"I Got Bin Laden" - And Why Obama's Big Boast Might Have Been A Huge Mistake

"..Osama bin Laden will never again walk the face of this Earth. That’s what change is."

So said President Obama at a recent fundraiser, the same one where he also claimed that Republicans threaten the "very core of what this country stands for."

Let's ignore his attacking the GOP's patriotism and focus on that first statement, because President Obama keeps coming back to it as a great foreign policy achievement of his. Was it?

Osama bin Laden certainly deserved death if any one did. But foreign policy is based on strategic goals, not on simply meting out justice to those who've murdered Americans. If President Obama's chief concern was punishing people who've murdered Americans, we wouldn't be aiding the Palestinian Authority, Hamas or the Hezbollah-controlled government of Lebanon and Iran would be a smoking crater right now, with the mullahs, President Ahmadinejad and a lot of other members of that government turned into halal crisps.

Since President Obama is touting this as a great foreign policy accomplishment of his and is using it to raise money, let's simply take a cold hard look at it in the light of what it actually accomplished from that perspective.

At the time he was assassinated, Osama bin Laden was essentially living quietly as a guest of the Pakistani government in Abbottobad. His health was not the best, so a great deal of the actual operational command was in the hands of his subordinate, Egyptian-born former Muslim Brotherhood leader Ayman Zawahiri.

As President Obama has pointed out, al-Qaeda has been weakened severely and marginalized, thanks to bin Laden's miscalculation in making Iraq a central front of jihad and suffering massive losses of men and material. That happened, ironically, because of military strategies like the surge Senator Obama did his very best to criticize and sabotage before he entered the White House.

At the time of bin Laden's death, Al-Qaeda had become more of a brand name, a proselytizing force over the internet and an inspiration to young jihadis rather than an actual source of many attacks.

We used a painstakingly created network of Pakistani informers and intel sources to nail down bin-Laden's whereabouts and plan the operation that assassinated him. We then sent the valiant men of Navy Seal Team Six into Pakistan via helicopter, broke into bin-Laden's compound, shot him down, removed his body, gave him a proper Islamic funeral ( which involves cursing Christians and Jews, if the usual text was used) and threw his body into the sea.

So we accomplished an act of retribution. Let's examine the results and see if they were worth it.

The Pakistanis were predictably livid at being exposed, again, as a major aider and abetter of Islamic fascism and terrorism. Their honor/shame mentality kicked in and rather than express regret that they had been caught sheltering a mass murderer, they went into hysterics about the violation of their sovereignty. They arrested every member of the Pakistani network they could get their hands on that helped the US find and assassinate bin-Laden and charged them with treason, which will likely end in a number of executions. Aside from our network in Pakistan being burnt, this assured that we're going to have great difficulty with intel from that country in the future.

The Pakistanis also closed the land route they control into Afghanistan through the Torkum Pass for several days. This route transports 75% of the supplies going into Afghanistan for our troops, who now simply had to make do without needed supplies for a few days. Also, because the stopped supply trucks were sitting ducks, the Taliban manged to destroy several of them.

Even more costly, we lost one of our helicopters in the bin-Laden operation, a Blackhawk. Now, these normally cost about $20 million or so, but this one cost a great deal more, because it had been highly modified with top secret stealth technology that brought its cost up to more like $60 million. Even worse, the SEAL's were unable to completely destroy it, and the angry Pakistanis gleefully gave it to the Chinese to examine at their leisure. The potential loss of technology is in the millions, not to mention our relationship with Pakistan, which has worsened considerably and is unlikely to recover for some time if at all.

But the worse is yet to come.

When we take a look at exactly why Osama bin-Laden was ratted out after all this time, some interesting intel surfaces. As I've mentioned on these pages before, we know that there was a substantial disagreement between Osama and his chief lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri, prior to Osama's death. Bin laden was relatively comfortable in Abbotobad and wanted to keep al-Qaeda anchored in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Zawahiri, looking at developments in his native Egypt and elsewhere like the 'Arab Spring' , the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Obama's already announced retreat from the region was pushing to relocate al-Qaeda back to the Middle East and the roiling Arab world.

