read other pieces on the problems in Libya and on Tuaregs who had supported Quaddaffi now returning to Mali with more weapons

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Taureg-Rebels-Vow-Push-in-Mali-After-Coup-143967086.html

Well-armed Tuareg separatists started attacking army bases in Mali's desert in January, after many Tuareg fighters returned from Libya, where they had assisted in the ousting Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The United Nations refugee agency says the conflict has uprooted 130,000 people in and around Mali. Many soldiers have died in the conflict.

Tuareg nomads have launched periodic uprisings for greater autonomy in Mali and Niger.

holy shit.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/world/africa/libya-us-ambassador-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The trailer was uploaded to YouTube by Sam Bacile, whom The Wall Street Journal Web site identified as a 52-year old Israeli-American real estate developer in California. He told the Web site he had raised $5 million from 100 Jewish donors to make the film. “Islam is a cancer,” Mr. Bacile was quoted as saying.

top, top work from the lad there

Yeah, what a dong. The film itself is nightmarish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmodVun16Q4

Still, feel like someone needs to go out and explain the internet to Libya and Egypt.

So essentially he made this movie to provoke some kind of mad Islamic shit. Well done, Mr. Bacile.

his name is literally sambacile

well, this guy is a shoe-in for the "thanks a lot, asshole" hall of fame now

god, rip ambassador

holy shit that video.

learning about that guy's work he seemed to genuinely care about africa and the middle east, real bummer

i have fam in the diplomatic corps and usis and the dude was a golden bear so it feels vaguely personal to me too, that's kinda dumb i know but true

his name is literally sambacile

Apparently it is a pseudonym.

holy shit that video.

― ❏❐❑❒ (gr8080), Wednesday, 12 September 2012 21:03 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The wildly varying overdubs have me wondering if it's some sort of fit-up, but I don't think there's anything non-crazy you can make from any 10 seconds of it.

It's despicable trolling. Like if 4chan decided to start a war.

A statement released on the behalf of the 80 cast and crew members of "Innocence of Muslims," a film that reportedly prompted Tuesday protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, indicates that they are not happy with the film and were misled by the producer.

"The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer. We are 100% not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose," the statement says. "We are shocked by the drastic re-writes of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred."

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/12/u-s-ambassador-to-libya-3-others-killed-in-rocket-attack-witness-says/

i'm sure romney's press conference is getting discussed on the politics threads but yo his face here:

http://i.imgur.com/d987y.jpg

Haha, I posted that same photo over on the other thread. He looks like such an ass!

Gawker sez

"In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn't even called Muhammed; he was "Master George," Garcia said. The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed."

woah

this is fucking completely, completely insane.

between the amateur movie shenanigans and the middle east foreign policy implications, this whole thing is a bit arrested development

This story is insane - there's no such person as Sam Bacile, the donors weren't Jewish, the actors were hoaxed… Juan Cole breaks it down with the aid of some important reporting by AP.

http://www.juancole.com/2012/09/romney-jumps-the-shark-libya-egypt-and-the-butterfly-effect.html

i'm still amazed that AP managed to produce quality reporting

most surprising element in this whole crazy story

Greenwald on the Administration's truthy spin of the consulate assault:

The Obama White House's interest in spreading [the it-was-the-video] falsehood is multi-fold and obvious:

For one, the claim that this attack was just about anger over an anti-Muhammad video completely absolves the US government of any responsibility or even role in provoking the anti-American rage driving it. After all, if the violence that erupted in that region is driven only by anger over some independent film about Muhammad, then no rational person would blame the US government for it, and there could be no suggestion that its actions in the region – things like this, and this, and this, and this – had any role to play.

The White House capitalized on the strong desire to believe this falsehood: it's deeply satisfying to point over there at those Muslims and scorn their primitive religious violence, while ignoring the massive amounts of violence to which one's own country continuously subjects them. It's much more fun and self-affirming to scoff: "can you believe those Muslims are so primitive that they killed our ambassador over a film?" than it is to acknowledge: "our country and its allies have continually bombed, killed, invaded, and occupied their countries and supported their tyrants."

It is always more enjoyable to scorn the acts of the Other Side than it is to acknowledge the bad acts of one's own. That's the self-loving mindset that enables the New York Times to write an entire editorial ...purporting to analyze Muslim rage without once mentioning the numerous acts of American violence aimed at them (much of which the Times editorial page supports). Falsely claiming that the Benghazi attacks were about this film perfectly flattered those jingoistic prejudices.

Then, there are the implications for the intervention in Libya, which Obama's defenders relentlessly tout as one of his great victories. But the fact that the Benghazi attack was likely premeditated and carried out by anti-American factions vindicates many of the criticisms of that intervention. Critics of the war in Libya warned that the US was siding with (and arming and empowering) violent extremists, including al-Qaida elements, that would eventually cause the US to claim it had to return to Libya to fight against them – just as its funding and arming of Saddam in Iraq and the mujahideen in Afghanistan subsequently justified new wars against those one-time allies.

War critics also argued that the intervention would bring massive instability and suffering to the people of Libya; today, the Washington Post reports that – just as the "president of Afghanistan" is really the mayor of Kabul and the "Iraqi government" long exercised sovereignty only in Baghdad's Green Zone – the central Libyan government exercises little authority outside of Tripoli. And intervention critics also warned that dropping bombs in a country and killing civilians, no matter how noble the intent supposedly is, would produce blowback in the form of those who would then want to attack the US.

When the White House succeeded in falsely blaming the consulate attacks on anger over this video, all of those facts were obscured.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/obama-officials-spin-benghazi-attack

Greenwald kinda getting ahead of himself about popular opinion of the US in Libya, methinks:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/libyans-hold-giant-march-demanding-militias-disband-in-wake-of-attack-on-us-consulate/2012/09/21/9203e21c-0406-11e2-9132-f2750cd65f97_story.html?hpid=z2

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/world/africa/libya-benghazi-counter-protest/index.html

CIA?

;-)