The Qaddafi Regime And The Bush Regime-- Together Forever In Crimes Against Humanity

Lately we've been covering the overthrow of Libya's government by the CIA from the perspective of how they overthrew governments they deemed "unfriendly" in Iran, Guatemala, Ecuador, Chile, etc. Before Bush left office, however, the CIA had a very good reason to keep Qaddafi in power: rendition and torture, the kind of rendition and torture that Cheney was on TV celebrating last weekend.

Very embarrassing documents have been discovered by Human Rights Watch and the British Independent newspaper's journalists that reveal close intelligence relationship between the United States, the UK and Libya during the so-called War on Terror.



The secret files reveal that the secret services of the UK, MI6 and the United States, the CIA had a regular dialogue with their counterparts in Libyan Intelligence, in particular with the former Libyan foreign minister and head of Libya's intelligence service, Mussa Kussa who defected days after the outbreak of the uprising that ousted the Libyan dictator Muammar Al Qathafi from power.



Mussa Kussa, who have long been accused by Rights groups of involvement in atrocities, had called on the UK to arrest him at the time, but after first defecting to the UK, he later flew on to Qatar.

Short story-- in return for Qaddafi's thugs torturing people the CIA decided needed rough treatment, the CIA handed over information on anti-Qaddafi dissidents. "In its report about the Human Rights Watch's discovery, the BBC goes on to say that the papers outline the rendition of several suspects, including one that Human Rights Watch has identified as Abdel Hakim Belhaj, known in the documents as Abdullah al-Sadiq, who is now the military commander of the rebel forces in Tripoli." Oops!



Although this isn't getting much coverage in the U.S., the NY Times mentioned it over the sleepy Labor Day Weekend. It wasn't information that came totally out of the blue and a CIA propagandist excused the whole thing as legitimate. “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats.” See? What's a little crimes against humanity between ruling elite types?

Although it has been known that Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after it abandoned its program to build unconventional weapons in 2004, the files left behind as Tripoli fell to rebels show that the cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and its British equivalent, MI-6.



Some documents indicate that the British agency was even willing to trace phone numbers for the Libyans, and another appears to be a proposed speech written by the Americans for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi about renouncing unconventional weapons.



...One document in the C.I.A. binder said operatives were “in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody, similar to what we have done with other senior L.I.F.G. members in the recent past.” The reference was to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was dedicated to the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi, and which American officials believed had ties to Al Qaeda.



When Libyans asked to be sent Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, another member of the group, a case officer wrote back on March 4, 2004, that “we are committed to developing this relationship for the benefit of both our services,” and promised to do their best to locate him, according to a document in the C.I.A. binder.



Two days later, an officer faxed the Libyans to say that Mr. Sadiq and his pregnant wife were planning to fly into Malaysia, and the authorities there agreed to put them on a British Airways flight to London that would stop in Bangkok. “We are planning to take control of the pair in Bangkok and place them on our aircraft for a flight to your country,” the case officer wrote.

That's the guy who's now running the show for the "rebels" in Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who says a couple of CIA thugs also tortured him while he was in Bangkok before they sent him off to Qaddafi. No wonder McCain was sucking up to Qaddafi. This crap is right up his alley. One has to wonder if, when he brought his gay little South Carolina sidekick with him to meet Muammar if they let Lindsay have his way with any of the hapless captives. Plenty more papers yet to be translated.





Predictably enough, Saturday's Wall Street Journal just loved In My Time, Dick Cheney's entirely self-serving memoir. If you don't even get beyond the title of Paul Gigot's grotesque and entirely ideological apologia, you find out that "Cheney was relentless and unapologetic in pursuit of his policy goals-- and Americans are safer for it." What more would anyone need to know?

On Guantánamo, interrogations, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wiretapping without a warrant, and the rest of the Bush antiterror architecture, he marshals familiar arguments and claims vindication.



He has a strong case, aided in no small part by the Obama administration. One virtue of Barack Obama's victory in 2008 is that it has put a Democratic stamp on the war on terror. In every particular except for interrogations, Mr. Obama has either embraced or been forced to accept substantially the policies that the Bush administration devised... Mr. Obama may not want to admit it, but his success against al Qaeda owes more to Dick Cheney than it does to his own campaign agenda.

Hard to understand why Gigot and his cronies hate Obama so much. He is, after all, just keeping Cheney's flame alive throughout the world.

Qaddafi, Libya... Some Other Sides Of The Story

Everybody's happy, happy, happy that the Qaddafi's have been overthrown, right? I mean, once it became public, however that happened, that he was personally behind the Lockerbie bombing-- like someone didn't already know that?-- he had to be deposed. And deposed he was, primarily by the CIA, the U.S. military and the NATO allies. Over the past couple weeks I've been trying to draw comparisons-- imperfect as they are-- between the U.S. overthrowing Qaddafi and the CIA activities that toppled legitimate governments "we" (meaning corporate America) disagreed with in Iran, Guatemala, Chile and Ecuador. I left out how the CIA toppled governments in Australia, Italy, Greece and even England. And now I see there are other people thinking along the same lines... like the fine folks at the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA. Don't laugh.

Qaddafi's overthrow and the victory of the "rebel" forces is being presented by the U.S. rulers, their European imperialist allies-- including Britain, France, and Italy-- and their media mouthpieces as a big victory for the people, a triumph of "democracy" over tyranny, and a vindication of their "humanitarian" military intervention in Libya.  



As the anti-Qaddafi forces took over Tripoli, President Barack Obama stated, "The people of Libya are showing that the universal pursuit of dignity and freedom is far stronger than the iron fist of a dictator... The future of Libya is now in the hands of the Libyan people."