So now that Osama's dead (and according to my sources, there are pretty solid indications he was deliberately fingered) Zawahiri, a former Muslim Brotherhood member has taken over and we see increased al-Qaeda presence in both the Egyptian Sinai and Libya, as well as in Iraq where the Maliki government's marginalization of the Sunnis has given al-Qaeda new life.

Moreover, should Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist governments take over in Egypt and Libya as seems likely, Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda and its affiliates like Takfir-wal Higra can count on a haven to train and recruit, with Libya's oil wealth and Egypt's population and rabid Islamism to draw on.

So let's reiterate, shall we? The chief foreign policy triumph President Obama continually boasts about consists of taking out a largely defanged terrorist. It cost us millions of dollars, inflamed an already unfriendly but unfortunately necessary relationship between the US and Pakistan, burnt our intel network in that country, gave the Chinese and probably the Russians and Iranians a good look at American state of the art stealth technology that cost additional millions to develop, and helped relocate al-Qaeda to the heart of the Middle East after we had largely driven them out.

'Foreign policy achievement' or a fiasco being used for political effect? You be the judge.

"I Got Bin Laden" - And Why Obama's Big Boast Might Have Been A Huge Mistake

"..Osama bin Laden will never again walk the face of this Earth. That’s what change is."

So said President Obama at a recent fundraiser, the same one where he also claimed that Republicans threaten the "very core of what this country stands for."

Let's ignore his attacking the GOP's patriotism and focus on that first statement, because President Obama keeps coming back to it as a great foreign policy achievement of his. Was it?

Osama bin Laden certainly deserved death if any one did. But foreign policy is based on strategic goals, not on simply meting out justice to those who've murdered Americans. If President Obama's chief concern was punishing people who've murdered Americans, we wouldn't be aiding the Palestinian Authority, Hamas or the Hezbollah-controlled government of Lebanon and Iran would be a smoking crater right now, with the mullahs, President Ahmadinejad and a lot of other members of that government turned into halal crisps.

Since President Obama is touting this as a great foreign policy accomplishment of his and is using it to raise money, let's simply take a cold hard look at it in the light of what it actually accomplished from that perspective.

At the time he was assassinated, Osama bin Laden was essentially living quietly as a guest of the Pakistani government in Abbottobad. His health was not the best, so a great deal of the actual operational command was in the hands of his subordinate, Egyptian-born former Muslim Brotherhood leader Ayman Zawahiri.

As President Obama has pointed out, al-Qaeda has been weakened severely and marginalized, thanks to bin Laden's miscalculation in making Iraq a central front of jihad and suffering massive losses of men and material. That happened, ironically, because of military strategies like the surge Senator Obama did his very best to criticize and sabotage before he entered the White House.

At the time of bin Laden's death, Al-Qaeda had become more of a brand name, a proselytizing force over the internet and an inspiration to young jihadis rather than an actual source of many attacks.

We used a painstakingly created network of Pakistani informers and intel sources to nail down bin-Laden's whereabouts and plan the operation that assassinated him. We then sent the valiant men of Navy Seal Team Six into Pakistan via helicopter, broke into bin-Laden's compound, shot him down, removed his body, gave him a proper Islamic funeral ( which involves cursing Christians and Jews, if the usual text was used) and threw his body into the sea.

So we accomplished an act of retribution. Let's examine the results and see if they were worth it.

The Pakistanis were predictably livid at being exposed, again, as a major aider and abetter of Islamic fascism and terrorism. Their honor/shame mentality kicked in and rather than express regret that they had been caught sheltering a mass murderer, they went into hysterics about the violation of their sovereignty. They arrested every member of the Pakistani network they could get their hands on that helped the US find and assassinate bin-Laden and charged them with treason, which will likely end in a number of executions. Aside from our network in Pakistan being burnt, this assured that we're going to have great difficulty with intel from that country in the future.

The Pakistanis also closed the land route they control into Afghanistan through the Torkum Pass for several days. This route transports 75% of the supplies going into Afghanistan for our troops, who now simply had to make do without needed supplies for a few days. Also, because the stopped supply trucks were sitting ducks, the Taliban manged to destroy several of them.

