Khadr's Back

Khadr, Canada's boy jihadi  and innernational good-guy-killer, is back in Canadian news after a recent government decision to mke a settlement on a lawsuit brought against the Canadian government on his behalf claiming $60 million in damages for depriving him of his civil rights under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

 This is the last in a number of lawsuits raised in Khadr's behalf in Canadian courts and dating back at least 12 years. All of the lawsuits - two of which were taken to ajudication at the Supreme Court of Canada have been successful in citing the Government of Canada for failing to attend to Khadr's protection (as a Canadian citizen) and in carrying-out a program of harassment and oppression against him.  Khadr is receiving about $8 million dollars (US) for the 12 years the Canadian government - calling him a 'terrorist' -   refused to support him.

You may recall from earlier posts on the subject, earlier post that Omar Khadr's was one of the first stories to come out of Operation Afghan Freedom - the cautionary tale of a 'radical kid' killer,  wounded and captured , treated by IS medics and doctors and one of the first inmates at Guantanamo.  Khadr,  we are told,  had been taken to Afghanistan to meet all the bad guys,  by his Egyptian-born father who, again we are told,  acted as 'the chief financial officer' for AQ's  training operations there. The Father was later killed in an US/Pakistani 'security operation'. Khadr had a brother who was crippled in that opeation and subsequently repatriated to join his family in Canada.


Khadr was tortured while being held by US forces at their base at Bagram. After he arrived at Guantanmo he was treated as a 'hard core terrorist', accused of killing a US "medic" and subjected to disciplinary detention and interrogations.  At at least two points in his detention Canadian government "representatives" were present at and participated in the intererogation process - leaving Khadr to believe that Canada was prepared to do nothing to help him,  unless he confessed and provided information.  After 13 years of detention,  a deal was struck whereby Khadr would plead guilty to a number of charges,  be sentenced, released and repatriated to Canada. That court action was executed.

 The US authorities, however, chose to differentiate between Khadr and a number of other detaineees who had opted for the same 'plea deal' - conviction-release  process. It was decided that, because he was now a 'self-confessed killer',  an extended period of detention at Guantanmo was required. The Canadian government did not object to this breech of the plea-deal agreement. After two years a court ruling, in Canada, directed the Canadian government to act to secure  his release. After a further year spent appealing, and losing,  the court ruling was put into action.

When Khadr arrived back in Canada the government, at that time, (in a distinct break with common procedure in every one of the similar plea-bargain cases)  stated that it was prepared to carry out the sentence of the Guantanamo Tribunal and detained  the 'self-confessed murderer and terrorist' in a Canadian prison.   A second lawsuit to force his release, again going all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, saw Khadr released, on bail, about 18 moths later,  while the government continued to file objections to and appeals of the SC ruling. That process was still pending when the Tory government of Steven Harper lost the election in 2016.

The incoming Liberal government eventually abandoned the appeals  and a lawsuit for costs and damages against the government was initiated. After study,  the Federal Justice Department declined to contest the suit and a settlement process was intiated.  This was concluded yesterday when Khadr and his lawyers,  recieved their money.

It was also noted that the widow of the dead special forces soldier and a comrade, partially blinded in that incident, had filed an application in a Canadian court to have the court enforce a ruling made by a Utah court,  granting them damages of $174 million dollars (US) from Khadr. There were also lawsuits launched against the Khadr family claiming damages from the incident.  Some news sources are now saying that, since the government has already paid Khadr, the widow won't be getting money from them, or Khadr,  without signifiant actions in Canadian Courts.

Khadr Hears Victim Impact Statement

A Court in Toronto dismissed the claim against Khadr by the American claimants.


Khadr is curently training to be a nurse.

According to the pulp press this 'issue' has "polarized" Canadians. Actually the split is the same one as appears now on political grounds, or with those Canadians who believe in the rule of law, and those who believe that laws should be different depending on circumstances. That the courts are supreme in law (as indicated in the Constitution)  or that the Government can and should change, or in Khadr's case ignore, the law,  to do as it pleases.

                                               
                                                      Khadr - for the specially educated

The War on ISIS; Kill 'em All. Let Allah Sort them Out

Re: Omelet, making a .. and the requisite eggs, broken

Listen to women screaming in the background.  I think there assholicism at work here.


One of the success stories of modern times was the one about how the Iraqi Armed Forces - which fled before the invasion of their country by ISIS from Syria, were able to re-form their ranks and, re-armed and advised by western 'coalition forces' began the slogging match that has taken two years to liberate much of their captured country.   Remarkable in those early day stories were those of ISIS brutality and the terrorization of innocent civilians - Yazidis and Kurds.  To-day the shoe is on the other foot - ISIS is getting it in the neck.  But so too are those 'civilians', again.  This time they are guilty of 'siding with the terrorists'. While the west bemoaned the 'brutality' of Assad regime 'tamping-down insurgent (ISIS) forces in Syria', we cheered the 'liberation' of  Kirkkuk, Fallujah  and of late Mosul.  We watched, and later awarded,  the sometimes staged atrocities laid at the door of an evil regime and gave a fee pass to similar evils done by those we call our allies. We just either ignored it, or told the story a different way - theirs.  In the one country there is nothing more evil than the government and nothing better than freedom fighters, in the other there is nothing worse than the same freedom fighters and nothing better than the government.  In both situations the same horrors are still being perpetrated still on ordinary people and civilians.

Imagine sending an 'expeditionary force' with one objective: to find and terminate any citizens of your country found to be in arms fighting for what is defined as a 'terrorist force'.  It's payback like that that makes one hope that either they have no friends or relatives left behind, or the ones they might have are the 'solid citizen' variety.  The US started the innovative thinking that citizens lose their natural rights to life, liberty and being happy when they leave the USA and 'put themselves in the gun sights' of the US military - or the US military for whatever reason puts its gun sights on them.

France sends in a 'hit squad'.

And shit happens.

They must have gotten this idea from Assad? And they have been 'doing this for thousands of years', anyway.

That French snuff squad?

Kurdish 'payback' or ethnic cleansing?

'Torcher' and 'Bus-tossin 101' - the Sophomores Take America!

It's out and it's 'transparent'.  All 500 pages - or whichever ones haven't been 'redacted', or withheld, or censored -  of the 'executive brief',  of a more substantial report, on America's torturing terrorists.

The Congress wrote it, the White House read it, the forces o'justis got to delete, or black out the parts (starting on the front cover)  that would have 'sapped America's strength'. And now the mall-trotters get to watch everybody important sucking their teeth and allowing as to how torture 'isn't a national value' and maybe we shouldn't do that any more, but how things were so bad back then, that extremism in defense of liberty was no vice  - to paraphrase Barry Goldwasser. Or 'crime' for that matter, either.

Leading the counterattack is 'the best Veep money could buy' - the 'Dickmeister' Cheney - who would do it all again 'in a heartbeat' or even faster. The report according to him is "full of crap" - I''m inclined to believe him, for even if it was fiction, it doesn't describe America's better moments. More like what would happen of frat house hazers and the school bullies were given awards for what they do. Let's face it though, the 'real American' part was trying to 'reinvent' torture - which according to Hollywood, has been around for millennia - as a 'scientific' discipline, or a subject for Psych 201 term papers.

It turns out, lacking the obviously repellent detail,  that a couple of US Air Force psych Majors (literally) got a little 'out of hand' on some desensitization survival training and something like the 'experiment' from  Ghostbusters took place - i.e. people got 'shocked and awed' for little or no reason - a lot. For their services, a grateful nation was prepared to pay them - and their private consulting corporation - some 120 million smackeroos. But they were only paid $81 million before the wheels came off their cart. Enough for each of them to build the home of their dreams and retire on their 'service pensions'. The two have been 'outed', in a show of good faith. But the same mechanism that stopped them from being 'overpaid', also stops them from being prosecuted. They have  better immunity than somebody who found the hidden idol.

I post their photos as example of the kind of non-monsters who approach torture the same way most people approach a pizza.

Mitchell on the left a 'defrocked' Mormon bishop lives in Florida, Jensen on the right has a multimillionaires' mansion somewhere the cowboys live.

 
If there's anybody to be blamed, these two 'bozeaux' are it.  They took taxpayer money for what turned out to be 'bad intel'. But, hey, they've already been pardoned. So good luck trying to 'go after' the good guys.

The media has been having a field day over it all and public opinion is divided between 'necessary evil' and 'they deserve everything they get'. One of the feast-makers, Big John Brennan, head of the CIA and master-planner of the faery-feller's masterstroke in Kyiv,  after declaring a couple of  'eus culpas' on behalf of the CIA has stated that the time has come to 'put it all behind us' and move on with the national business of voting the necessary appropriations to keep the government  payroll keeping America safe. It's done. Over.  Nothing to see here. Move along.

 What seems apparent is that - for all the negativity, and cost and effort - the whole exercise was relatively fruitless. No demonstrable terrorism was stopped, no evil-doers caught, you can't say that vic'try was attained. And to-day someone is even saying that,  for all the torture, there isn't an iota of proof that Al Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers like we thought they did.


AQ didn't do it?

The Known Unknown

Just watched the  documentary on Donald Rumsfeld. 'The Known Unknown'.

 As Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, and in a couple of other existences in American Government, Rumsfeld was instrumental in turning America into the 'world beater' it is to-day.

He began his political career; after a stint in the US Navy, running for congress, in which he served three terms. He was given a portfolio and worked in the Nixon White House.  He was a 'useful' tool for Nixon but he ran afoul John Erlichman who attempted to torpedo him. It almost worked by Rumsfeld was assigned elsewhere and when the Watergate  scuttled Nixon and his 'plumbing department'. Rumsfeld happily dodged that bullet.

Which stood him in good stead as an aide to Gerald Ford. Working as Dick Cheney's boss, Rumsfeld claims to have changed Ford's idea of avoiding Nixon's mistakes by not having a WH staff. He and Cheney threatened to quit unless Ford saw things their way, Ford saw things their way.

When Ford lost the election to Carter, Rumsfeld spent some time in private enterprise as CEO of Searle Pharmaceuticals where he 'turned the company around by downsizing 60 percent of the workforce, raising profits and getting a 'boss of the year' award. He also positioned the company for a lucrative sale to Monsanto. He also worked for General instruments and Gilead sciences before making a return to politics as Secretary of Defense.

He had hoped to run on the ticket with Ronald Reagan but was 'delighted' to 'make way' for George Bush senior, and that Reagan had opted not to run with the ex-president as his running mate. Reagan  would use Rumsfeld to meet privately with Saddam Hussein - offering a handshake the Rumsfeld now describes as "iconic" -  and not enough help to have Saddam beat the Iranians. He was sent because he had no direct political connection but it was thought his prestige as a former SecDef would impress the locals. It did, they lost. And I'd say it started Saddam a-thinking as to what America really could do when needed. Hence Kuwait.

Even though he was carving out a career in free enterprise, generally by paring costs to the bone and negotiating successful buy-outs, Rumsfeld was never far from the halls of real power.  The Clinton years were lean but the prospect of another Bush White House was just the kind of thing the Chicago-school believers, Ayn Rand mifflins and Neocon pattern-bombers were slaverin' about. Bushco won and Rummy and pals got busy. Dick Cheney had 'surged' ahead  of his onetime boss into the navigator's seat as Vice President - he would put his mark on that office. Rummy was picked for Sec Def and the Pentagon - with its cadre of Neocon 'warfighters' became his bailiwick.

In the documentary he guesses at the hundreds of thousands of  'memos; he generated. Obviously at some point - after the invention of a portable recording device, Rummy became very adept at hearing himself talk. Talk, and word and language, it seems, took on a fetish-like quality for him. Constantly looking up definitions and relaying them to others with his 'slant'  you might almost swear he had his retirement fund invested in dictionaries.  

The war years were good ones for him. he claims to have gone to war with the minimum he thought would 'do the job'. So when the job started to head south and eventually became the 'quagmire' he said he didn't do, things started to turn rocky with the neocons.  They got him first. By resigning in protest at 'how the war was being run' and then blaming Rummy for the quagmire from the safety of new jobs in right wing think tanks. That bruised him.  Abu Gharib polished him off.

The publication of the notorious photos had the same effect on America's war effort in Iraq as the Tet offensive did in VietNam. For all the embedding and trumpets at sunset on the media, the mall-trotters got a look up -  'close and personal' - at something that made them doubt that things they were told were right at all. Saddam's WMD's never showed up and the premise for the war had to be changed from 'self defense of civilization'  to, well, probably a good idea anyway. As things continued to not go well Rummy developed the markings of a scapegoat for beleaguered administration - he resigned (for the third time) and Bushco took him up on his offer.  He was out, the new team was in.

So rummy got to watch the denouement of his adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq from the  corporate box and I'm sure he's glad he got out before more shi*t stuck to him. Mercifully the 'A' team didn't win, either. But he probably already knew that.

Rummy come across in the documentary as the personable, happy smiling guy he no doubt comes across as. But his is the smile of the Great White - if they do that  - the purpose is to distract you from the fact that he's constantly looking for an advantage, seeking the edge.   He strike  me as somebody who gets mad, but then  gets even too. He strikes me as a psychopath."

 Robert McNamara did the same kind of thing years after his work on VietNam.  When he did that, an older wiser man looking back on some serious mistakes he seemed to be  seeking some reconciliation and even redemption. He admitted to some errors. Rummy doesn't 'do errors'. The best he could do was call Abu Gharib ' sickening'. Sickening perverted guards doing 'sexo', but the fact that thousands of Iraqis were warehoused there to 'get the treatment' didn't bother him a whit.  If only he didn't have to hear, or see that stuff.

"The good lord only knows" but I don't think Rummy has a conscience.

Otherwise he couldn't life with himself.

Where Did it Go Gyorgi? Where did it go?

Just like that, hey! presto - the Ukraine is a non-topic for the world's media. After weeks of popping-up as key word on Google news, generating a pond of ink in papers and time in media 'analysis', it's gone! Piff-paff-poof passed-away! Like it never happened.

But why? Not much, apparently, has changed in Ukraine, except the new president. The 'interim' government still sits. 'Yats' is still the Prime Minister and  'Turchy' is still the 'Trotsky' of the new Ukraine  (What do you call what would have been 'the commissar of the armies' back in the day?). The army still surrounds Slavyansk and the indiscriminate shelling of that place goes on. Lugansk remains in the hands of 'separatists'  as do other places and installations. The separatists seem to have no intentions of turning themselves over to Poroshenko's justice and mercy. The people of the region, under fire, still seem to think that asylum lies east and not west. It could be the 'nationalists' - who also haven't gone away,  and seem to be showing-up more and more, well-equipped for battle, are causing that.  Sort of like the frontier negotiations in early North America with indian allies ... watching, and testing 'the edge' ... on scalping knife and tomahawk.

So why has the Ukraine gone away?  Well, actually it hasn't. Russian sources, and some European ones, continue to report on the gas negotiations and mention the 'war' situation. Kyiv Post continues to post its on-line teasers (you have to subscribe to get the whole story) about the wonderfulness that is Ukraine - good for tourists - and the 'badness' lying off to the east. Poroshenko has his 'pen in his hand' to sign on to the 'Euromarket' but they're having some procedural difficulty. All is 'good for the end of the month' - unless that war is still on. Not much of this shows up at first click, you have to do  a search.

So it looks like the west is killing the story, so the 'sheeple' don't get bored, or overly concerned, as the Ukrainian 'army' makes the 'big push'.

In news to-day the Ukrainian government was accusing Russian tanks of "crossing the border" - 3 of them, to be exact - videoed some 40 miles from the border - they were captured from the government forces ( oops Kyiv forgot to mention that) last week. The Russians had a motion coming before the Security Council and were accusing the Ukraine of firing 'indiscriminate' weapons into Slavyansk. Gas negotiations had stalled.

And what had knocked Ukraine off the boards  - well not much: Bowie Bergdahl was one; Boko Haram and their schoolgirls has been off and on; thinking about a future 'president' Hilary distracted America, as did the stealing of Kasey Kasem. Until the  (on-going but again largely-ignored for the past six months) 'situation' in Iraq took a noticeable turn for the worse yesterday, there was nothing much doing.


But since the bad news from Iraq, why Ukraine has reappeared as well. Bad news loves company, or maybe this will be a long awaited 'success' story.

I wouldn't be wagering the grocery money.

Operation Cast Dirt

Another little Israeli 'pacification' exercise  has come to a sudden stop. After  7 days of bombing , shelling and retaliatory rocketing, Bibi Netanyahu has, for some strange reason, opted for  a 'ceasefire' and negotiations. The ceasefire part is obvious, but other than the Egyptians, Turks, Americans or somebody else pulling strings, he's still in the same position he was last week -  having to not negotiate with terrorists.

This is all very strange,  for the Israelis, by a sizable majority, are in favour of much more hurt for  HAMAS. At least the 75 000 reservists 'called up' to do the ground operation are going to be disappointed about not 'getting any'.  These lads a case in point.

Their body language spells out, "Bibi Loser"

The Gazans are treating this as a 'win', or at least they were until this morning. A group of the inmates made the mistake of taking that 'freedom of movement' part of the ceasefire seriously enough to enter the no-go zone and approach the Gaza fence. That got one of them killed and 17 wounded by the ensuing 'warning' fire from Israeli military on the 'green' side of the wire.

It was widely thought by the 'world' media that the gunfire would 'have no effect' on the ceasefire, while the same media blatted that calls for jihad from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were jeopardizing the whole deal. Somebody has completely forgotten that until Israel 'whacked' a HAMAS 'military chief' - the one who was tasked to keep other groups from firing rockets into Israel - the rocket-firing had almost stopped. I guess, as the Israelis will tell you, being a target all the time takes some getting-used to - in Gaza too, do you think?

Israelis, even some of the dumb ones, have the ability to understand where the Gazans and other Arabs are 'coming from', they know what life is like for them. But, and this makes them different from the Germans  who could always claim they 'didn't know' -  they still don't give a sh*t, or, worse still, think the Arabs 'deserve it'. An Israeli group put up this interesting little piece - done by the 'targets'  in Sderot.
Palestinian video

The ceasefire touts a 'new' freedom of movement for people in Gaza, but I'm inclined to think that, unless they guarantee the future existence of the Jewish state and give up any right to reparations for stolen property, they're going to have exactly the same 'freedom' they had in Gaza last week - the 'freedom' to be surveilled while not leaving the zone except under rigorous scrutiny, and the freedom to stay out of the IDF's self-defence 'free fire zone'. The goldfish bowl might have some new rubble in it, but it's still just as restricted, visible and vulnerable.

The Israeli media is weeping. tears of sadness, in keeping with President Shimon Peres 'weeping' over the deaths of Palestinian babies - an 'accident' that the Palestinians 'made' happen ( "You made us kill you, we didn't want to do it,  etc") . And tears of joy to match a crocodile grin that goes with the boast that Israel is 'no longer alone'. The 'seamless support' for Israel's "right to defense" is claimed, not only due to Obama's non-presence, but also in every 'right-thinking' nation on earth. That's why, if the Palestinians ask for UN observer status next week, they're probably going to get it. Because of some weird blowback 'conscience thing' about rootin' Israel on to vic'try this week. Get it?

It's a Nutty Old World

The Canadian News was monopolized by a story that began with somebody's foot being mailed to a political office in Ottawa. The next day the postal department headed-off what turned out to be a hand, in the mail to a different political office. Then the headless, limbless torso of a body turned-up in a suitcase put out for garbage pick-up. Since then, the story has morphed into the world-wide (Europe at least) manhunt for a fugitive porn-star cum (no pun intended) artist, who allegedly video-taped himself murdering and dismembering a 'pal' in his apartment. The victim was to-day identified as a nice-guy university student of Chinese extraction who was looking 'for a friend'. His friend, the killer, is being described as someone very closely related to the great lord Beelzebub. He's also managed to make himself go 'poof', allegedly leaving Canada by air shortly after the murder and disappearing from the radar screen due, we are told, to the possibility that he has created multiple identities for himself and can change his appearance with some facility. That he doesn't have a proverbial pot to piss in, is, apparently, no impediment to his ability to get around and get away.

As an update: the killer was arrested while using the facilities of an internet cafe in Germany to keep up with his facebook following.  The latter, we learn, are a growing number  who see the gender-confused 'prawduct' of modern society as a 'troll model'. The cafe manager 'saw through' his disguise - ie recognized him from news posts, and called the police. The police were, it is reported, taken in by his denials - (keine deutsche spreche?)- but he finally 'fessed-up'. He was flown back to Canada on a military aircraft and is now undergoing intensive counselling. In sidebar, a teacher was fired for showing the u-tube vodeo of the murder/dissection to his civics class in a lesson about how to treat, or not treat, other people.

Bizarre as that might be,  is an even better story coming out of Miami this week where an apparently 'decent human being' (according to his family) reportedly got 'hepped-up' on some new style 'acid' and, after stripping naked while making his way home, assaulted and ate the face of a homeless individual he encountered, who was sleeping on a bridge. Numerous passers-by witnessed the attack and eventually police showed up. They ordered the man to stop feeding but after he refused and 'growled' at them, they shot him, and then shot him again whan he resumed eating. The assailant died, the assailed is reported to be a candidate for facial replacement surgery - having lost most of the skin on his forehead, his nose, his eyelids and lips. It was only the apparent  lack of a decent shave that saved the lower part of his face.

More mundane was the reported massacre of more than 100 people including a large number of women and children in a place called Houla in Syria.  Within  minutes of the occurrence the world press was laying the killings at the door of Bashir Assad, describing how the army had been shelling the area. It later turned out that the majority of the dead had been killed up close by gunshot. The notion of the Syrian army shooting civilians while under a barrage of friendly artillery fire seemed a little out of whack. Then the killings were laid at the door of 'government militia' who can, apparently, better stand the shelling whilst killing the innocent. An eyewitness, a little lad who drenched himself in his dead brother's  blood and avoided detection by the killers, when asked who did it, he responded, 'Why are you asking me that? Everybody knows who did it."

Since the intial reports,  at least three 'dissonent' ones are reporting the dead weren't shiite Arabs, but rather Armenian Christians and others aligned with the Assad government and  the killers now might well be the anti-government 'free Syria' forces. The UNHRC is calling for an investigation.

FARC,  the almost-defunct 'terrorist' organization in Colombia, recently released the French reporter they had taken 'hostage' when they ambushed a group of Colombian military engaged in a "peaceful" drug lab take-down operation a month ago. The release was accomplished in a village where the people seemed to be happy and  supportive of FARC - or all looped-up on the local 'medication'. A Colombian ex-senator and the IRC were on hand to take the 'victim' under protection. Notable in its absence was the Colombian military, which has stage-managed so many other such 'rescues'  and 'releases'. It will be interesting to find out if the 'hostage' bad mouths  his captors now that he's free, as has been the 'de rigeur' exercise on such similiar cases. Colombia is well on its way to having one of the world's premier fighting forces that American money can buy, it's certainly of a quality to-day to be able to make FARC permanently defunct. Then all the 'illegal' drug trade can stop. Unless those FARC are like the Taliban.

We were told this week that President Obama, as part of his duties has assumed the mantle of  'killer-in-chief' of the United States of America. In his duty as chief protector of America, we are told, he meets with his advisory staff and vets all those, world-wide, who are targeted for extinction due to their 'threat to  ___________'  (fill in the blank). What we weren't told was how somebody gets on the list, and how many times these targets have been acquired and attacked. Taking it on faith -  it's 'all good', clean, kills and totally necessary - otherwise it wouldn't be done, see? 'Legs Diamond' running 'Murder Inc' was  a crime, the President's-class world-wide version is a 'necessity'.

Kill Khaddafi!

The latest  bit of 'UN-sponsored', first-world industrialized destruction is being rained down upon one of the world's "bad guys", again. The leaders of the 'free-world', or a chunk of it, have decided that a robust military response to the 'terror' Muammar Khaddafi is inflicting on his own country is the best way to remove him from office. It's another one of those  "freedom for  ______" (fiil in the blank) exercises the 'good guys have been doing since the late 80's. If it wasn't that such exercises usually require somebody getting bombarded from the air, and, to date, haven't accomplished much more than some good will and honest brokering might have done, I'd be all for them.

Not that I have any great affection for Khaddafi,  but it strikes me that he's doing exactly what the other 'allied' leaders of the middle east are doing: 'keeping their houses in order'. And they would be doing it exactly the same way (wouldn't we too?) had  their protesters there been able to access an arms dump, as was the case in Libya. The army is 'defecting' in other places too, and supporting the protestors, as some units did in Libya. There are, again in all instances so far, forces 'loyal' to the government available to wreak varying amounts of mayhem, or order, as the case may be. In Yemen it's called 'mayhem', in Bahrein it's called 'order' for example. Some people are calling Libya a 'civil war', others a 'revolution' or 'putting down an armed insurgency' - the differences are solely in the optics of the observer. Libya, like Egypt and Tunisia, is not a failed state, yet. Until very recently Khaddafi, for all his warts, was considered a world leader and Libya considered friendly to the west. Khaddafi had claimed for himself the mantle of Arab 'leader' against radical Islamicists. So why all, of a sudden, the need for regime change?

Well we had better ask Obama's female advisors, for they, apparently convinced him it was time to 'go kinetic' to save their Libyan sisters. More likely it's being seen as the need to do something, as opposed to being accused by teabaggers of doing nothing, that has goaded the American President into 'joining the fun'. Sarkozi may be getting the credit for 'leading', but everybody knows the only state capable of 'getting her done quick and professional' is the US of A. And there, as the old saying goes, lies the rub. America, or the rest of the free world for that matter. needs another fast and professional military solution to anything like it needs an outbreak of plague or another economic melt. (In actuality it seems that there may be more to American involvement that we were led to believe, as comments about the CIA being involved "for weeks" and rumours that Obama had signed the orders to assist the rebels well before he told Americans he was considering it. The reason, however, is not yet clear.)

'Quick and professional' sounds good going in, but as the warriors are so fond of telling the rest of us, the best laid military plan does not survive the first clash of arms. They've obviously gotten over the 'cake-walk' and 'home for Christmas' ballyhoo  learned in such outstanding vic'tries as the Falklands, Grenada and Panama, for the latest applications of military 'science' have reverted to the classic styles of  fiasco or quagmire.  Even the best of such operations, as in Kosovo, wind up being protracted military 'peace-keeping' operations. There are still NATO troops 'standing watch' over Kosovo, although the war has been over for almost a generation. While Libya is no Iraq or Afghanistan, it's not going to be a Kosovo either. It definitely won't be a push-over like aforementioned 'vict'ries', if Kaddafi chooses to 'fight it out', particularly without any 'boots on the ground'. But that right now is not part of the 'plan'.

At present there seems to be no plan other than bombard, evaluate and re-bombard. Once again there is the impression that somebody wants to kill Khaddafi (although EVERYBODY says Khaddafi's NOT being 


targetted), unless he's in the habit of pitching his tent right next to valuable military targets.  Ronald Reagan let somebody talk him into blasting the beast in his lair. The result was an ugly press relations situation featuring Muammar's dead baby daughter. Ronnie never tried 'second time lucky' on that mode of 'reasoning'. Shortly afterward an American jumbo jet, full of citizens, came to an unscheduled landing in Lockerbie, Scotland. Muammar got some 'payback' for that assassination attempt. (As an aside, to get back in the 'good books'  he recently paid off the monetary damages for that bombing.  The 'convicted'  bomber ( he still pleads innocent) was granted a 'humanitarian' release from a Scottish jail. Maybe he's being targetted now, too.). There are, at present, no plans to put boots on the ground in Libya. So the UN/NATO is depending on an untrained armed jacquerie to put paid to Khaddafi. They'd better be prepared to send in a kill team. Of course to arm, supply and train the protestors  would take more resources, and a lot more time.

Other than that,  there is a split in world support - China and Russia could have vetoed the adventure, but didn't, they haven't been verbally supportive though.  The Arab states offered some lip service to their best customers, but once again weren't able to actually do much.  The African Union is adamantly opposed to the move. I guess they're getting the feeling that, since Asia's a bust, the next great hope for western 'progress' is Africa. Progress being the process in which the west's bi-lateral 'interests' open a country up for economic (viz business) 'cooperation'.

In the short run, though, the Libyan adventure is just another great opportunity for something else to go wrong.