Sent to WS, Blog, individuals
OMNI WAR ON LIBYA NEWSLETTER #1, April 28, 2013 . Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice.
My blog:
War Department/Peace Department
War Department/Peace Department
Newsletters
Index:
Contents #1 April 28, 2013
Google Search on Illegal War Against Libya
Cynthia McKinney, Libyan War Illegal
Boyle, Destroying World Order
Forte, NATO’s War on Libya and Africa
Chomsky
Ellen Brown, Oil and Finance
US $
Spending on War v. Libya
Media:
PBS NewsHour’s Limited Debate
Swanson: From Libya
to Syria to Iran
1.
Obama's Illegal War in Libya - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/opinion/21Ackerman.html
Jun 20, 2011 – The legal acrobatics
President Obama has used to justify war without Congressional
consent set a dangerous precedent.
2.
The US must end its illegal war in Libya now | Dennis Kucinich ...
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/.../libya-nato1
Jul 6, 2011 – Dennis Kucinich:
President Obama has ripped up the US constitution for Nato's
ill-considered Libyan adventure. Congress must
restore sense.
3.
THE ILLEGAL WAR ON LIBYA edited by Cynthia McKinney
www.claritypress.com/McKinney.html
This volume offers both
analysis and eyewitness accounts of the NATO assault on a helpless civilian
population it had a UN mandate to protect, and the massive ...
4.
Obama's War in Libya is Illegal and Unconstitutional
Mar 20, 2011 – In an editorial
headlined, “Obama's illegal war. Congress, not the
U.N., should authorize force against Libya ,” the paper said,
“Removing ...
5.
The illegal war in Libya - Salon.com
www.salon.com/2011/05/19/libya_7/
May 19, 2011 – The always dubious claim
that the War Powers Resolution
authorized the war is coming to an end.
6.
30:03 Illegal War In Libya Is CIA - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG8PzfJCv_8
Apr 5, 2011 - Uploaded by NotForSale2NWO
The Intel Hub with special guest Susan
Lindauer, former U.S. asset
covering Libya , 9/11, and Iraq Listen ...
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clarityrity
R E S S, I N C
.
THE ILLEGAL
edited by CYNTHIA McKINNEY A DIGNITY PROJECT |
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an independent publisher on global issues and alternatives
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CYNTHIA
Congresswoman
Francis
Boyle, Destroying Libya and World Order
1.
OpEdNews - Article: Libyan Door to Syrian Door to Iran
www.opednews.com/.../Libyan-Door-to-Syrian-Door-by-David-Swanso...
3 days ago – ... I recommend Francis Boyle's new
book, Destroying Libya
and World Order. Boyle served as a lawyer for the government of Libya
repeatedly, ...
2.
Syria
Lashes Out At Chemical Arms Use Claims - Democratic ...
13 hours ago - 1 post
... I recommend Francis Boyle's new
book, Destroying Libya and
World Order.Boyle served as a lawyer for the government of Libya
repeatedly, ...
3.
BOOK »»» Destroying Libya and World Order - Francis Boyle
#Libya ...
www.scoop.it/.../book-destroying-libya-and-world-order-francis-boyle-li...
Mar 1, 2013 – ... by Francis A. Boyle. Buy
a discounted Paperback of Destroying Libya
and World Order online from Australia 's
leading online bookstore.
4.
Destroying Libya And
World Order - A Book
Review
killuminati.the-talk.net/t45-destroying-libya-and-world-order-a-book-re...
Jan 25, 2013 – Book Review: Destroying Libya and
World Order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to
Reverse the Qaddafi Revolution By Francis A. Boyle ...
5.
BOOK: Destroying Libya and
World Order/ Boyle -
Dialogues
dialogueseriesnew.blogspot.com/.../usa-africa-dialogue-series-book.html
Mar 14, 2013 – USA Africa Dialogue Series
- BOOK: Destroying Libya and World Order/ Boyle. Francis Boyle remains the conscience
of the United States !
SLOUCHING TOWARDS SIRTE
NATO's War
on Libya
and Africa
25% discount until March 17, date on which the UN security council
authorized regime change and the destruction of Libya by NATO. See below.
“the definitive
treatment of NATO’s war on Libya .”