It is nothing of the sort. The unfolding events in Libya are primarily the result of a U.S.-NATO military, political, and economic assault on Qaddafi’s forces, stretching over months.  



The day the Tripoli fell to the anti-Qaddafi forces, the New York Times reported:



"Through Saturday, NATO and its allies had flown 7,459 strike missions, or sorties, attacking thousands of targets, from individual rocket launchers to major military headquarters. The cumulative effect not only destroyed Libya's military infrastructure but also greatly diminished the ability of Colonel Qaddafi's commanders to control forces, leaving even committed fighting units unable to move, resupply or coordinate operations." ("Sharper Surveillance and NATO Coordination Helped Rebels Race to Capital," August 22)



This assault has had not been about liberating Libya or ensuring self-determination for the nation of Libya. Instead, it has been aimed at strengthening imperialism's grip on Libya... [T]he day after Tripoli fell, the New York Times carried an article headlined, "Scramble Begins for Access to Libya's Oil."

It wasn't that big a war. I saw a CNN news crawl yesterday that said it's estimated that 50,000 Libyans died. And I guess that doesn't count the African workers who are all over the country who seem to be meeting a bad fate at the hands of "our" pals. Even a reporter who is totally buying into the "magnificence" (his word) of the battle to free themselves from the tyrant, observed that the whole enterprise has been marred by racism.

"This is a bad time to be a black man in Libya," reported Alex Thomson on Channel 4 News on Sunday. Elsewhere, Kim Sengupta reported for the Independent on the 30 bodies lying decomposing in Tripoli. The majority of them, allegedly mercenaries for Muammar Gaddafi, were black. They had been killed at a makeshift hospital, some on stretchers, some in an ambulance. "Libyan people don't like people with dark skins," a militiaman explained in reference to the arrests of black men.



The basis of this is rumours, disseminated early in the rebellion, of African mercenaries being unleashed on the opposition. Amnesty International's Donatella Rivera was among researchers who examined this allegation and found no evidence for it. Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch similarly had not "identified one mercenary" among the scores of men being arrested and falsely labelled by journalists as such.



Lurking behind this is racism. Libya is an African nation-- however, the term "Africans" is used in Libya to reference the country's black minority. The Amnesty International researcher Diana Eltahawy says that the rebels taking control of Libya have tapped into "existing xenophobia." The New York Times refers to "racist overtones," but sometimes the racism is explicit. A rebel slogan painted in Misrata during the fighting salutes "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin." A consequence of this racism has been mass arrests of black men, and gruesome killings – just some of the various atrocities that human rights organisations blame rebels for. The racialisation of this conflict does not end with hatred of "Africans." Graffiti by rebels frequently depicted Gaddafi as a demonic Jew.



...The dominance of relatively conservative elites and the absence of countervailing pressures skewed the politics of the rebellion. We hear of "the masses," and "solidarity." But masses can be addressed on many grounds-- some reactionary. There are also many bases for solidarity-- some exclusionary. The scapegoating of black workers makes sense from the perspective of elites. For them, Libya was not a society divided on class lines from which many of them had profited. It was united against a usurper inhabiting an alien compound and surviving through foreign power. Instead, the more success Gaddafi had in stabilising his regime, the more the explanation for this relied on the claim that "Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans."



A further, unavoidable twist is the alliance with Nato. The February revolt involved hundreds of thousands of people across Libya. By early March the movement was in retreat, overseas special forces were entering Libya, and senior figures in the rebellion called for external intervention. Initially isolated, they gained credibility as Gaddafi gained ground. As a result, the initiative passed from a very large popular base to a relatively small number of armed fighters under the direction of the NTC and Nato. It was the rebel army that subsequently took the lead in persecuting black workers.



Under different conditions, perhaps, unity between the oppressed was possible. But this would probably have required a more radical alliance, one as potentially perilous for those now grooming themselves for office as for Gaddafi. As it is, the success of the rebels contains a tragic defeat. The original emancipatory impulse of February 17 lies, for now, among the corpses of "Africans" in Tripoli.

At least they didn't infect them with syphilis. I mean who would ever do something like that? (The Washington Post story gets all the facts out there except that this was done by a gang of Nazis brought here by domestic fascists in the OSS straight from experimenting on Jews and other captives in the concentration camps. They did lots of experiments in the U.S. and for the U.S.) Off topic... let's get back to Libya. Actually we're going to turn to Africa News for a completely different perspective than the one we're hearing from corporate media cheerleaders for the Military Industrial Complex. I'm not claiming it's a more valid perspective; it's just another perspective to the one we all know-- or should know by now-- is completely compromised and devoid of anything beyond slick propaganda.

Libya's destruction, a victory for the west; a defeat for ordinary Libyans. The suffering of Libyans has just begun. For there can never be true liberation when your oppressor is the one who defines what your freedom should be. The ousting of Colonel Gaddafi, Libyan leader for 42 years, by the rebels backed western forces especially NATO is indeed a victory for the west whose fixation on Gaddafi's Libya has become worrisome.



It’s definitely not a victory for ordinary Libyans who would continue to suffer a lot of nervous strain and shock after the destruction. Neither is it a victory for the rebels who have been in excess jubilation since capturing Gaddafi’s official residence. “We are free,” they proclaimed in wild happiness.



But they have forgotten one important thing: that they are now slaves to all the countries that helped them kick out Gaddafi.



Apparently the rebels are not ordinary Libyan but a group of people who want the share of the oil with the help of foreign forces. Gaddafi’s main crime may be the fact that he refused to let the west control Libya’s resources, hence he must be eliminated by all possible means.



In their euphoria and in their haste to get rid of him, they forgot that none of the countries that backed them has the interest of Libyans at heart. Let them for once re-visit Iraq.



...Gaddafi should have known that neither America nor its allies forget and forgive. He should have known that the oil in his background is enough to eliminate him by all means. He should have learnt a lesson from Iraq, a nation destroyed by Obama's predecessor on the pretense that the late Iraqi leader possessed Weapon of Mass Destruction which turned out to be a ruse.



It was simply a ploy by Mr. Bush to invade the oil rich nation. There is always an excuse to invade certain countries especially when the rulers of such countries refused to be a stooge.

Earlier this morning author and investigative journalist Russ Baker was asking for some transparency about U.S. intervention in Libya. He's already written about the growing doubts about Libya's complicity in Lockerbie and looking at the American role in the "liberation" of the country... well, like many of us, he smells a rat.

It’s true that Qaddafi, like many-- perhaps a majority of-- rulers in his region, was a thug and a brute, if at times a comical figure. But one doesn’t need to be an apologist for him-- nor deny the satisfaction of seeing the citizenry joyously celebrating his ouster-- to demand some honesty about the motives behind his removal. Especially when it comes to our own government’s role in funding it, and thus every American’s unwitting participation in that action.



Let’s start with the official justification for NATO’s launch of its bombing campaign-- for without that campaign, it’s highly improbable the rebels could ever have toppled Qaddafi. We were told from the beginning that the major purpose of what was to be very limited bombing-- indeed, its sole purpose-- was to protect those Libyan civilians rebelling against an oppressive regime from massive retaliation by Qaddafi. Perhaps because of NATO’s initial intervention, the feared Qaddafi-sponsored, genocidal bloodletting never did occur. (At least, not beyond the military actions one would expect a government to take when facing a civil war:  after all, remember General Sherman’s “scorched earth” policy in the US Civil War?). However, protecting civilians apparently didn’t generate sufficient public support for intervention, so we started to hear about other purported reasons for it.  Qaddafi was encouraging his soldiers to…commit mass rape! And giving them Viagra! And condoms!



You can’t make this sort of thing up. And yet that’s just what the NATO crew did-- made it up. The media, always glad to have a “sexy” story, especially a sick sexy story, even a sick sexy story with no evidence to back it up, covered this ad nauseum, but never bothered to find out if it was true.



...Qaddafi should never be seen as a victim-- indeed, he has always been sleazy and monstrous in various ways. But the US and its allies appear to have cared little about this, while being deeply  troubled by his role as a fly in the geopolitical ointment. A look at the long and complex historical relationship between Qaddafi and the West begins to explain the true reason he had to go. It also dovetails perfectly with a growing body of indications that Western elites encouraged and even provoked the uprising-- while tapping into deep discontent with the dictator.



Qaddafi has long been a thorn in the side of the West’s oil industry and their national security apparatus. In the early 1970s he worked closely with Occidental Petroleum chairman Armand Hammer in thwarting the ambitions of the oil majors. He was a leader in the boycott of Israel and often cozied up to the Soviet Union.



...What the media has so relentlessly characterized as the “spontaneous uprising” of February 2011 was hardly spontaneous. It began even before the Arab Spring itself commenced in Tunisia during December of last year—and it was orchestrated by the West.



...Khalifa Hifter, a former Libyan army officer, had spent the past two decades living just down the road from CIA headquarters, with no apparent source of income.  In 1996, while a resident of Vienna, Virginia, he organized a Benghazi-based revolt that failed. When the current uprising was sputtering in March, CIA sent Hifter in to take command.



When the rebels were being routed, the United Nations Security Council approved a no-fly order for Qaddafi. The NATO bombing began almost immediately, under the “humanitarian” label.

Before long, other European countries had covert elements in Libya. The British paper, The Guardian, has just reported the role of British special forces in coordinating the rebels on the ground. This was denied by the UK government . But then another British paper, The Telegraph, cited UK defense sources saying special forces had been in Libya already for weeks, i.e., since early August.)

Hopefully they won't attack Algeria next-- for it's oil... I mean for giving the Qaddafi family shelter. Interesting video below, although the filmmakers seem a little hung up with the Rothschilds.

Let's Hope The CIA Doesn't Have A Libyan Augusto Pinochet Waiting In The Wings

If you're getting sick of me harping on CIA atrocities (like in Iran and Guatemala) and comparing them to what's going down in Libya... just skip right over this admittedly disturbing post and go back to reading about what a psychopath Rick Perry is.



I'm getting sick of reading all the self-congratulatory tweets and posts about how we took out the dictator in Libya. You can leave me out of that "we," if you don't mind. When "we" were making the world safe from godless Communism in southeast Asia, I decided to leave the country rather than be part of that murderous "we." Sorry, but I'm not convinced-- at least not yet-- that this is that much different. Big country stomping on little country to get it's way-- and, in this case, its oil. Let's talk about Chile and what the U.S. did down there to protect "us." By now everyone knows how the arch war-criminals Nixon and Kissinger engineered the overthrow and execution of the President of Chile and the transformation of that country's robust democracy into a horrifying fascist dictatorship. But it didn't start with Nixon and Kissinger. Presidents and Secretaries of State come and go... the CIA and a foreign policy establishment is forever-- or has been since a fascist takeover in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Turning to Glen Yeadon's Nazi Hydra in America for some background...

The CIA began covert operations in Chile following the 1958 presidential election, in which Allende came within 3 percent of winning. The next presidential election was scheduled in 1964, and Washington was determined that an avowed socialist like Allende not win.



In 1961, the Kennedy administration set up an electoral committee composed of more than 100 top-level officials from the State Department, the CIA and the White House. A parallel committee was set up in the U.S. embassy in Chile. Committee operatives laid the groundwork for the election by establishing relationships with key political figures. After channeling funds to right-wing groups, the committee decided to back a centrist, Eduardo Frei of the Christian Democratic Party. The CIA underwrote more than half of the party's expenses in the 1964 election, spending an estimated $20 million. The amount is about equal to the money spent by John F. Kennedy ($9.7 million) and Richard Nixon ($10.1 million) together in the 1964 election. The CIA took the Chilean election seriously.



The CIA spent the money on a scare campaign, with images of Russian tanks and Cuban firing squads, with extra attention on women and religion because, traditionally, women in Chile are more religious. The CIA produced massive volumes of propaganda to fill the airwaves and the press. Besides buying the press piecemeal, the agency subsidized wire services, magazines and right-wing newspapers from 1953-70.



One of the assets the CIA employed in the 1964 election was Roger Vekemans, a Belgian Jesuit who founded a network of social action organizations. Vekemans admits to receiving $5 million from the CIA, as well as a like amount of aid. The results of the 1964 election were gratifying for the CIA. Frei won the election with a commanding margin of victory. The continued operations of the CIA network kept Allende and the socialists at bay throughout the 1960s. However, no amount of propaganda can cover the lack of needed reforms and social progress.



By 1970 Allende's popularity was high and his chances in the upcoming presidential election were good. His rising popularity did not go unnoticed by the Nixon White House, which increased anti-Allende spending by $300,000. The CIA continued to use its networks in Chile against Allende. Despite all efforts by the CIA and the Nixon White House, Allende won the Sept. 4 election.



On October 24, the Chilean Congress was due to confirm the winner, assuring Allende of the presidential office. This left the Nixon White House and the CIA with seven weeks to prevent him from taking office. Nixon met with Kissinger, CIA Director Richard Helms and Attorney General John Mitchell. The Committee of 40 received authorized funds to bribe Chilean congressmen to vote against Allende, but soon abandoned the effort as unfeasible. The Nixon administration concentrated on fermenting a military coup, which would cancel the congressional vote. The White House also made it clear that an assassination was not unwelcome.



The CIA and the Nixon administration launched a new propaganda campaign to impress on the military the danger of Allende taking office. Privately, military officers were threatened with a cut in aid if Allende were seated. During this seven-week period the CIA produced more than 700 articles, broadcasts and editorials in Europe and Latin America. Journalists in the pay of the CIA from at least 10 countries traveled to Chile for on-the-spot coverage. The propaganda came with the usual communist scare tactics-- fabricated stories that Allende would nationalize everything down to the small shops. The campaign was so intense that it affected the Chilean economy negatively, inducing a financial panic...



Meanwhile, the CIA was consulting actively with several military officers receptive to a coup. It was difficult due to apolitical attitudes and support for the constitution. The prime obstacle to a military coup was the Commander and Chief of the Chilean Army, Rene Schneider, who insisted on following the constitution. The coup attempt was a direct result of a plea for action by Donald Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, in two phone calls to the company's former lawyer, President Richard Nixon.



With time running out before Allende was seated, the CIA distributed sterilized machine guns and ammunition to some of the conspirators on the morning of October 22. That same day, Schneider was mortally wounded in an attempted kidnapping. The CIA station in Santiago cabled headquarters that Schneider had been killed with CIA weapons. The assassination did not result in a coup; instead, military officers rallied around the flag and the constitution. Two days later, Allende was seated as president. The Nixon administration responded by cutting aid to Chile, including loans from the Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank... In addition, holding what amounted to a veto, the United States denied all loans to Chile from the World Bank during 1971-73. The following U.S. banks [almost all fascist run outfits that had been ardent Hitler supporters very recently] canceled credit to Chile: Chase Manhattan, Chemical, First National City, Manufacturers Hanover and Morgan Guaranty. The CIA provided financial support to prolong strikes, and caused panic buying to further compound shortages. The CIA and the Nixon administration were determined to bring about a complete economic collapse and widespread public unrest to defeat the Allende government and prove socialism cannot work in the Western Hemisphere...



Large U.S. corporations also helped destabilize Chile in support of a coup to remove Allende. International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) offered $1 million to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Officials denied the offer was accepted. However, former U.S. Ambassador to Chile Edward Korry has stated in recent interviews the offer was made by former CIA Director John McCone. McCone was a member of ITT's board at the time. The Nixon White House was well aware at the time that ITT was illegally channeling money to the Republican Party. Korry also stated that Anaconda Copper and other multinationals, under the aegis of David Rockefeller's Business Group for Latin America, gave $350,000 to the CIA to bribe members of Congress.



...On Sept 11. 1973. Allende's Administration ended in a violent coup. Allende was killed after an assault on the presidential palace, where he and a group of dedicated followers made a last stand. Within twelve hours, most of the people with Allende who had survived the military assault were executed.



...The Nixon administration immediately recognized the new regime and granted it $24 million in credit for wheat previously denied the Allende government. The resulting fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet was brutally repressive. Only 19 days after the coup, a briefing paper for Kissinger showed the death toll was 1,500, including 320 summarily executed. By mid-November, U.S. intelligence estimated 13,500 people had been arrested. Others were executed, disappeared or tortured, including two Americans killed in the mass executions at the national stadium... An estimated 50,000 died at the hands of Pinochet.



But the right wingers and the CIA hail Pinochet's rule of Chile as an economic miracle. For once in power he installed the boys from Chicago, a group of Chileans educated in economics at the University of Chicago. It may have been an economic miracle for the American corporations but it certainly wasn't for the average Chilean worker. As the Boys from Chicago promptly set about dismantling all social programs and destroying unions. The statistics of this so-called economic miracle are indeed bleak, as the GNP per capita fell from 1972 to 1982 by 6.4 percent. Presently Pinochet faces charges of murder in Spain if England will extradite him. But once again we see the model repeated, a legally elected reform minded government is overthrown to be replaced by a brutal right wing dictator, corporate America gets rich at the expense of the native population. In just Guatemala and Chile the body count from the CIA and their puppet regimes total over a quarter million... Does the reader have anymore questions over the fascist nature of our foreign policy as executed by the CIA?

And about that Libyan oil, which has NOTHING-- DO YOU HEAR ME? N.O.T.H.I.N.G.-- to do with the overthrown of the Qaddafi regime in the glorious name of democracy, the New York Times had a few salient facts that slipped through yesterday.

The fighting is not yet over in Tripoli, but the scramble to secure access to Libya’s oil wealth has already begun.



...Western nations-- especially the NATO countries that provided crucial air support to the rebels-- want to make sure their companies are in prime position to pump the Libyan crude.



...Colonel Qaddafi proved to be a problematic partner for international oil companies, frequently raising fees and taxes and making other demands. A new government with close ties to NATO may be an easier partner for Western nations to deal with. Some experts say that given a free hand, oil companies could find considerably more oil in Libya than they were able to locate under the restrictions placed by the Qaddafi government.

But, of course... to the victors, the spoils. Like everywhere in all ages. “We don’t have a problem with Western countries like Italians, French and U.K. companies,” Abdeljalil Mayouf, a spokesman for the Libyan rebel oil company Agoco, was quoted by Reuters as saying. “But we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil.”

How We Ever Gonna Know What Happened In Libya? From Our TVs?

Many cute tweets about the fall of the House of Qaddafi over the weekend. That was one of the cutest. But the toppling on Qaddafi wasn't Democratic policy or Republican policy. It was American policy. Unraveling what that means exactly is to face some harsh realities about our own country. Sunday-- and this really was just a coincidence-- we posted about the CIA overthrowing the legitimate, popular, elected government of Iran in 1953 and how that set up a model for violent international operations for decades. In those days the U.S. was always overthrowing good guys-- national heroes who were trying to make life better for their people, Mohammed Mosaddegh in Iran, Jacobo Árbenz, president of Guatemala, the year after the "success" in Iran, Patrice Lumumba, President of the Congo in 1961, Salvador Allende, president of Chile, a decade later. In the interim the CIA took a hand in government changes in less dramatic, less violent ways all over the world, including Greece, Italy, Japan, Australia, England, Congo... Let me quote from Glen Yeadon's book, Nazi Hydra in America:

At the end of the Second World War the US had the chance to grab the brass ring of liberty and present it to the world as a gift. Instead lead by a small cabal of Wall Street sharks and rich industrialists we were plunged into a cesspool of repression and became the spawning grounds for the fourth Reich. From earlier chapters it was shown that fascism was the end product of a capitalistic society that government failures are started by midlevel officials And finally for any revolution to be successful it requires the control over the 3Ms: the military, the media and money. This chapter has established the relationship between the CIA and money in the form of a revolving door between Wall Street and the CIA and the manipulation of the free press by the CIA as well as its close ties to Nazi war criminals. In short the CIA is a danger to the future liberty of not only US citizens but to the world. Its an agency that has served its purposes and needs to be broken into a thousand pieces and scattered to the winds as JFK threaten to do after his reelection.

What does this have to do with Libya, clearly a popular uprising against a terrible dictator? Or so it appears on our TVs. Is Qaddafi's oppression of his people-- the ostensible reason for U.S. and NATO intervention-- as bad, even nearly as bad, as what our good friend King Hamid is doing to his people in Bahrain? The brutal repression in Syria by Assad makes Qaddafi look almost benevolent.



Half a year ago, the CIA was no longer plotting to remove Qaddafi. They were on the ground removing Qaddafi. In March the NY Times, always, always, always an integral part of all U.S. imperialistic moves anywhere in the world, was reporting that the CIA had "inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials."

While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.



In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.



American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers-- including the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns-- might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.



In addition, the American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi, said United States government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the activities.  American officials cautioned, though, that the Western operatives were not directing the actions of rebel forces.



A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

Lotta oil in Libya. Just a coincidence, I'm sure, as the U.S. continues its unending crusade to bring democracy to every part of the world, other than Florida or Waukesha County, Wisconsin. Libya's popular uprising has every hallmark of a CIA operation. Expect bodies. If you want to find the conventional wisdom here, just put on your TV... any channel, and you'll hear how Americans are being conditioned to look at what just happened in Libya. Instead let's turn to Steve Clemons at The Atlantic: "Like Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein was also a horrendous thug whose arbitrary and brutal rule resulted in the deaths of vast numbers of his own citizens..." But Clemons didn't reprocess a CIA press handout. He says he gets "the euphoria that is sweeping amongst those who had a hand in toppling a 42-year old regime" but he definitely buys into what David Cameron is trying to sell as "a Libyan-led and Libyan-owned process with broad international support."

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The fall of Moammer Qaddafi -- whose bizarre antics ranging from rambling nonsense speeches he'd give at the UN General Assembly to his proposal to "abolish Switzerland" to his personal-digs at other Arab leaders-- could easily excite anyone who spent any time studying this tormenting figure.



...I was skeptical of the Libyan intervention by the US and the rest-- but the Tuesday night when President Obama authorized action, I expressed cautious support, understanding that the humanitarian costs of letting the siege of Benghazi unfold outweighed other factors.  The US military raised concerns about managing a limited conflict where the authorization for action might lead to a long drawn-out stalemate with Qaddafi, who eventually might be able to dig himself a back door of support with nations like Russia, China, Brazil and India. 



The Pentagon's counsel in this case was important-- because the scenario the military sketched out could have come to pass-- and the impact on America's credibility would have been negative. 



