
Syria’s new UN-approved government is little more than a loose alliance of militias loose alliance thrown together to provide Libya with a semblance of progress. (Photo: Wikipedia)
Cross-posted from View from the Left Bank. Read part 1.
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On July 1, 2011, in the midst of the NATO bombing campaign a huge rally opposing the bombing and in support of Gaddafi took place in the center of Tripoli and other Libyan cities. Nationwide, it is estimated that two million people braved the bombs to show their sympathy, solidarity with the Libyan leader and his “Jamahiriya” government. In spite of that support, playing on the contradictions that still remained inside Libya, the United States and its allies were able to engineer the overthrow of Gaddafi.
While the C.I.A., among other things was busy recruiting Libyans to fight in Syria, the devastating consequences of the Libyan invasion, referred to by NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen as “the most successful mission in NATO history”, went largely unreported, unnoticed. During the seven months of its air campaign, NATO flew 26,500 bombing sorties over Libya, more often than not targeting civilian and infrastructural facilities as it did previously in Iraq. In the U.S. media, the usual blackout conditions continued with virtually no reporting of horrors unfolding on the ground, and certainly no formal acknowledgment that the United States contributed to the destruction and collapse of yet another country (Iraq, Syria).
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