Stephen Gowans What’s Left
“In this provocative and unabashedly
direct book, Forte speaks truth to power.” ForeWord Reviews,
January 4, 2013
AVAILABLE – Buy PDF ebook here
(see below)
NATO’s war in Libya
was proclaimed as a humanitarian intervention—bombing in the name of “saving
lives.” Attempts at diplomacy were stifled. Peace talks were subverted. Libya
was barred from representing itself at the UN, where shadowy NGOs and “human
rights” groups held full sway in propagating exaggerations, outright
falsehoods, and racial fear mongering that served to sanction atrocities and
ethnic cleansing in the name of democracy. The rush to war was far speedier
than Bush’s invasion of Iraq .
Max Forte has scrutinized the documentary history from before,
during, and after the war. He argues that the war on Libya
was not about human rights, nor entirely about oil, but about a larger process
of militarizing U.S.
relations with Africa . The development of the
Pentagon’s Africa Command, or AFRICOM, was in fierce competition with
Pan-Africanist initiatives such as those spearheaded by Muammar Gaddafi.
Far from the success NATO boasts about or the “high watermark”
proclaimed by proponents of the “Responsibility to Protect,” this war has left
the once prosperous, independent and defiant Libya in ruin, dependency and
prolonged civil strife.
Tradepaper | 352 pp | 27 BW photos, 3 maps
ISBN 978-1-926824-52-9 |PRICE: $27.95
PDF E-book ISBN 978-1-926824-75-8 | PRICE 21.95 (i.e., 16.95 + 5.00 shipping)
ISBN 978-1-926824-52-9 |PRICE: $27.95
PDF E-book ISBN 978-1-926824-75-8 | PRICE 21.95 (i.e., 16.95 + 5.00 shipping)
About humanitarian imperialism,
Max Forte writes:
“Desperate to finally
be seen as the liberators of Arabs, rescuing poor victims with the finest of
American exports (human rights), some would understandably feel compelled to
exploit the suffering of others (residents fleeing Sirte) and turn that into
something worthy of celebration. This is an example of the abduction process at
the centre of Western, liberal humanitarianism: it can only function by first
directly or indirectly creating the suffering of others, and by then seeing
every hand as an outstretched hand, pleading or welcoming. We see (or imagine)
helpless others, gobbling morsels of food that we hand them, brown mouths
chugging down water from our plastic bottles, and we feel accomplished. Our
moral might is reaffirmed by the physical plight of others. Clearly, the
humanitarian relation is not a relation between equals. We are not our
“brothers’ keepers” then, but rather we are more like animal keepers. Bombing
for us is really just an animal management technology, and our relationship to
the world remains a zoological one.” (Slouching
Towards Sirte, p. 97.
A War for Human Rights
(by Max Forte – in The Political Bouillon)
(by Max Forte – in The Political Bouillon)
The war in Libya never
happened. At least that is what one might think, considering the dearth of
serious analysis and critical reflection in Canada since our participation in
NATO’s bombardment campaign ended a year ago. Yet in Libya , in many ways the war is
still happening…Read more..
Praise, Reviews
“Slouching Towards Sirte is a penetrating critique, not only of
the NATO intervention in Libya ,
but of the concept of humanitarian intervention and imperialism in our time. It
is the definitive treatment of NATO’s war on Libya . It is difficult to imagine
it will be surpassed.” Stephen Gowans, What’s Left, Read More
“Forte’s allegations
that NATO’s war was manufactured by liberal interventionists and “iPad
imperialists” whose agenda to disrupt African independence and execute regime
change under the “fig leaf” of saving lives are chilling—and persuasive. So too
is the timeline of events between the start of the protests and the
propagandist hysteria promulgated online. Even though Forte couches
descriptions of Gaddafi in amorphous, guarded language, he isn’t an apologist.
In this provocative and unabashedly direct book, Forte speaks truth to
power.” ForeWord Reviews, January 4, 2013, read full
review…
The Public Archive identified Slouching
Towards Sirte as one of 10
Books for 2012on its Black Radical Reading List.
Maximilian C. Forte is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University
in Montréal, Québec. He teaches courses in the field of political anthropology
dealing with “the new imperialism,” Indigenous resistance movements and
philosophies, theories and histories of colonialism, and critiques of the mass
media. Max is a founding member of Anthropologists for Justice and Peace. He
writes regularly for the Zero Anthropology Project, CounterPunch,
and was formerly a columnist for Al Jazeera Arabic.
