Libya: Well President Obama Has Saved Hillary The Trouble

[if indeed she is elected]

Here we go again

US warplanes target ISIL in Libya for first time
Airstrikes are backing Libyan forces seeking to retake city of Sirte from ISIL.

US warplanes have carried out air strikes on positions of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Libyan city of Sirte for the first time, the country's unity government head announced.

"The first American air strikes on precise positions of the Daesh (ISIL) organisation were carried out today, causing heavy losses ... in Sirte," Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj said in a televised speech on Monday

Then the kicker

"The specific targets will be precision targets," Cook said. "One of the targets struck today was a tank... the United States military will be rigorously involved in every step of the process.

"We don't have an end point [for the bombing campaign] at this particularly moment of time... we certainly hope that this something that does not require a lengthy amount of time."

Remember this

The pro-GNA forces are mostly made up of militias from western Libya established during the 2011 revolt that overthrew Qaddafi.

A militia set up to guard the country's main oil facilities has also been advancing on ISIL.

The GNA was the result of a UN-brokered power-sharing agreement struck in December, but it has yet to be endorsed by Libya's elected parliament based in the country's far east.

GNA = Government of National Accord.

Here we ago again.

But then again the GNA is very busy opening oil terminals, so all is good.

One Country 3 Governments

At the moment Libya has three centres of power. The first is the Presidential Council (PC), which has been located in the Abu Sittah navy base, a stone’s throw from central Tripoli, since 30 March 2016. The PC is headed by Fayez al-Sarraj – a former member of the Tobruk Parliament, where he represented a Tripoli constituency – and it was borne out of the signing of the UN-brokered Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) in December 2015. According to this agreement, the PC presides over the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is currently based in Tripoli. The GNA should be endorsed by the House of Representatives (HoR) which was previously based in Tobruk but could move elsewhere to guarantee the safety of its members some of whom have repeatedly reported being stopped from voting and threatened by members hostile to the GNA. For this reason, at the time of writing, the HoR has still not voted on the government, although on two occasions a majority of its members have expressed their support for it in a written statement.

As for the oil

Libya’s Bungled Oil Deal

In an article in Al-Monitor, I argued that the political fractures that are preventing progress on ISIS are the same ones preventing progress on exporting oil and this is shown by the so-called national oil deals. The July 2 merger of the rival eastern and western National Oil Companies (NOC) is a sham, announced likely to demonstrate “progress” to the Western.

The eastern Tobruk government and the western Tripoli-based GNA are still pursuing different oil policies and maintain separate NOCs. Simultaneously, each is trying to prevent the other from benefiting from the country’s oil wealth. In retrospect, it appears the merger announcement three weeks ago was likely fabricated to allay Western demands for progress in the oil sphere… Rather than seeking to secure genuine political compromises or incentivize coordinated fighting against the Islamic State (IS), the UN appears to have prioritized bribing key militias to allow oil to flow through infrastructure that they control.

Open ended warfare, not one vote in congress and the question remains as always, who are we really supporting?

As long as the US just bombs; then no democracy is required.

Drone strikes and the complete disregard of the sovereignty of other nations, no democracy required.

Killing without trial, no democracy required.

Torture, oh shush you silly person, no democracy required.

Bombing a hospital for no reason, tsk tsk, no democracy required.

Continuous and never ending war, no democracy required.

The neoconservatives must be laughing their asses off, they couldn't have done it any better.

But always remember we are not an Imperial power, we are a democracy and if you don't agree we will throw exceptionalism in your face to go along with the bombs and chaos generated by our deliberate actions.

Question, which bit of this current chaos in the Middle East and N. Africa was not the result of our own ["The West"] actions?

No Democracy Required.

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Comments

tapu dali's picture

Just bomb. Per Curtis LeMay (G. Wallace's running mate) "back to the Stone Age".

Which one, though? Palaeo- , Meso-, or Neolithic?

Not precise enough.

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There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.

tapu dali's picture

Zere vill be Var!!

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There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.

Ze zousand year Reich...oh wait

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ZimInSeattle's picture

The dark side of the imperial empire requires no democracy.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

Alligator Ed's picture

AUMF is not a declaration of war(s) but an excuse to start war whenever and wherever wanted. No House of Representatives. No Senate. No pretense of any thing echoing "popular sovereignty"--especially not in those lands being the receipt of our bombs. And if the country has oil---ooh! get's so much better--more bombs.

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and utter lunatic, how much more democratic do you want it to be?

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And rigged elections, giving a democratic flavour when reporting is artfully arranged and presented by corporate media.

Sometimes appearances really do count, just not votes.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

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lunachickie's picture

Notice that our government watched an election be stolen in broad daylight--and did nothing. Why would they be bothered about something formal like "a declaration of war", just to go drop bombs on another country?

God, these people are despicable.

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detroitmechworks's picture

This is how you make enemies, not end a conflict.

Fucking morons in command...

The only way to win a war is to put boots on the ground and actually FIGHT the damn thing. Of course, that is assuming the war is worth fighting, which is a case that NOBODY has made yet.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

I have long believed that that was the intent.

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lotlizard's picture

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176169/tomgram%3A_william_hartung%2C_how...

Though seldom thought of this way, the U.S. political system is also a global arms distribution system of the first order. In this context, the Obama administration has proven itself a good friend to arms exporting firms. During President Obama’s first six years in office, Washington entered into agreements to sell more than $190 billion in weaponry worldwide — more, that is, than any U.S. administration since World War II. In addition, Team Obama has loosened restrictions on arms exports, making it possible to send abroad a whole new range of weapons and weapons components — including Black Hawk and Huey helicopters and engines for C-17 transport planes — with far less scrutiny than was previously required.

Under the circumstances, it should be obvious that trends in the global arms trade are a major news story and should be dealt with as such in the country most responsible for putting more weapons of a more powerful nature into the hands of those living in “volatile” regions. It’s a monster business (in every sense of the word) and certainly has far more dangerous consequences than licensing a Hollywood blockbuster or selling another Boeing airliner.

Historically, there have been rare occasions of public protest against unbridled arms trafficking, as with the backlash against “the merchants of death” after World War I, or the controversy over who armed Saddam Hussein that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Even now, small numbers of congressional representatives, including John Conyers, Chris Murphy, and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, continue to try to halt the sale of cluster munitions, bombs, and missiles to Saudi Arabia.

There is, however, unlikely to be a genuine public debate about the value of the arms business and Washington’s place in it if it isn’t even considered a subject worthy of more than an occasional media story. In the meantime, the United States continues to hold onto the number one role in the global arms trade, the White House does its part, the Pentagon greases the wheels, and the dollars roll in to profit-hungry U.S. weapons contractors.

The White House does its part. Deals: the kind Trump has made, the kind Obama makes, the kind the Clintons will make. Think about it.

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shower then with love and weapons deals.

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tapu dali's picture

Isn't that the whole point?

Sojapoliitikapropagandaviljelejad.
Esto for "sowers of war politic propaganda".
It's an agglutinative language. thanks

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There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.

snoopydawg's picture

It has been from the beginning starting with the reason for the Iraq war.
Our government knew that Saddam had WMDs because they gave them to him.
During the Iran/Iraq war they gave Saddam chemical and biological weapons to use on the Iranian troops along with the coordinates of where the troops were.
The reason why they decided that Saddam had to go had nothing to do with WMDs. It was for two reasons.
The first was to start removing the governments of countries in the Middle East so that Israel could be the only super power in the Middle East.
Wesley Clark is on record stating that the US was going to bomb (overthrow) 7 countries.
The second reason was to get the oil and other resources of those countries for corporations and to build pipelines to transport natural gas that other countries and corporations had contracts with like Russia has in Syria as one example.
The other reasons that the war on various terrorist groups is bogus is because our government and our allies are creating, arming, training and funding them.
We now know that Saudi Arabia government officials helped finance the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11, but for over 15 years our government hid that fact from us and continued relationships with them.
Our government knows that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and our other allies are funding the various terrorists organizations, yet don't cut ties with them.
And our government is also funding and training its own groups of terrorists to help overthrow Assad.
And again why does Assad need to go? Because he used sarin gas on his own people. Except it wasn't Assad that used the gas, it was one of the terrorists groups that the US created. Oop, good thing that our media is complicit in covering up that fact. No the reason why Assad needs to be removed is again all about oil, resources and pipelines that other corporations want.
The Al Quada group that the troops fought against during the Iraq war are now fighting alongside our troops in Syria. You didn't know that?
Our government tells us that it has to send the military in to other countries to protect the people from their government that is killing them but instead of protecting them, the troops kill them, bombs are dropped on them or they are killed by the terrorists that our government created.
The defense contractors, companies like Blackwater, the banks and everyone else who profits from wars are getting richer as they always do with any war.

This article goes into detail about all the countries that are funding the different terrorist organizations, including ISIL.
It's long but worth the read that shows why the war on terror is bogus.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/europe-is-harbouring-the-islamic...