Even more costly, we lost one of our helicopters in the bin-Laden operation, a Blackhawk. Now, these normally cost about $20 million or so, but this one cost a great deal more, because it had been highly modified with top secret stealth technology that brought its cost up to more like $60 million. Even worse, the SEAL's were unable to completely destroy it, and the angry Pakistanis gleefully gave it to the Chinese to examine at their leisure. The potential loss of technology is in the millions, not to mention our relationship with Pakistan, which has worsened considerably and is unlikely to recover for some time if at all.

But the worse is yet to come.

When we take a look at exactly why Osama bin-Laden was ratted out after all this time, some interesting intel surfaces. As I've mentioned on these pages before, we know that there was a substantial disagreement between Osama and his chief lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri, prior to Osama's death. Bin laden was relatively comfortable in Abbotobad and wanted to keep al-Qaeda anchored in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Zawahiri, looking at developments in his native Egypt and elsewhere like the 'Arab Spring' , the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Obama's already announced retreat from the region was pushing to relocate al-Qaeda back to the Middle East and the roiling Arab world.

So now that Osama's dead (and according to my sources, there are pretty solid indications he was deliberately fingered) Zawahiri, a former Muslim Brotherhood member has taken over and we see increased al-Qaeda presence in both the Egyptian Sinai and Libya, as well as in Iraq where the Maliki government's marginalization of the Sunnis has given al-Qaeda new life.

Moreover, should Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist governments take over in Egypt and Libya as seems likely, Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda and its affiliates like Takfir-wal Higra can count on a haven to train and recruit, with Libya's oil wealth and Egypt's population and rabid Islamism to draw on.

So let's reiterate, shall we? The chief foreign policy triumph President Obama continually boasts about consists of taking out a largely defanged terrorist. It cost us millions of dollars, inflamed an already unfriendly but unfortunately necessary relationship between the US and Pakistan, burnt our intel network in that country, gave the Chinese and probably the Russians and Iranians a good look at American state of the art stealth technology that cost additional millions to develop, and helped relocate al-Qaeda to the heart of the Middle East after we had largely driven them out.

'Foreign policy achievement' or a fiasco being used for political effect? You be the judge.

Blood And Sand

By now, the whole world knows that Libyan dictator Moamar Khaddaffi was captured wounded, helpless and alive in Sirte by the rebels.

Instead of being brought in for trial, which is what the rebel leadership claimed they were going to do to him, he was essentially lynched. The snuff videos that the rebels mailed to western journalists show him being beaten and executed while begging for his life, with his corpse being sodomized and mutilated as a last sign of triumph by the mob.

As Mahmoud Shammam, the chief spokesman of the Transitional National Council, said with a smirk, "This is the day of real liberation. We were serious about giving him a fair trial. It seems Allah has some other wish."

Khaddaffi's corpse was then left to rot for a couple of days, after which he was buried, but not allowed a Muslim funeral. The Grand Mufti of Libya, Assadiq al-Ghiriani denied him that because, as the Grand Mufti declared, Colonel Gaddafi was an ''infidel'' and for this reason ''prayers should not be spoken over his body''. He was subsequently buried in an unmarked, secret grave, something that has deep symbolic significance is Islam as a sign of disrespect. In many Islamic cultures, unmarked secret graves are reserved for bastards and apostates.

Several Western observers, Michael Totten and Jonathan Foreman among them admitted being moved to pity for a moment as they saw this spectacle, but then reminded themselves what a brutal dictator Khaddaffi was and came to the conclusion that the punishment fit the crime so to speak, and was thus understandable.

With all respect to two writers who are normally extremely astute observers, I think they missed something that's worth pointing out.

Moamar Khaddafi was indeed a monster...but by our standards, not the standards of the world he lived in.

That world was the culture shaped by Islam, and I have never failed to be astounded at how much of it seems to revel in cruelty and domination.

In Khaddaffi's world,just as in Saddam's world or Basher Assad's,torturing and killing political opponents is just how business is done, and terrorism is just another tool of statecraft. And it's no different for Khaddaffi's successors. Ugly stories are already drifting back about the rebel's torture chambers,summary executions and scores being settled. And it's no coincidence that the interim leader of the new Libya announced cheerfully the other day that the country will be governed by sharia law.