Also see rev. in Monthly Review (April
2013), “The Fall of Libya ,”
by Max Ajl. Accompanied by note on the
killing, the execution of Gaddafi one day after Sec’t. of State Clinton stated: “’We hope
he can be captured or killed soon.” (p.
59)
Noam
Chomsky | Recognizing the ‘Unpeople’
On June 15, three months after the NATO bombing of Libya began, the
African Union presented to the U.N. Security Council the African position
on the attack – in reality, bombing by their traditional imperial aggressors:
France and Britain, joined by the U.S., which initially coordinated the assault,
and marginally some other nations.
MORE http://www.nationofchange.org/recognizing-unpeople-1326034449
Who Owns the World?
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com. This piece is adapted from a talk given in
Amsterdam in
March. The video is posted
here.
he democracy uprising in the Arab world has
been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular
forces - coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of
thousands in support of working people and democracy in Madison ,
Wisconsin , and other US cities. If the trajectories of
revolt in Cairo and Madison
intersected, however, they were headed in opposite directions: in Cairo toward gaining elementary rights denied by the
dictatorship, in Madison
towards defending rights that had been won in long and hard struggles and are
now under severe attack. Read more
“Libya : All About Oil, or All About
Banking?”
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/5625-libya-all-about-oil-or-all-about-banking 5 April 11
everal writers have noted the odd fact that
the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their
own central bank - this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal:
I have never before heard of a
central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising.
This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around
and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.. . . .
Another anomaly involves the official justification
for taking up arms against Libya .
Supposedly it's about human rights violations, but the evidence is
contradictory. According to an article on the Fox News website on February 28:
As the United Nations works feverishly
to condemn Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi for cracking down on protesters,
the body's Human Rights Council is poised to adopt a report chock-full of
praise for Libya 's
human rights record.
The review commendsLibya
for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a
"priority" and for bettering its "constitutional"
framework. Several countries, including Iran ,
Venezuela , North Korea and Saudi
Arabia , but also Canada ,
give Libya
positive marks for the legal protections afforded to its citizens - who are now
revolting against the regime and facing bloody reprisal.
The review commends
Whatever might be said of Qaddafi 's personal crimes,
the Libyan people seem to be thriving. A delegation of medical professionals
from Russia , Ukraine and Belarus wrote in an appeal
to Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin that after becoming
acquainted with Libyan life, it was their view that in few nations did people
live in such comfort:
[Libyans] are entitled to free
treatment, and their hospitals provide the best in the world of medical
equipment. Education in Libya
is free, capable young people have the opportunity to study abroad at
government expense. When marrying, young couples receive 60,000 Libyan dinars
(about 50,000 US dollars) of financial assistance. Non-interest state loans,
and as practice shows, undated. Due to government subsidies the price of cars
is much lower than in Europe , and they are
affordable for every family. Gasoline and bread cost a penny, no taxes for
those who are engaged in agriculture. The Libyan people are quiet and peaceful,
are not inclined to drink, and are very religious.
They maintained that the international community had
been misinformed about the struggle against the regime. "Tell us,"
they said, "who would not like such a regime?"
Even if that is just propaganda, there is no denying
at least one very popular achievement of the Libyan government: it brought water to the desert by building the largest and most
expensive irrigation project in history, the $33 billion GMMR (Great Man-Made
River) project. Even more than oil, water is crucial to life in Libya . The GMMR
provides 70 percent of the population with water for drinking and irrigation,
pumping it from Libya 's
vast underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south to populated
coastal areas 4,000 kilometers to the north. The Libyan government has done at
least some things right.
Another explanation for the assault on Libya is that
it is "all about oil," but that theory too is problematic. As noted
in the National Journal, the country produces only about 2 percent of the world's oil. Saudi Arabia
alone has enough spare capacity to make up for any lost production if Libyan
oil were to disappear from the market. And if it's all about oil, why the rush
to set up a new central bank?
Another provocative bit of data circulating on the Net is a 2007 "Democracy Now!"
interview of US General Wesley Clark (Ret.). In it he says that about 10 days
after September 11, 2001, he was told by a general that the decision had been
made to go to war with Iraq .
Clark was surprised and asked why. "I
don't know!" was the response. "I guess they don't know what else to
do!" Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries
in five years: Iraq , Syria , Lebanon ,
Libya , Somalia , Sudan
and Iran .
