Mahmoud Jibril Meeting the French President

"LandepNews"

Mahmoud Jibril Meeting the French President

Two days after the entering of the rebel forces in the capital of Libya, Tripoli, there are many questions unanswered about this outstanding success of a rebel group that seemed very weak and incapable to fight the military troops of Qaddafi. The fact that they entered the capital took by surprise the Western supporters, too, and the American and French presidents were quick to announce the end of Qaddafi’s regime, satisfied that the plan worked and no ground invasion staged by NATO was now necessary.
Two weeks ago, Debka, a website that is considered close to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, posted information according to which a ground invasion was under way and it would be deployed in Libya in at most two weeks’ time.
The site was saying that NATO would send ground troops from France, and Britain and that later on, in October, American ground troops would follow.
If the information about the advancement of the rebels into Tripoli checks, as well as the fact that Qaddafi is defeated and it is only a matter of time until he is captured, then the ground troops of NATO are no longer necessary.
Though there are two strange coincidences: the time frame and the power of the rebels to pierce the defense lines of the pro-governmental troops, after many months when they showed they were not capable of much.

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil

These two coincidences point out to a possibility that Debka’s prediction may have come true, but not exactly in what one is expecting to see in a ground invasion. The outstanding news that the capital has been taken could indicate that the ground invasion actually took place but not in the sense that the NATO soldiers set boot on Libyan soil, but rather that NATO has been able to turn what used to be called “rebel rabble” into a formidable army with which they took the capital and probably will take out the clique in power.
Al Jazeera presented NATO-like soldiers acting as advisers of the rebels, when the troops stormed Misrata, which could drive us to think that besides weapon supplies already admitted by French army, which said that ammunition had been airdropped, they also sent on the ground military instructors to soldier the shepherds and tribal fighters of Libya.
After all, the rebels admitted that the entire success on Tripoli was the result of the coordination between them and NATO, which is more than the coordinating attacks on the ground with those from the air force.
Even to coordinate such an attack would take some military expertise, which means that the rebels had this kind of expertise as they were taught by the NATO special forces.
On top of that, the rebels benefited from very accurate military data obtained by U.S. unmanned drones which kept the pro-governmental compounds under constant surveillance and gave the rebels all information they needed to make their move count.
A diplomat told New York Times that it was inevitable that the curve of effectiveness would eventually lean in favor of the rebels, whose training and equipping were bound to pay off. And they seem to have done so.
Another reason for the unexpected success of the rebels is that NATO executed until Saturday no less than 7,459 missions, most of them bombings of military facilities or installations.
That is a lot of missions! With air support like this the rebels should have won the battle even if they had to fight with bows and arrows. Which they did not. Thanks to the same NATO, whose initial mission in Libya was to prevent Qaddafi’s troops from shooting at random at the population.

Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes

More than that, there are reports that the rebels themselves cooperate with the NATO targeting center in Italy, transmitting coordinates and data that helped the NATO strikes be even sharper.
In spite of this cooperation that would explain the success of the rebels in Libya, Western military experts warn that it may take some weeks until the army that supports Qaddafi has collapsed entirely.
This would be a fair assessment, if one is to take into account the report published by Wall Street Journal according to which the rebels withdrew from most parts of the capital and hold “a slice of land leaning from the west edge to the centre of the town.”
This report shows the volatility of the situation in Tripoli, but it also shows that some things may have been slightly exaggerated. For instance, yesterday, as some people in Tripoli were celebrating the fall of the regime, the rebels announced that they had captured two of the president’s sons: Muhammad and Seif al-Islam.
On Tuesday, the reports showed that Muhammad had escape arrest, while Seif al-Islam produced a major surprise and a deadly blow to the image campaign on the Tripoli takeover as he appeared at Rixon hotel, in a limousine, surrounded by many armored vehicles.
Seif told the journalists that the rebellion would be crushed and took them on a ride in the neighborhoods and showed them people who were lining up to receive arms to protect the regime.
All these contradictions show that there is an interesting war waged on the imagery level. The reports that the press in the Western countries receives are often contradicted by the reality of the facts.
Which brings the next question: To which extent were the reports about Qaddafi’s wrongdoings exaggerated in all these months?
No one is actually contesting the violent nature of the president of Libya and the fact that he may have easily ordered the massacres he is accused of. Still, the question is: Why was the West so quick to react to what he is said to have done, and not so eager to deal the same way with Bashar al-Assad for instance?
The United Nations haven’t even brought themselves to issuing a resolution on Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on his people, though reports are saying that he killed at least 2,000 people over the last months.
An U.N. investigation panel was set up to investigate what happened in Syria, and to see whether the Syrian leader deserves to become subject to an international arrest warrant.
In the case of Qaddafi the arrest warrant was issued without delay, and the resolution was issued without too many proves to look at.
It is true, Qaddafi had his own mouth as a loathed enemy, considering his threats against the “dogs” he was going to exterminate and so on. But is there any possibility that the information on the ground be just a little bit oversized, so that the campaign be perfectly motivated?
One has to ask this question, because it would not be the first time when people’s emotions are being played to justify interventions that had any other reason than the actual upholding of human rights.

Abdel Hafidh Ghoga

In 1990, a young girl told the American reporters how the Iraqi soldiers had raped her back in Kuwait. A few years after this episode, that “tenderized” the public opinion into accepting the first war on Iraq, it was made public that the little girl was Kuwait ambassador’s daughter, and she had not been in the country for years.
The most famous lie was told by the Bush administration to justify the second intervention in Iraq. No one ever found the weapons of mass destruction Bush based his campaign on in 2003, Iraq is in ashes right now, Saddam was hanged, and George W. Bush is enjoying his political retirement.
That is why as the campaign enters its final round, the truth must be sought after. That Qaddafi exercised violent crackdown there is no doubt. But why was his crackdown thought harder than the one of al-Assad’s? Is it because his country is one of the richest in oil? Or is it that the propaganda machine worked better against him? When it comes to estimated death toll, al-Assad rules by far.
There are people who are skeptical about what is going on in Libya. Many qualified workers in the former Communist bloc were sent in the 1980s to work in Libya and help Qaddafi build his country.
For some of these people, most of them from Eastern Europe, their trip to Libya was a benediction, providing them with all the financial resources they needed to go well through the last Communist years, and even to face well the new kind of society installed in their countries in the 1990s.
These people have a little problem understanding why is Qaddafi so loathed by his own people, especially when comparing their way of life in Europe to the way of life in Libya.
Maybe taking a look at the people who are now considered the leaders of the country and are already partners to the West will shed more light on these questions.
When in Istanbul, the Contact Group on Libya declared that the Libyan regime was illegitimate and that the National Transitional Council was the new authority of the country.
The Western countries pledged to help NTC with guns and expertise, not to mention with the money of the regime, frozen in the Western accounts.
Soon after the meeting in Istanbul, the British foreign minister told the ambassadors of the Qaddafi regime to vacate the embassy and demanded NTC to send representatives. Other Western countries followed suit.
It would seem that since the announcement was made about the takeover of the capital, many Libyan embassies around the world have placed the flag of the rebels in stead of the one of the country, thus showing that they recognize the victory of the rebellion.
Who is the provisional power that controls now Libya? National Transitional Council is said to be composed of people who used to oppose the leader Qaddafi, whether inside Libya or abroad.
The key leaders are: Mahmoud Jibril, former head of National Economic Development Board under Qaddafi. After he defected, he embraced the ideas of the rebellion, now serving as head of government; Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, former Minister of Justice under Qaddafi, leader of the NTC since it was formed in February; Abdel Hafidh Ghoga, the lawyer who actually triggered the revolt in Libya, representing the families of the people imprisoned by the regime at Abu Salim prison. His arrest caused the people in Benghazi to rebel, and the rest is already history. Ghoga is now the vice chairman of NTC; Ali Tarhouni, had been in exile until February, is the man that managed the finances of the revolution; Khalifa Hifter, senior leader of the rebel troops, lived in exile in the United States until February; General Abdul Younes, the leader of the rebel troops until July 28, when he was killed under unclear circumstances, which brought the scandal of traitors infiltrated into the ranks of the rebellion.
As it can be seen, most of these men are formerly involved with the regime, one way or another. When the rebellion ends, if the outcome is the same as expected right now, the question is whether the people will except their offer to lead Libya into the post-Qaddafi era, if such era is to come soon.
Soon after the rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia, the most important demand of the people in these two countries was that the former collaborators of the presidents deposed be eliminated from the power structures.
What gives Jibril or Abdel-Jalil any assurance that the people won’t take it to streets demanding their ouster for the mere reason that they were collaborators of Qaddafi’s one way or another?

Libyan Rebels

When asked by the reporters who the rebels in Libya were, Retired Air Force General Mike Dunn, the one who set up the no-fly zone, described them as “poorly defined group of mutually hostile and suspicious tribes and factions” that never came to a consensus and failed to “coalesce into a meaningful force.”
Dunn said that they were a “democratic Jeffersonian type of people,” that is people who believe more in the power of communities than of the federal government. He concluded that these people were fighting for their freedom and that “we don’t know much about them.”
For the United States and the European partners to deem them as equal partners, the “Jeffersonian democrats” must have made quite an impression, and the West must have had a lot of documenting to do to place such a rich country into their hands.
Update: International media reports that the rebel troops entered the compound of Bab ai-Aziziyah, the stronghold of the president. The colonel was not found there.

Thank's for link: