Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".
Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".
His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".
Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.
US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.
Posts: 42921 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Hmmm, well if the above posted by Lioness is correct, Moammar's claim to be opposing Al Qaeda might be true. If so, why is the "West" trying to destroy someone who is also an enemy of their greatest terrorist enemy- al Qaeda?. Does the Obama Admin know what its doing, dragging the US into someone else's civil war? Or is it simply following a naive "international community" line, manipulated by the Europeans? What happens if the rebels are too weak to do much? What then, after the prestige and cash of the US has been committed? Even if the kill Moammar, what if his successors fight on? What's the end game?
Prominent U.S. pundits are expressing deep skepticism about the U.S. intervention in Libya. NNN GLobalspin blog compiled some of the frequently-made arguments [against intervention.] Skeptics of the intervention are asking: Why this? To protect what interests? At what cost? For whom? And what next?
1. Why this?
Ezra Klein thinks there are better things to do with our money:
“The easy response to this is to ask how I can be so diffident in the face of slaughter. But consider Obama’s remarks. “Left unchecked,” he said, “we have every reason to believe that Gaddafi would commit atrocities against his people. Many thousands could die.” Every year, one million people die from malaria. About three million children die, either directly or indirectly, due to hunger. There is much we could due to help the world if we were willing. The question that needs to be asked is: Why this?”
2. What are our interests in Libya?
Richard Haas argues that the U.S. doesn’t have any, anyway:
"…U.S. interests are decidedly less than vital. Libya accounts for only 2 percent of world oil production. The scale of the humanitarian crisis is not unique; indeed, this is not strictly speaking a humanitarian intervention. It is a decision to participate in Libya's civil war.”
Leslie H. Gelb agrees:
“No foreign states have vital interests at stake in Libya. Events in this rather odd and isolated land have little bearing on the rest of the tumultuous Mideast region. Also not to be dismissed, there are far, far worse humanitarian horrors elsewhere. Yet, U.S. neoconservatives and liberal humanitarian interventionists have trapped another U.S. president into acting as if the opposite were true.”
3. At what cost?
Jim Manzi contends that we cannot afford this:
"I understand the humanitarian impulse to help the underdog, but we have finite resources, and cannot hold ourselves responsible for the political freedom of every human being on Earth. As many others have said, the obvious problem with this action is that we must set the pretty gauzy-sounding benefits of influencing public opinion in the Middle East, avenging ourselves for the Pan Am bombing, possibly improving the lives of people in Libya and so forth, against the many ways that this could plausibly turn into a much more expensive proposition than is currently anticipated – and not only in terms of money."
Tom Friedman agrees:
"…sadly, we can’t afford it. We have got to get to work on our own country. If the president is ready to take some big, hard, urgent, decisions, shouldn’t they be first about nation-building in America, not in Libya?"
4. Who are we helping?
Friedman further holds that we don’t know who we are helping:
"...we should be doubly cautious of intervening in places that could fall apart in our hands, a là Iraq, especially when we do not know, a là Libya, who the opposition groups really are — democracy movements led by tribes or tribes exploiting the language of democracy?"
5. What happens next?
James Fallows says that the American military rarely asks this essential question:
"Count me among those very skeptical of how this commitment was made and where it might lead….The most predictable failure in modern American military policy has been the reluctance to ask, And what happens then? We invade Iraq to push Saddam Hussein from power. Good. What happens then? Obama increases our commitment in Afghanistan and says that "success" depends on the formation of a legitimate, honest Afghan government on a certain timetable. The deadline passes. What happens then?"
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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It should be quite obvious by now that the UN coalition forces are outright aiding the Libyan insurgents.
Behind the mask of protecting innocents against the sovereign Libyan government they are in fact assisting attempts to overthrow that government.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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BENGHAZI, Libya: Oil fields in rebel-held territory in Libya are producing between 100,000 and 130,000 barrels a day, and the opposition plans to begin exporting oil "in less than a week", a rebel representative said on Sunday.
"We are producing about 100,000 to 130,000 barrels a day, we can easily up that to about 300,000 a day," said Ali Tarhoni, the rebel representative responsible for economy, finance and oil, at a news conference.
He said the rebel government had agreed an oil contract with Qatar, which would market the crude, and that he expected exports to begin in "less than a week".
Tarhoni said he had signed the contract with Qatar recently and that the deal would help ensure "access to liquidity in terms of foreign denominated currency".
"We contacted the oil company of Qatar and they agreed to take all the oil we export and market that oil for us," he said.
"We have an escrow account... and the money will be deposited in this account, and this way there is no middle man and we know where the money is going."
Yep oil as usual black gold texas tea lol. My question is when is the rest of the world(China and Russia) gonna step in and do something about "white people" invading sovereign countries and stealing their natural resources? Obama has show himself to be a puppet and a lap dog for white supremacy **** HIM!!
Posts: 43 | Registered: Aug 2010
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Just to remind you good folks that other Africans are upset about their El Presidente for life.
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – Rebels fighting to install Ivory Coast's democratically elected president began their final descent on Abidjan Thursday, after seizing a key seaport overnight as well as the hometown of the country's entrenched ruler. United Nations radio announced that the port of San Pedro was taken late Wednesday. Residents reached by telephone said soldiers firing into the air retreated in trucks as the rebels moved into the town about 186 miles (300 kilometers) west of Abidjan, Ivory Coast's largest city. The rebels have seized over a dozen towns since beginning their onslaught on Monday, and the fall of the cocoa-exporting port of San Pedro came hours after they took the administrative capital, Yamoussoukro, where the fighters did a victory lap as people cheered and clapped.
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