The Qu'ran and the sharia law derived from it permeates this world and it allows wife beating and what we in the west would consider gross injustice for those on the wrong end of the pecking order, such as non-Muslims. It mandates horrific punishments and executions designed to inflict maximum physical pain for homosexuals, adulterers, apostates and for those caught committing crimes, even petty theft. It is a culture that produces forced clitorectomies for small girls, honor killings, and yes, torture and painful death for those who end up on the wrong end of the power struggle or who are seen as a threat to the established order.

Moreover, the more Islamic the society is, the more the above seems to apply. The Iranians who overthrew the Shah's relatively secular regime in 1978 made much of the cruelty of the Shah's SAVAK secret police. But the theocratic Islamic Republic that replaced it soon made the Savak look benign, and the few accounts that have leaked out of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison bear witness to the extreme brutality of the regime.

Saudi Arabia's penchant for lashes, decapitations and the amputation of limbs is well known, as is the famous instance of a number of young girls burning to death when their school was on fire and the muwataheen ( religious police) forced them back into the burning building and refused to let them out because they felt they were insufficiently covered . The regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan was characterized by the same kind of brutality.

A quick look around the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East but actually anywhere there are large numbers of Muslims shows this to be fairly common, even in the West where violence like honor killings are frequently covered up by the media. Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew, was lured to an apartment by an attractive girl he didn't realize was a Muslim. He was then tortured slowly to death by a Muslim gang over a period of weeks, with his screams fully audible to the rest of the Muslim residents of the building, some of whom stopped by to participate. And this happened in Paris, not in Tehran, Ramallah or Damascus.

In an earlier essay,I examined whether this was more a case of an existing tribal culture or whether it developed from Islam per se, and came to the conclusion that at this point,the two are so welded together that it ultimately doesn't matter.

The reaction in the West to what happened to Moamar Khaddaffi is important, because it illustrates a very dangerous mindset. We have become so permeated by the poisonous nonsense that all cultures are equal, that we have to be non-judgmental of the 'other' no matter what, that we easily fall into the bigotry of low expectations. That explains why the Western Press prints reams of critique about the supposed injustices done by a relatively benign and humane Israel but ignores the celebration of brutal murder as a holy act and and the holding up of murderers as heroes and role models just over Israel's borders.

It's why the exchange of a large group of convicted killers for one Israeli soldier was commonly referred to as a 'prisoner exchange' instead of what it actually was, a ransom drop to release a kidnap victim who received no trial but was held incognito in brutal captivity for five and a half years.

It's why a mob demonstrating in Tahrir Square in Egypt for freedom and equality could horrendously gang rape a TV reporter while screaming "Jew, Jew" without anyone in the dinosaur media calling for them to be punished or even pointing out the hypocrisy. Even Lara Logan's own network spirited her quickly out of the country without even making a police report or getting her medical attention until she was safely out of Egypt.

If Muslims break into a UN aid office in Afghanistan and decapitate every non-Muslim there because a Florida preacher burned a Qu'ran, we're understanding and don't even insist that anyone be brought to justice. But if American Christians were to kill Muslims in our own country because Muslims burned a church in Pakistan or confiscated and burned bibles in Saudi Arabia, the headlines and tearful apologies would be rampant, and anyone who participated would receive a healthy prison term if not a death sentence.

It's absurdly easy to fall into this trap with someone like Khaddaffi, who admittedly is no great loss to the world. But this kind of cultural cringe is the proverbial slippery slope and shows how poisoned our reactions and expectations are not only of Muslim nations but for Muslims who live in the West among us. If the lynching of Khaddafi had happened in America or if the Israelis had simply dragged Yasser Arafat out of the Muqata one day and strung him up, the media outcry would have been deafening. But we accept such behavior from Muslims with hardly a murmur. In our minds, they're 'supposed to act like that'. So we allow more and more trespasses on our own mores and standards and feel guilty about to defending ourselves against the most egregious assaults on our culture, and even our persons.

Even an Adolf Eichmann in Israel or Timothy McVeigh or a Ted Bundy in America rated a trial, and a judicially mandated execution at the end of it.

Believe it or not, so did Moamar Khaddaffi. And we should be saying so loudly and clearly,instead of shrugging our shoulders at yet another act of barbarity emanating from the Muslim world.

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Blood And Sand

By now, the whole world knows that Libyan dictator Moamar Khaddaffi was captured wounded, helpless and alive in Sirte by the rebels.

Instead of being brought in for trial, which is what the rebel leadership claimed they were going to do to him, he was essentially lynched. The snuff videos that the rebels mailed to western journalists show him being beaten and executed while begging for his life, with his corpse being sodomized and mutilated as a last sign of triumph by the mob.

As Mahmoud Shammam, the chief spokesman of the Transitional National Council, said with a smirk, "This is the day of real liberation. We were serious about giving him a fair trial. It seems Allah has some other wish."

Khaddaffi's corpse was then left to rot for a couple of days, after which he was buried, but not allowed a Muslim funeral. The Grand Mufti of Libya, Assadiq al-Ghiriani denied him that because, as the Grand Mufti declared, Colonel Gaddafi was an ''infidel'' and for this reason ''prayers should not be spoken over his body''. He was subsequently buried in an unmarked, secret grave, something that has deep symbolic significance is Islam as a sign of disrespect. In many Islamic cultures, unmarked secret graves are reserved for bastards and apostates.

Several Western observers, Michael Totten and Jonathan Foreman among them admitted being moved to pity for a moment as they saw this spectacle, but then reminded themselves what a brutal dictator Khaddaffi was and came to the conclusion that the punishment fit the crime so to speak, and was thus understandable.

With all respect to two writers who are normally extremely astute observers, I think they missed something that's worth pointing out.

Moamar Khaddafi was indeed a monster...but by our standards, not the standards of the world he lived in.

That world was the culture shaped by Islam, and I have never failed to be astounded at how much of it seems to revel in cruelty and domination.

In Khaddaffi's world,just as in Saddam's world or Basher Assad's,torturing and killing political opponents is just how business is done, and terrorism is just another tool of statecraft. And it's no different for Khaddaffi's successors. Ugly stories are already drifting back about the rebel's torture chambers,summary executions and scores being settled. And it's no coincidence that the interim leader of the new Libya announced cheerfully the other day that the country will be governed by sharia law.

The Qu'ran and the sharia law derived from it permeates this world and it allows wife beating and what we in the west would consider gross injustice for those on the wrong end of the pecking order, such as non-Muslims. It mandates horrific punishments and executions designed to inflict maximum physical pain for homosexuals, adulterers, apostates and for those caught committing crimes, even petty theft. It is a culture that produces forced clitorectomies for small girls, honor killings, and yes, torture and painful death for those who end up on the wrong end of the power struggle or who are seen as a threat to the established order.

Moreover, the more Islamic the society is, the more the above seems to apply. The Iranians who overthrew the Shah's relatively secular regime in 1978 made much of the cruelty of the Shah's SAVAK secret police. But the theocratic Islamic Republic that replaced it soon made the Savak look benign, and the few accounts that have leaked out of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison bear witness to the extreme brutality of the regime.

Saudi Arabia's penchant for lashes, decapitations and the amputation of limbs is well known, as is the famous instance of a number of young girls burning to death when their school was on fire and the muwataheen ( religious police) forced them back into the burning building and refused to let them out because they felt they were insufficiently covered . The regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan was characterized by the same kind of brutality.

A quick look around the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East but actually anywhere there are large numbers of Muslims shows this to be fairly common, even in the West where violence like honor killings are frequently covered up by the media. Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew, was lured to an apartment by an attractive girl he didn't realize was a Muslim. He was then tortured slowly to death by a Muslim gang over a period of weeks, with his screams fully audible to the rest of the Muslim residents of the building, some of whom stopped by to participate. And this happened in Paris, not in Tehran, Ramallah or Damascus.

In an earlier essay,I examined whether this was more a case of an existing tribal culture or whether it developed from Islam per se, and came to the conclusion that at this point,the two are so welded together that it ultimately doesn't matter.

The reaction in the West to what happened to Moamar Khaddaffi is important, because it illustrates a very dangerous mindset. We have become so permeated by the poisonous nonsense that all cultures are equal, that we have to be non-judgmental of the 'other' no matter what, that we easily fall into the bigotry of low expectations. That explains why the Western Press prints reams of critique about the supposed injustices done by a relatively benign and humane Israel but ignores the celebration of brutal murder as a holy act and and the holding up of murderers as heroes and role models just over Israel's borders.

It's why the exchange of a large group of convicted killers for one Israeli soldier was commonly referred to as a 'prisoner exchange' instead of what it actually was, a ransom drop to release a kidnap victim who received no trial but was held incognito in brutal captivity for five and a half years.

It's why a mob demonstrating in Tahrir Square in Egypt for freedom and equality could horrendously gang rape a TV reporter while screaming "Jew, Jew" without anyone in the dinosaur media calling for them to be punished or even pointing out the hypocrisy. Even Lara Logan's own network spirited her quickly out of the country without even making a police report or getting her medical attention until she was safely out of Egypt.

If Muslims break into a UN aid office in Afghanistan and decapitate every non-Muslim there because a Florida preacher burned a Qu'ran, we're understanding and don't even insist that anyone be brought to justice. But if American Christians were to kill Muslims in our own country because Muslims burned a church in Pakistan or confiscated and burned bibles in Saudi Arabia, the headlines and tearful apologies would be rampant, and anyone who participated would receive a healthy prison term if not a death sentence.

It's absurdly easy to fall into this trap with someone like Khaddaffi, who admittedly is no great loss to the world. But this kind of cultural cringe is the proverbial slippery slope and shows how poisoned our reactions and expectations are not only of Muslim nations but for Muslims who live in the West among us. If the lynching of Khaddafi had happened in America or if the Israelis had simply dragged Yasser Arafat out of the Muqata one day and strung him up, the media outcry would have been deafening. But we accept such behavior from Muslims with hardly a murmur. In our minds, they're 'supposed to act like that'. So we allow more and more trespasses on our own mores and standards and feel guilty about to defending ourselves against the most egregious assaults on our culture, and even our persons.

Even an Adolf Eichmann in Israel or Timothy McVeigh or a Ted Bundy in America rated a trial, and a judicially mandated execution at the end of it.

Believe it or not, so did Moamar Khaddaffi. And we should be saying so loudly and clearly,instead of shrugging our shoulders at yet another act of barbarity emanating from the Muslim world.

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Khaddaffi Dead : The Fall Of The Brother Leader

Libyan leader Moamad Khaddaffi was killed this morning, fighting to the last as his final stronghold in Sirte was taken by the rebels.He'd been in power for 44 years.

National Transitional Council (NTC) Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril announced the death at a news conference this morning in Tripoli.

Jibril said NTC forces were now pursuing Saif al-Islam, Col Khaddaffi's most prominent son, who fled Sirte in a convoy before Sirte fell. He's probably the last major Khaddaffi loyalist still at large.

Jibril also called for neighboring Algeria to turn over the members of KHaddaffi's family who fled there in August to revolutionary justice. Two of KHaddaffi's younger sons, his daughter and his wife are in the country.

"A new Libya is born today," Mahmoud Shammam, the chief spokesman of the Transitional National Council, said today in a statement. "This is the day of real liberation. We were serious about giving him a fair trial. It seems Allah has some other wish."

Apparently so.

British and French leaders hailed the of Khaddaffi's death and the preservation of those lucrative oil contracts they signed with the rebel forces.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the death a major step forward for the people of Libya and urged the pursuit of democratic reforms.

"The disappearance of Moamer Kadhaffi is a major step forward in the battle fought for more than eight months by the Libyan people to liberate themselves from the dictatorial and violent regime imposed on them for more than 40 years."

William Hague, Britain's Foreign Secretary said: "When the uprising began, we didn't know how long this would take. I think we feel vindicated all along as the country is now free to become a free and fair democracy. We are very pleased that with Khaddaffi has been removed. There is work to be now to stabilise Libya and bring together separate militias under the control of one governemnt. Once the liberation is declared then there's 30 days to form a transitional government. We should be on the optimistic side, but should not rule out further problems.

It could be a long job for the UK and our allies, but not so much a military job now. Tripoli is not Baghdad."

In other words, count on a lot more of your tax dollars going for nation building before the nature of Libya's new government is actually known.Actually, the odds on an Arab state being established in Libya that's actually free and democratic are incredibly long ones, but the oil will start flowing,which is all the British and French ever were concerned about in the first place.

After all, they didn't care a fig about 'democracy' when they were actively dealing with the Khaddaffi for the oil during his reign, and they were even able to happily ignore the Brother Leader's involvement in the Lockerbie Bombing. What they cared about was that black gold underneath Libya's sands.



The British and French only dumped Khaddaffi during the initial surge of the rebellion, when it looked like he was finished, and their response was to abandon Khaddaffi and rush to sign new oil deals with the rebels. When Khaddaffi rallied and pushed the rebels back to their final stronghold in Benghazi, the Brits and the French realized that they were going to be left out in the cold. And that's when NATO suddenly became involved and western military action against Khaddaffi's forces was launched to turn the tide.

I remind you of this not to defend Khaddaffi, but to give you a little realistic perspective on the matter, so no one's disappointed when the West pours billions into a Libyan rathole only to have it turn out as something different than 'free and democratic'. If the West's leaders were really all that fired up about freedom of democracy, they would have put Khaddaffi in the jar a long time ago.

All the pious nonsense about 'establishing freedom and democracy' or 'protecting the rights of the Libyan people' needs to be seen as exactly that. This was nineteenth century imperialism writ large, and it was always about the oil.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Khaddaffi Dead : The Fall Of The Brother Leader

Libyan leader Moamad Khaddaffi was killed this morning, fighting to the last as his final stronghold in Sirte was taken by the rebels.He'd been in power for 44 years.

National Transitional Council (NTC) Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril announced the death at a news conference this morning in Tripoli.

Jibril said NTC forces were now pursuing Saif al-Islam, Col Khaddaffi's most prominent son, who fled Sirte in a convoy before Sirte fell. He's probably the last major Khaddaffi loyalist still at large.

Jibril also called for neighboring Algeria to turn over the members of KHaddaffi's family who fled there in August to revolutionary justice. Two of KHaddaffi's younger sons, his daughter and his wife are in the country.

"A new Libya is born today," Mahmoud Shammam, the chief spokesman of the Transitional National Council, said today in a statement. "This is the day of real liberation. We were serious about giving him a fair trial. It seems Allah has some other wish."

Apparently so.

British and French leaders hailed the of Khaddaffi's death and the preservation of those lucrative oil contracts they signed with the rebel forces.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the death a major step forward for the people of Libya and urged the pursuit of democratic reforms.

"The disappearance of Moamer Kadhaffi is a major step forward in the battle fought for more than eight months by the Libyan people to liberate themselves from the dictatorial and violent regime imposed on them for more than 40 years."

William Hague, Britain's Foreign Secretary said: "When the uprising began, we didn't know how long this would take. I think we feel vindicated all along as the country is now free to become a free and fair democracy. We are very pleased that with Khaddaffi has been removed. There is work to be now to stabilise Libya and bring together separate militias under the control of one governemnt. Once the liberation is declared then there's 30 days to form a transitional government. We should be on the optimistic side, but should not rule out further problems.

It could be a long job for the UK and our allies, but not so much a military job now. Tripoli is not Baghdad."

In other words, count on a lot more of your tax dollars going for nation building before the nature of Libya's new government is actually known.Actually, the odds on an Arab state being established in Libya that's actually free and democratic are incredibly long ones, but the oil will start flowing,which is all the British and French ever were concerned about in the first place.

After all, they didn't care a fig about 'democracy' when they were actively dealing with the Khaddaffi for the oil during his reign, and they were even able to happily ignore the Brother Leader's involvement in the Lockerbie Bombing. What they cared about was that black gold underneath Libya's sands.



The British and French only dumped Khaddaffi during the initial surge of the rebellion, when it looked like he was finished, and their response was to abandon Khaddaffi and rush to sign new oil deals with the rebels. When Khaddaffi rallied and pushed the rebels back to their final stronghold in Benghazi, the Brits and the French realized that they were going to be left out in the cold. And that's when NATO suddenly became involved and western military action against Khaddaffi's forces was launched to turn the tide.

I remind you of this not to defend Khaddaffi, but to give you a little realistic perspective on the matter, so no one's disappointed when the West pours billions into a Libyan rathole only to have it turn out as something different than 'free and democratic'. If the West's leaders were really all that fired up about freedom of democracy, they would have put Khaddaffi in the jar a long time ago.

All the pious nonsense about 'establishing freedom and democracy' or 'protecting the rights of the Libyan people' needs to be seen as exactly that. This was nineteenth century imperialism writ large, and it was always about the oil.

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