What do these seven countries have in common? In the
context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among
the 56 member
banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts
them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers' central bank in Switzerland .
The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq , the two that have actually
been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr., writing on Examiner.com, noted that "[s]ix months before
the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the
move to accept Euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a
threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its
dominion as the petrodollar."
According to a Russian article
titled "Bombing of Lybia - Punishment for Qaddafi for His Attempt to
Refuse US Dollar," Qaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a
movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African
nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Qaddafi suggested
establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this
single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab
countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League
of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, with French
president Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya
a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Qaddafi was not swayed and
continued his push for the creation of a united Africa .
And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan
central bank. In an article posted
on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:
One seldom mentioned fact by
western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State
Owned.... Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan
Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a
sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic
destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do
business with Libya ,
they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place
where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence,
taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of
Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist
agenda for absorbing Libya
into its hive of compliant nations.
All of which prompts a closer look at the BIS rules
and their effect on local economies. An article on the BIS website
states that central banks in the Central Bank Governance Network are supposed
to have as their single or primary objective "to preserve price
stability." They are to be kept independent from government to make sure
that political considerations don't interfere with this mandate. "Price
stability" means maintaining a stable money supply, even if that means
burdening the people with heavy foreign debts. Central banks are discouraged
from increasing the money supply by printing money and using it for the benefit
of the state, either directly or as loans.
In a 2002 article
in Asia Times titled "The BIS vs National Banks," Henry Liu
maintained:
BIS regulations serve only the
single purpose of strengthening the international private banking system, even
at the peril of national economies. The BIS does to national banking systems
what the IMF has done to national monetary regimes. National economies under
financial globalization no longer serve national interests.
... FDI [foreign direct investment] denominated in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, has condemned many national economies into unbalanced development toward export, merely to make dollar-denominated interest payments to FDI, with little net benefit to the domestic economies.
... FDI [foreign direct investment] denominated in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, has condemned many national economies into unbalanced development toward export, merely to make dollar-denominated interest payments to FDI, with little net benefit to the domestic economies.
He added, "Applying the State Theory of Money,
any government can fund with its own currency all its domestic developmental
needs to maintain full employment without inflation." The "state
theory of money" refers to money created by governments rather than
private banks.
The presumption of the rule against borrowing from the
government's own central bank is that this will be inflationary, while
borrowing existing money from foreign banks or the IMF will not. But all
banks actually create the money they lend on their books, whether
publicly-owned or privately-owned. Most new money today comes from bank loans.
Borrowing it from the government's own central bank has the advantage that the
loan is effectively interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of
public projects by an average of 50 percent.
And that appears to be how the Libyan system works.
According to Wikipedia, the functions of the Central
Bank of Libya include "issuing and regulating banknotes and coins in Libya " and
"managing and issuing all state loans." Libya 's wholly state-owned bank can
and does issue the national currency and lend it for state purposes.
That would explain where Libya gets the money to provide
free education and medical care, and to issue each young couple $50,000 in
interest-free state loans. It would also explain where the country found the
$33 billion to build the Great Man-Made River project. Libyans are worried that
NATO-led air strikes are coming perilously close to this pipeline, threatening another humanitarian disaster.
So is this new war all about oil or all about banking?
Maybe both - and water as well. With energy, water, and ample credit to develop
the infrastructure to access them, a nation can be free of the grip of foreign
creditors. And that may be the real threat of Libya : it could show the world what
is possible. Most countries don't have oil, but new
technologies are being developed that could make non-oil-producing nations
energy-independent, particularly if infrastructure costs are halved by
borrowing from the nation's own publicly-owned bank. Energy independence would
free governments from the web of the international bankers, and of the need to
shift production from domestic to foreign markets to service the loans.
If the Qaddafi government goes down, it will be
interesting to watch whether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the
nationalized oil industry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and
health care continue to be free.
Here is an article by Ellen Brown
on the connection between banking and war
and the true motivations of the West
towards Libya
(Note the revealing comment from Wesley Clark).
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/libya.php
Ellen Brown's 'The Web Of Debt'
website is a great source of information concerning money, central banking,
BIS, IMF, etc... and their connection
and influence on conflict and war.
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the
Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In "Web of
Debt," her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has
usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the
people can get it back. Her websites are http://webofdebt.com and http://ellenbrown.com.
3-29-11 “U.S. Spending On Military Operations In Libya Drains
Pentagon”
“Public TV's Libya Limits:
Narrow war debate on PBS NewsHour”
3/29/11
If public television's
mission is to bring diverse viewpoints to the airwaves, the discussions about
the war in Libya
on the PBS NewsHour haven't lived up to that standard. Over the past two weeks,
the NewsHour has featured an array of current and former military and government
officials in its discussion segments--leaving little room for antiwar voices, U.S. foreign policy
critics and legal experts.
-On March 18, the NewsHour interviewed the Obama
administration's UN Ambassador Susan Rice.
-On March 21, anchor Jim Lehrer decided to get
"perspective on the Mideast turmoil from two former U.S. national
security advisers"--Carter's Zbigniew Brzezinski and Reagan's Brent
Scowcroft. The same day also featured a discussion between retired Maj. Gen.
Dutch Remkes and Robert Malley, a Clinton-era National Security Council
official now with the International Crisis Group.
-On March 22, the NewsHour brought on Charles Kupchan, a
former Clinton administration National Security Council staffer, along with a
couple of rare guests without U.S. government or military backgrounds: Daniel
Dombey of the Financial Times and former Libyan Ambassador Ali Suleiman Aujali,
who broke with the Gadhafi regime and is aligned with the opposition.
-On March 23 the NewsHour was back to the officials-only
format, interviewing a pair of former senators, Democrat Gary Hart and
Republican Norm Coleman, both of whom support the White House action in Libya , and
Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough.
-On March 24, the NewsHour interviewed retired Army Gen.
Jack Keane and Frederic Wehrey, a former Air Force officer and Iraq War vet now
at the Rand Corporation, both of whom supported sending some U.S. ground troops to Libya . Viewers weren't told that
Keane's consulting firm, Keane Associates, includes major military companies
among its clients (USA Today, 3/10/10), or that Keane is also on the board of
General Dynamics, a major military contractor.
--On March 28, a discussion of "what's at stake for the
president" featured Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus and Politico's
Roger Simon.
There are many aspects of the Libya War that should be
discussed on public television, featuring the views of those outside of elite
Beltway circles. The 1967 Carnegie Commission report that gave birth to PBS
envisioned it as a "forum for debate and controversy" that would
"provide a voice for groups in the community that may be otherwise
unheard.” The NewsHour should include those principles in its decisions about
whom to include in its coverage of Libya .
ACTION:
Tell the NewsHour to open up its Libya
discussions to voices outside the Beltway, including antiwar voices, U.S. foreign
policy critics and legal experts.
CONTACT:
PBS NewsHour
onlineda@newshour.org
(703) 998-2138
You might also want to send your comments to PBS ombud
Michael Getler (ombudsman@pbs.org), and post copies of your comments on the
FAIR Blog.
Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:35 am (PDT) .
Posted by:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Swanson <davidcnswanson@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 11:15 PM
Subject: Libyan Door to Syrian Door to Iran
To: shelly@veteransforpeace.org
Cc: media@lists.mayfirst.org
Libyan Door to Syrian Door to IranBy David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/content/libyan-door-syrian-door-iran
"Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence
that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria,
specifically the chemical agent sarin."
I do assess with varying degrees of horror (some of the varying degrees
rather high even) that a lot of people are going to die. And how dare they
die from chemical weapons when they should be dying from hellfire missiles
and cluster bombs and napalm and depleted uranium and white phosphorous.
We have a responsibility to protect these people from dying of the wrong
type of weapon and in too small numbers.
I'm inDallas
protesting the rehabilitation of our last criminal president
because of the precedents he set for our current criminal president. So,
precedents are on my mind. One precedent for an illegal humanitarian NATO
war onSyria is, of course,
the illegal humanitarian war on Libya
two years
ago. And the pair of precedents (Libya
and Syria ) will put the
target of
the neocon/neoliberal cooperative war project squarely onIran .
Syria
will suffer, of course. There will be no more an example of a
humanitarian war that actually benefitted humanity afterSyria than
before.
The precedent will not be one of having accomplished something, but of
having gotten away with something.
For some truly illuminating background on what was done toLibya , and some
relevant discussion of what awaitsSyria (if we don't prevent it), I
recommend Francis Boyle's new book, *Destroying Libya and World Order. *
Boyle served as a lawyer for the government ofLibya
repeatedly, over a
period of decades, more than once successfully preventing a military
assault by theUnited States
and the United Kingdom .
Boyle details the
aggression towardLibya
of the Reagan administration: the lies and false
accusations, the sanctions, the provocations, the assassination attempts,
the infiltration, the blatant disregard for international law.
Boyle's history brings us up to and through the 2011 assault, and traces
its precedents to a very similar war over a decade earlier inBosnia .
Boyle finds the unconstitutional and illegal assault onLibya a clear
impeachable offense for President Obama. And why would we think
otherwise? Only because we let Clinton and Bush get away with everything
they got away with. It would seem unfair now to impeach Obama for a crime
his predecessors committed as well.
But past, as well as current, presidents can be impeached, censured,
prosecuted, and/or publicly shamed. Five of them came toDallas today;
there shouldn't be any trouble finding them. And the criminal attack on
Libya
can be treated as the crime it was. The excuse of protection was
used to quite openly pursue the overthrow of a nation's government, bombing
large numbers of civilians in the process, while arming brutal thugs and
creating predictable blowback in neighboring nations as well.
In contrast, inBahrain ,
nonviolent pro-democracy activists are left to
their own devices as a U.S.-backed dictatorship jails, tortures, and
murders them.
InSyria , the United States
has worked against peace and for violence.
That violence is not a justification for further and heightened violence.
And every member of an intelligence "community" that announces that Syria
might possibly have used a chemical weapon should be doing community
service for the people of Fallujah and Basra and Baghdad, not prodding the
world's only stupor power into another genocide.
David Swanson's books include "War Is A Lie <http://warisalie.org/>." He
blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for
http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation
Radio<http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41>.
Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson <http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson>and
FaceBook <http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#>.
>
From: David Swanson <davidcnswanson@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 11:15 PM
Subject: Libyan Door to Syrian Door to Iran
To: shelly@veteransforpeace.org
Cc: media@lists.mayfirst.org
Libyan Door to Syrian Door to IranBy David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/content/libyan-door-syrian-door-iran
"Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence
that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria,
specifically the chemical agent sarin."
I do assess with varying degrees of horror (some of the varying degrees
rather high even) that a lot of people are going to die. And how dare they
die from chemical weapons when they should be dying from hellfire missiles
and cluster bombs and napalm and depleted uranium and white phosphorous.
We have a responsibility to protect these people from dying of the wrong
type of weapon and in too small numbers.
I'm in
because of the precedents he set for our current criminal president. So,
precedents are on my mind. One precedent for an illegal humanitarian NATO
war on
ago. And the pair of precedents (
the neocon/neoliberal cooperative war project squarely on
humanitarian war that actually benefitted humanity after
The precedent will not be one of having accomplished something, but of
having gotten away with something.
For some truly illuminating background on what was done to
relevant discussion of what awaits
recommend Francis Boyle's new book, *Destroying Libya and World Order. *
Boyle served as a lawyer for the government of
period of decades, more than once successfully preventing a military
assault by the
aggression toward
accusations, the sanctions, the provocations, the assassination attempts,
the infiltration, the blatant disregard for international law.
Boyle's history brings us up to and through the 2011 assault, and traces
its precedents to a very similar war over a decade earlier in
Boyle finds the unconstitutional and illegal assault on
impeachable offense for President Obama. And why would we think
otherwise? Only because we let Clinton and Bush get away with everything
they got away with. It would seem unfair now to impeach Obama for a crime
his predecessors committed as well.
But past, as well as current, presidents can be impeached, censured,
prosecuted, and/or publicly shamed. Five of them came to
there shouldn't be any trouble finding them. And the criminal attack on
used to quite openly pursue the overthrow of a nation's government, bombing
large numbers of civilians in the process, while arming brutal thugs and
creating predictable blowback in neighboring nations as well.
In contrast, in
their own devices as a U.S.-backed dictatorship jails, tortures, and
murders them.
In
That violence is not a justification for further and heightened violence.
And every member of an intelligence "community" that announces that Syria
might possibly have used a chemical weapon should be doing community
service for the people of Fallujah and Basra and Baghdad, not prodding the
world's only stupor power into another genocide.
David Swanson's books include "War Is A Lie <http://warisalie.org/>." He
blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for
http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation
Radio<http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41>.
Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson <http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson>and
FaceBook <http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#>.
>
END WAR ON LIBYA
NEWSLETTER #1
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