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

lotlizard's picture

some on the marginalized “far” Left and the so-called “alternate” or “alt” Right — both of whom are already beyond the pale in mainstream-media world anyway, so they don’t have anything to lose.

why the war on terror is bogus

Can’t threaten someone with loss of access, destruction of reputation, or firing from a cushy job if they never had any of those things to start with.

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snoopydawg's picture

foreign policy in the Middle East.

If not for Putin, the neocons along with Israel and Saudi Arabia had hoped that Obama would launch military strikes on Syria and Iran that could open the door to more “regime change” across the Middle East, a dream at the center of neocon geopolitical strategy since the 1990s. This neocon strategy took shape after the display of U.S. high-tech warfare against Iraq in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union later that year. U.S. neocons began believing in a new paradigm of a uni-polar world where U.S. edicts were law.

The neocons felt this paradigm shift also meant that Israel would no longer need to put up with frustrating negotiations with the Palestinians. Rather than haggling over a two-state solution, U.S. neocons simply pressed for “regime change” in hostile Muslim countries that were assisting the Palestinians or Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Iraq was first on the neocon hit list, but next came Syria and Iran. The overriding idea was that once the regimes assisting the Palestinians and Hezbollah were removed or neutralized, then Israel could dictate peace terms to the Palestinians who would have no choice but to accept what was on the table.

The Rise of Obama.

The neocons were dealt another setback in 2008 when Barack Obama defeated a neocon favorite, Sen. John McCain. But Obama then made one of the fateful decisions of his presidency, deciding to staff key foreign-policy positions with “a team of rivals,” i.e. keeping Republican operative Robert Gates at the Defense Department and recruiting Hillary Clinton, a neocon-lite, to head the State Department.

Obama also retained Bush’s high command, most significantly the media-darling Gen. David Petraeus. That meant that Obama didn’t take control over his own foreign policy.

Gates and Petraeus were themselves deeply influenced by the neocons, particularly Frederick Kagan, who had been a major advocate for the 2007 “surge” escalation in Iraq, which was hailed by the U.S. mainstream media as a great “success” but never achieved its principal goal of a unified Iraq. At the cost of nearly 1,000 U.S. dead, it only bought time for an orderly withdrawal that spared Bush and the neocons the embarrassment of an obvious defeat.

So, instead of a major personnel shakeup in the wake of the catastrophic Iraq War, Obama presided over what looked more like continuity with the Bush war policies, albeit with a firmer commitment to draw down troops in Iraq and eventually in Afghanistan.

Wow!

Hillary has hinted that she isn't on board with the Iranian deal that Obama and Kerry brokered with Iran and the other countries, as well as most of the republicans and the neoconservatives who want to overturn it.
Many people have commented in a different essay that she has said that she would obliterate Iran if they used nuclear weapons on Israel, but what else could Iran do that would nullify the Iran deal?
I was surprised by how Obama was left out of loop of the Ukraine coup. If this is true, then it does show that the president is basically just a puppet and others are setting the foreign policy agenda.

The gravest threat to this Obama-Putin collaboration has now emerged in Ukraine, where a coalition of U.S. neocon operatives and neocon holdovers within the State Department fanned the flames of unrest in Ukraine, contributing to the violent overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and now to a military intervention by Russian troops in the Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine that historically was part of Russia
Though I’m told the Ukraine crisis caught Obama and Putin by surprise, the neocon determination to drive a wedge between the two leaders has been apparent for months, especially after Putin brokered a deal to head off U.S. military strikes against Syria last summer and helped get Iran to negotiate concessions on its nuclear program, both moves upsetting the neocons who had favored heightened confrontations.

Putin also is reported to have verbally dressed down Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan over what Putin considered their provocative actions regarding the Syrian civil war. So, by disrupting neocon plans and offending Netanyahu and Bandar, the Russian president found himself squarely in the crosshairs of some very powerful people.

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/02/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-cri...

Obama and NATO had already sent troops into countries surrounding Russia before the DNC hack. But since the hack the neoconservative have been ramping up the rhetoric about Russia's interference with not only our election, but the election in other countries and accusing Russia's aggression.
And the people are swallowing this propaganda.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

He makes a public policy statement (occasionally semi-reasonable) and high military and state department people immediately oppose it publicly. There are no consequences for the insubordination, no mention of the flip-flop, by him or by the media, and he shifts position to do what they want. Brilliant. Not.

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over it and Obama & the foreign policy establishment are OK with it. I think it's a disgrace.

