There was a very interesting document leak over the weekend, and it casts a whole new light over America's strategy in Libya.

Air traffic control recordings obtained by the Middle East Eye suggest British, French, Italian and US forces have been coordinating air strikes in support of renegade Libyan general, Khalifa Haftar.
The leaked tapes, which could indicate the countries are helping Haftar fight rebels in the east, appeared to confirm that a joint operations base exists - something which the London-based media organisation has previously reported.
"What's clear is that Western forces are helping Haftar coordinate air strikes in eastern Libya ,which is where his base of control is. But the targets there aren't actually Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS)," Karim el Bar, the journalist who reported the story, told Al Jazeera.
"They [the targets] are his [Haftar's] political enemies - some of whom are Islamists, some of whom have other political affilations ... he's undermining the government in Tripoli."

So who is Khalifa Haftar? The answer is extremely interesting, and shows just how little our foreign policy has changed since the Cold War.

Haftar took part in the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969. He served proudly fighting against Israel in the 1973 war. Haftar later became Gaddafi's military chief of staff.
Then things went south. In the 1987 war with Chad, Libya lost badly and Haftar was captured along with about 600 other soldiers. Gaddafi, for whatever reason, disavowed Haftar and all those soldiers. Haftar had been betrayed.

Guess who stepped in to save the day for Haftar? The CIA.
They negotiated the release of Haftar and 300 other of his soldiers, who all came back to Virginia to work the next few decades in the shadow of CIA headquarters trying to overthrow Gaddafi. (note: the early effort was "funded in part by Saddam Hussein")
Fast-forward to 2011.

Haftar returned to Libya to take part in the 2011 revolution, but internal politics left him in a subordinate position in the rebel army.

Some members of the revolutionary political leadership say Haftar returned to Libya with a swaggering arrogance and an expectation that he would automatically be put in charge of the armed fight against Gaddafi.

Disappointed, Haftar moved back to Virginia for a few years.
Then in 2014, when he returned to Libya and everything changed.

Heavily armed gunmen loyal to a renegade Libyan general stormed parliament on Sunday demanding its suspension and a handover of power to purge the North African country of Islamist militants....
Details of who was involved Sunday's chaotic attack were unclear, but loyalists of retired General Khalifa Haftar said his forces and militia allies had planned the parliament assault in a campaign to rid Libya of Islamist hardliners.
The attackers kidnapped about 10 employees from the GNC, an official said. At least two people were killed and another 55 wounded in the violence, officials said.

This event basically marks Libya's final downleg into full-scale civil war. By August, the Islamic group Libyan Dawn had driven Haftar and the new GNC into exile in Tobruk.
The international community recognized Abdullah al-Thani's government and its parliament in Tobruk, which quickly made an alliance with Haftar's old-Gaddafi army. Since then things have gone from bad to worse.

Last year, Haftar launched a self-declared campaign to drive armed groups from Libya's second biggest city, Benghazi. He has refused to support a UN-backed unity government, based in the capital Tripoli, because his forces were once loyal to a rival government.
"The government in Tripoli is launching an offensive in Sirte against ISIL, and so we have this bizarre situation where Western governments are diplomatically and publicly supporting the government in Tripoli, but then their militaries are supporting Haftar in the east," el Bar said.

The Government of National Accord, formed last December and backed by all the Western governments as a path to peace, has made some progress creating alliances in Western Libya.
Haftar is reportedly unhappy that the national security post in the UN-government was given to a rival.
Haftar's army is in the East....as are the troops of the Western governments.

An informed security source has disclosed to Huffington Post Arabic the existence of a high-tech Western military operations room under French command in Benghazi. With, British, UAE and Jordanian participation, it has hitherto been unknown to the Libyan national accord government that was announced months ago. The ops room is in place to support General Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Al-Karamah operation launched in the middle of 2014, despite the fact that he continues to refuse to cooperate with the UN-sponsored government....
There are also, claims the source, a number of US Marines within the base. He declined to describe their role or mission.

Haftar is heavily backed by the military dictatorship in Egypt, and has recently traveled to Russia seeking Putin's support.

All of which leads one to wonder, what was accomplished? Other than getting a whole lot of people killed?