As it turns out, the combination of intelligence support provided by the US, the technical and financial and logistics support provided behind the scenes by Qatar and the UAE, the military interventions by French and British forces, and more helped give the Libyan rebels an opportunity to regroup after early setbacks and push Qaddafi's forces back steadily and firmly to the battle inside Tripoli that we saw last night.  A key part of the success were the Berbers organizing their village militias west of Tripoli and pushing towards Qaddafi from one direction while the Benghazi-based rebels pushed from the other-- putting Tripoli in a vise.



Barack Obama's gamble in providing limited support for a conflict, in which other countries played lead roles, now seems like a winning move.  It's hard to replicate the conditions of Libya in other cases because Qaddafi had a habit of making unnecessary enemies-- most importantly in the Arab League, whose vote in favor of imposing a No Fly Zone over Libya was the trigger that led to everything else that has been possible.



...What Obama's intervention accomplished was giving Libyans an opportunity to own the outcome.  Obama kept the US military footprint relatively small-- occasionally getting involved in unhelpful Western posturing that took the cameras off the Libyan rebels and putting them on the West-- but on the whole, Obama kept his game to one of trying to tilt the odds, not guarantee outcomes.



This is the same kind of approach that the international community needs to take as Libya takes its next steps.  Give support, technical counsel and advice if asked, but be respectful of the process that is now going to have to evolve inside Libya to include many players and groups that have been excluded from power for decades.



That means being there if needed-- but as Cameron implied, not making Libya's next steps about us-- but rather making sure that the leaders of the next government control their own reigns.

Sounds far-fetched in light of the post-World War II history of U.S./CIA intervention in other countries. You don't rememeber? A few random thoughts-- again via Yeadon-- about our neighborly agenda in Guatemala... if you can take it:

In 1953 the CIA also intervened in Guatemala, and regarded the action as a success. For what reasons they regarded the operation as success can be only guess at for what followed was a bloody civil war that lasted 36 years. Once again this intervention fits the model perfectly. The legally elected government of Arbenz was reform minded. The center piece of his reforms was land reform. In an overwhelmingly rural nation only 2.2% of the population owned 70% of the land. Prior to the 1944 revolution and ousting of the dictatorship of Ubico, the army was used to rope farm labors together for delivery to low-land farms where they were kept as debt slaves. The expropriation of large uncultivated tracts of land to landless peasants, improvement in the rights of unions and other social reforms were hurting the bottom line of United Fruit. Arbenz even constructed a port on the Atlantic to compete against the port controlled by United Fruit, likewise a public hydro-electric plant was constructed for the same reasons.



The position of United Fruit inside Guatemala was essentially one of a country within a country. United Fruit owned the country's telephone and telegraph systems, administered the country's only Atlantic port, monopolized banana exports and a subsidiary owned the rail system. In the US United Fruit had close ties to the Dulles brothers, various state department officials, congressmen and the US Ambassador to the UN. The former CIA Director, Wlater Bedell Smith was seeking an executive position with United Fruit at the same time he was planing the Guatemala coup. He later was named to the board of directors of United Fruit.



The first plan to oust Arbenz was given by Truman as a response to Guatemala receiving arms from Czechoslovakia and the implied communism threat but was canceled. After the election of Eisenhower the plan was put into effect. The Guatemala coup also provides and ideal example of how the CIA manipulates the American opinion. After first being tried in Guatemala this technique has been employed throughout South America. It involves the CIA planting an article in the foreign press the article is then picked up by the news wires and newspapers in other countries. Besides the obvious multiplier effect upon the potential audience it has the appearance of an independent world opinion. Incidentally it was the same tactic that Bush tried to use against Clinton in the 1992 election.



The immediate after effects of the coup was draconian, within four months 72,000 was labeled as communist, many who were tortured and murdered. It is known that the U.S. Ambassador John Peurifoy had a long list of names of leaders that the successor government was to assassinate. Agrarian reform was stopped and the land already expropriated was given back to United Fruit. Union leaders turned up dead. Three quarters of the population was disenfranchised by barring illiterates from the polls and all political parties, unions and peasant organizations were outlawed...



The blood bath and carnage that followed for the next 36 years can only be described as horrific A genocidal war was carried on against the native Indians. Murders, kidnappings and disappearances became widespread and everyday occurrences as right wing death squads roamed the countryside. The report on Guatemala as a first step to reconciliation states that the army is blamed for over 200,000 deaths and disappearances. Below are some extracts from that report:

"Of the 42,000 deaths investigated in the report, the army was found to be responsible for 93 percent. Three percent were the work of the leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, and 4 percent were unresolved. The report found that 29,000 of the investigated deaths involved summary executions.



Most of the victims were civilians and Mayan Indians... [T]he government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some state operations."



It was "clearly genocide and a planned strategy against the civilian population," said Christian Tomuschat, a German citizen who heads the three-member commission. "Government forces... blindly pursued the anti-communist fight, without respecting any legal principle or even the most elemental ethical or religious values."



In 626 massacres, the report found that government forces "completely exterminated Mayan communities, destroyed their dwellings, livestock and crops." The guerrillas were blamed for 32 such massacres, the report said."

Guatemala also provides us with the first example of the right wing death squads that have became so much a part of South American politics. Those death squads and the dictators that employ them are products of the CIA-Military intelligence system of the US. They lead directly to the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.

So grubby compared to President Obama soaring, idealism last night:

Tonight, the momentum against the Qadhafi regime has reached a tipping point. Tripoli is slipping from the grasp of a tyrant. The Qadhafi regime is showing signs of collapsing. The people of Libya are showing that the universal pursuit of dignity and freedom is far stronger than the iron fist of a dictator.



The surest way for the bloodshed to end is simple: Moammar Qadhafi and his regime need to recognize that their rule has come to an end. Qadhafi needs to acknowledge the reality that he no longer controls Libya. He needs to relinquish power once and for all. Meanwhile, the United States has recognized the Transitional National Council as the legitimate governing authority in Libya. At this pivotal and historic time, the TNC should continue to demonstrate the leadership that is necessary to steer the country through a transition by respecting the rights of the people of Libya, avoiding civilian casualties, protecting the institutions of the Libyan state, and pursuing a transition to democracy that is just and inclusive for all of the people of Libya. A season of conflict must lead to one of peace.



The future of Libya is now in the hands of the Libyan people. Going forward, the United States will continue to stay in close coordination with the TNC. We will continue to insist that the basic rights of the Libyan people are respected. And we will continue to work with our allies and partners in the international community to protect the people of Libya, and to support a peaceful transition to democracy.

McCain and Lindsey Graham-- where was Lieberman?-- released this statement yesterday: "Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Qaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower." I'm sure either would have preferred nukes, of course. Dennis Kucinich had a very different perspective last week.

In March of this year, the US, France, Britain and their North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies launched military operations in Libya under the guise of a "humanitarian intervention." US diplomats and world leaders carelessly voiced unsubstantiated claims of an impending massacre in Benghazi. You hear no such appeals to humanity while NATO, in the name of the rebels (whoever they are), prepares to lay siege to Tripoli, a city of nearly 2 million people.



Libyan rebels are now advancing on the capital city of Tripoli with the aid of NATO strikes; this is sure to result in a real bloodbath, as opposed to the one that was conjured in Benghazi this past winter. NATO is assisting rebels who are blocking food, water and medical supplies from coming into the capital city, and is stopping those who need advanced medical care from travelling to Tunisia to access it. NATO is bombing power stations, creating blackouts, and using Apache helicopters to attack Libyan police checkpoints to clear roads for rebels to advance.



Regardless of whether Muammar Gaddafi is ousted in coming days, the war against Libya has seen countless violations of United Nations security council resolutions (UNSCRs) by NATO and UN member states. The funnelling of weapons (now being air-dropped) to Libyan rebels was, from the beginning of the conflict, in clear violation of UNSCR 1970. The use of military force on behalf of the rebels, in an attempt to impose regime change, has undermined international law and damaged the credibility of the United Nations. Countless innocent civilians have been killed, and NATO air strikes continue to place many at great risk.



So much for the humanitarian-inspired UNSCR 1973 as a means to protect civilians. The people of Libya cannot take another month of such humanitarian intervention.



The leading donor nations of NATO-- the US, France and Great Britain-- have been free to prosecute war under the cloak of this faceless, bureaucratic, alphabet security agency, now multinational war machine, which can violate UN resolutions and kill innocent civilians with impunity. War crimes trials are only for losers. The prospective conquerors, the western powers and their rebel proxies, will then expect to be able to assert control over Libya's vast oil and natural gas reserves.



The US share of the war against Libya has probably exceeded the $1bn mark. This extraordinary amount of money for an intervention that Americans were told would last "days not weeks" could only be explained by looking at the war as an investment, and at control over Libya's wealth as an opportunity to make a return on that investment. Cynical? Then tell me why else we are at war in Libya.

The victors write the history:

Is It Hard For You To Imagine Why Iran Might Not Trust America? It Shouldn't Be

I passed by a TV last week that had on some MSNBC show with their in-house Nazi Pat Buchanan pontificating about what a wonderful world it would be if Hillary Clinton was president instead of Obama. It was a discussion between him and Tweety and I wasn't paying attention at all until they started talking about how Hillary would have been so wonderful and macho and would have attacked Iran by now. I wish I had taped it.



I visited Iran twice. The first time was in the summer of 1969 when I drove there from London in a VW van. I loved the place-- and discovered pomegranate juice for the first time. It was 16 years after the CIA overthrew it's first-- a model as it turned out-- civilian government, toppling the enormously popular Mohammed Mosaddegh in favor of an illegitimate "royal" family, and 10 years before the Iranian people were finally able to throw off the yoke of the CIA and the "royal" predators.



Many Americans were upset yesterday by the harsh sentences given the two U.S. hikers who strayed into Iranian territory a few years ago, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal. And, no doubt warming Buchanan's fascist heart, Hillary's spokesperson demanded they be released. CNN and other U.S. government propaganda sources say they were just carefree lovers of travel wandering around the lovely mountains and borderlands between eastern Iraq and western Iran, immersing themselves in other cultures. Iran says they are spies. Why all the mistrust? After all, it wasn't that many years ago that Iran was our bestest buddy in the whole Mideast, aside from Israel-- and those two were practically married too. I've been reading Glen Yeadon's book, Nazi Hydra In America and there's a chapter about how the CIA recruited a whole lot of Nazis after the way to work for it in various capacities, including that of helping overthrow governments that were deemed unfriendly to American corporate power. Iran was the first.

Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy Roosevelt was the CIA's agent in Iran that installed the Shah and overthrew Mossadegh. The plans issued by Mossadegh for nationalizing the oil fields precipitated his removal. The reader should understand that Mossadegh had been elected to office. Once the Shah was in power he was persuaded to name Fazlollah Zaledi as Prime Minister. During WWII Zaledi was imprisoned for collaborating with the Nazis. Once firmly in control Iran completed a contract with an international consortium of oil companies. One member of that consortium was Standard Oil of New Jersey, a client of Sullivan and Cromwell. Jack Anderson reported that the Rockefeller family had helped arranged the coup that brought the Shah to power. Anderson had listed a number of ways the Shah demonstrated his appreciation. The CIA also provided training for the dreaded Savak or secret police of Iran.



...The result over the next two decades was the Shah enriched himself at the expense of his fellow countrymen using the brutal Savak to maintain control. Of course he remained a loyal ally of the US and corporate America such as Standard Oil of New Jersey got pricing breaks... The reader can now see the pattern, first the legally elected leader purposes reforms or maybe leaning to the left in a move that threatens corporate America. He is then dispelled and replaced with a hard right leader favorable to US [corporate] interests. The new leader enriches himself at the expense of his fellow countrymen and becomes an ally of the US. He maintains power through brutality and outright murder with a police force trained by the US. This then is the model that the US has followed since WWII, often times in the 1950s ex Nazis were employed as agents. The US press should be considered a co-conspirator in that they cover up the bloodshed by ignoring the killing as they did in Nicaragua. It is a model that has been repeated time after time in all corners of the globe from the end of WWII to the present time. Noam Chomsky terms the resulting state as subfascist. The resulting brutality and looting of the country by a group of elitists proceeds as it did in Germany under the Nazis.

Everyone knows what karma means, right? This clip is worth taking a look at:

Would The CIA Harm Us... American Civilians? Operation Midnight Climax

A few days ago I let loose with a provocative and kind of random tweet based on something I was reading about the post World War II American national security state in Glen Yeadon's book Nazi Hydra In America. I sometimes forget not everyone has read that book. So this little tweet dialogue ensued:





Operation Midnight Climax was part of a CIA mind-control research program after the U.S. started importing hundreds of Nazi "scientists who had been experimenting on human beings in concentration camps. According to Wikipedia, this project "consisted of a web of CIA-run safehouses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York. It was established in order to study the effects of LSD on unconsenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass. Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations.



... News of the story began to leak following a landmark story by New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh on illegal CIA domestic surveillance. This report triggered Senate Subcommittee hearings which investigated MKULTRA, and brought Operation Midnight Climax to light.



I found an old report from 1977 in Time, slightly minimizing the magnitude of what the U.S. government was doing. Let's take a look at some of what Yeadon had to say that inspired my little tweet:

Just as the immigration of Nazis and war criminals into the US involved the use of several projects of which Paperclip is the most widely known such is the case of MK-Ultra. There were 149 sub projects under MK-Ultra. The use of drugs for truth serum and for mind control were conducted under a bewildering list of Project or Operations.



...Army documents suggest there is a contingency plan to use BZ [aka, Buzz or Quinuclidinyl benzilate] as a domestic civilian riot control method. STP, PCP and hundreds of other drugs were tested for use in mind control and as incapacitating agents.



Most research involved LSD. The Army tested LSD on approximately 1,500 military personnel in the mid-1960s. Soldiers were not the only guinea pigs used by the CIA. The list of expendables: war prisoners, prostitutes, sexual psychopaths, prison inmates, certain war objectors, mentally retarded people, the elderly, terminally ill patients, schizophrenics, drug addicts, foreigners, and, of course, any other man, woman or child who fit the need.



...Besides being illegal, such testing [Operation Midnight Climax] without subjects' informed consent is a violation of the Nuremberg code, a set of ethical principles regarding experiments with human subjects and other medical research, which guided the Nuremberg Tribunal.

No idea if the Brits recently used-- or even have-- any of these mind control drugs. No doubt a pissed off right-wing prime minister-- who had to interrupt his Tuscan vacation and hurry home-- wouldn't hesitate for a moment to use them. And now he isn't hesitating to kick arrested suspects' families out of their homes. His coalition partners, the Liberal-Democrats are starting to get a little nervous that they're hooked up with an increasingly dangerous sociopath and that their party could well be headed for extinction. The party's business secretary, looking to the underlying causes of the anti-Austerity riots that shook Britain last week, wants to impose a wealth, or mansion, tax, in the form of a capital gains tax, on properties valued at over £1 million. Their Conservative partners, like the Republicans here, will never go for it. In fact they are committed to lowering taxes on the rich which ramping up the Austerity regime that is convulsing the country. Does this sound familiar?

Speaking on BBC Radio 4, [Chancellor of the Exchequer George] Osborne said there was "not much point" in having a tax that raised scant funds but that served to drive businesses out of Britain.



Osborne said: "I've said with the 50p rate I don't see that as a lasting tax rate for Britain because it's very uncompetitive internationally, and people frankly can move. What is it actually raising? It's only been in operation for a year, this tax, put in place by the last government."

Another Lib-Dem MP, Simon Hughes, who represents a district in South London, Old Southwark, hit hard by rioting last week, penned a column for The Guardian Sunday, Profits must no longer go to the few at the top. It probably wasn't very well-received by anyone at or near the top, particularly not David Cameron. Hughes called for "a fundamental shift in the politics of the last 30 Conservative and Labour years which have sacrificed people's jobs and security in the name of efficiency, and then seen the profits go only to the few at the top."

We must now focus on the redistribution of wealth. But this will not succeed by means of greater hand-outs. Financial benefits must seek to engage people positively. The redistribution of hope and opportunity means the redistribution as well as the creation of work. Co-operative and mutual businesses and social enterprise should be prioritised. The private sector, like the public sector, should not be allowed to get away with obscene pay ratios and bonuses. All employers should be required to consider how they can increase employment and training, by themselves or with others.



Where communities are unable to provide work the government must be prepared to intervene.



A responsible economy is necessary for a responsible society. Building local, regional and national economies which provide the opportunity for all to participate in for fair reward will build much stronger communities. This will counter the appeal of the gangs and the get-rich-quick merchants. Other people and activity must now capture the energies and abilities of a generation that has greater potential than any we have had before.

The Austerity the Republicans are demanding-- and to which Obama seems to be giving in to without any fight at all-- is what's infecting Britain and Greece and dozens of other countries on the verge of explosions. I just don't want to see anyone get hurt with all those experimental drugs.