When will a politician arise that can be accused of "isolationism" and being an "American firster?" I remember Thomas Jefferson was quite persuasive on the evils of foreign entanglements.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Citizen Of Earth's picture

The Nobel Peace prize winner gettin in his last licks. Gotta keep the MIC and OilCos happy by heating up a shooting war just before he is Defecated From Office.

And by all accounts, Libya is Hellery's Baby. She is the one who talked Obomba into bombing it in the first place. Which destabilized it and threw it into chaos leading to growth of ISIS. Can't wait to see what Hellery does when she becomes the most powerful corrupt woman in the world.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

Having obama as a recipient of this prize is disgraceful and he has proven himself to be completely unworthy of it.

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Why would a person, or organization, who works for peace and the betterment of humanity ever accept a future Nobel?

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

claim credit as peacemakers.

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ZimInSeattle's picture

The libertarians may be crazy on a few things, but at least they are strongly against foreign entanglements. I hope enough people on both the right and left become aware of the 3rd party candidates and dump the war parties in droves. All this bombing around the world is only going to bring the suicide bombers here. And there is no stopping that.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

ZimInSeattle's picture

Here’s some news you all have ignored: US fighter jets target ISIL in Libya for first time

Hillary has lot’s of experience:

Michael Crowley, a liberal senior writer for Politico, summed up that rich experience. She “backed a bold escalation of the Afghanistan war… pressed Obama to arm the Syrian rebels … endorsed airstrikes against the Assad regime… backed intervention in Libya, and … helped enable Obama’s expansion of lethal drone strikes [as] the administration’s most reliable advocate for military action,” in Afghanistan, Libya, and the bin Laden raid, taking “a more aggressive line than [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates, a Bush-appointed Republican.” Crowley left out her backing for such “democracy promotion” efforts as the extrajudicial killing of bin Laden, drone assassinations with hundreds of added “collateral damage” murders, the illegal Israeli West Bank dispossessions and housing settlements on Palestinian territory, and the 2009 coup in Honduras that forced the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, out of the country. Clinton denied that his removal was a coup even though a leaked document from the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa said, “there is no doubt… [that his ouster] constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” In short, her experience in the State Department was primarily a string of lies and imperialist coups masquerading as support for democracy, just as her ruthless deposing of Gaddafi (“We came, we saw, he died”) and bombing of Libya is portrayed as civilized in spirit.

~snip~

Did Hillary’s Clinton sidekick, Deborah Wasserman Schultz rig the Democratic campaign primaries? You bet she did, and as punishment, she has been put in charge of the Clinton campaign nationwide. Clinton asked a Senate investigative committee, what difference did it make why Libyans attacked the US embassy in Benghazi? One might ask what difference does it make who exposed the DNC illegalities? It can be assumed by their behavior that the MSM is just a megaphone for establishment (i.e., ruling class) power and legitimacy, and uninterested in questions of justice and legality. It is humorously ironic that the Obama administration and its acolytes in the MSM are absorbed in Russian conspiracies while engaging in the greatest conspiracy of all – hiding the truth from the citizens of the US and the world.

Emphasis Added

American Elections: Weapons of Mass Distraction

Good job HillBots. The MIC thanks you for your patriotism.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

snoopydawg's picture

Not one thing you wrote was untrue, but they sure did try to spin it at total CT and they just won't accept the fact that Hillary is a warmonger.
You gave them proof that she was and instead of them trying to debunk your comment, they hid instead.
We will see that you are right when more wars are started, more soldiers come home in caskets because she wants to put troops in Syria.
Again, what was wrong when Bush and Cheney were doing them is acceptable under Obama and Hellery.
And I need to shower after looking for your comment and reading through those comments.
I see that Lysis has no problem with the neocons and the banking people that want to privatize social security are endorsing Hellery.
Good Gawd, how people can be so damned stupid is beyond me.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

ZimInSeattle's picture

Not surprised they hid my comment immediately. They can't handle the truth. There are more prominent Republicans endorsing Hellery than either Gary Johnson or Trump. That pretty much says it all. I could care less if I get banned from TOP. The cognitive dissonance is deep over on there on the Dark Side.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

Thaumlord-Exelbirth's picture

So she can sit there and tsk tsk about how we're not doing things in a way she would have done them.

I wish I had voted for McCain back in 08. Not that it would have changed the outcome at all, given I'm in a blue state, but at least I wouldn't have any association with the warmonger.

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Damnit Janet's picture

under educated
abused
neglected

While Obama and his minions use the money that could help our children but instead he and WE are using the money to drop bombs on men, women and children.

Fine fucking job America.

Nice priorities.

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison