By Alison@Creekside
“He simply will not last very long,” Harper said of Muammar Gaddafi back in March, as Canada prepared to drop $27-million of smart money smart bombs on Libya in order to oust him.
As of now Gaddafi controls most of the country, including the capital.
Today Parliament will debate Steve’s resolution to support NATO’s proposal for another three month extension, supported last time by all opposition parties.
One will recall that Steve does not like to miss a parade:
“I noted that there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein operates programs to produce weapons of mass destruction. Experience confirms this. British, Canadian and American intelligence leaves no doubt on the matter.
“In my judgment Canada will eventually join with the allied coalition if war on Iraq comes to pass. The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with its allies, or its inability to contribute . . . . It will not join as a leader but unnoticed at the back of the parade.”
As we wait for this war’s versions of uranium yellowcake and “he gasses his own people” to go into spin overdrive, perhaps our opposition politicians — so eager to be onboard this latest “coalition of the willing to protect the people of Libya while ignoring the similar plight of the peoples of Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria” — could take a moment to read Glenn Greenwald’s perusal of the WikiLeaks cables info found in a Washington Post article:
In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war
“The relationship between Gaddafi and the U.S. oil industry as a whole was odd. In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier . . . .
“Yet even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms . . .
“Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects . . . .
“By the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in 2008, U.S. joint ventures accounted for 510,000 of Libya’s 1.7 million barrels a day of production, a State Department cable said . . . .
“But all was not well. By November 2007, a State Department cable noted “growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism . . . . Libya’s oil production has foundered, sagging to about 1.5 million barrels a day by early this year before unrest broke out.
“Yet when representatives of the rebel coalition in Benghazi spoke to the U.S.-Libya Business Council in Washington four weeks ago, representatives from ConocoPhillips and other oil firms attended, according to Richard Mintz, a public relations expert at the Harbour Group, which represents the Benghazi coalition.”
End of Greenwald.
So let’s hear a rebel yell for the Harbour Group, the Washington public relations firm whose leadership includes former staff director for Hillary Clinton Richard Mintz, and for the Benghazi coalition, represented by former Libyan Ambassador Ali Aujali, seen here with Paul Wolfowitz during his April speech to the American Enterprise Institute.In another pure coincidence, neocon Wolfowitz and his AEI buddies at PNAC, the Project for the New American Century, were the original architects of the war on Iraq, arguing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein back in 1998. Later Wolfowitz and AEI were supposedly hoodwinked by Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi and Curveball into thinking the Iraqis would greet their US liberators with roses. Nudge, nudge, wink, hoodwink.
Speaking of Hillary and Iraq:
“Hillary Clinton hosted a meeting of top executives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Halliburton, GE, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, Occidental Petroleum, etc. etc. to plot how to exploit ‘economic opportunities in the new Iraq.'”
And so it goes . . .
That oil folk are interested isn’t terribly surprising. That doesn’t mean that the initial impetus to provide air support to the rebels wasn’t the right thing to do. Remember, nations were dragging their heels on that until Gaddafi threatened to go door to door slaughtering people in a rebel controlled city. Then things began to happen very quickly, within a matter of hours.
What’s interesting is the escalation from air support for rebels to what seems to be a push for regime change. It might be worthwhile to take a lesson from Iraq on that one. After the first Gulf War Saddam Hussein was effectively collared by continuing defence of no fly zones and targeting of military targets. There was cost associated with that, but nothing like the cost of the neocons’ full blown invasion and occupation. It effected regime change, but at a terrible cost.
Rather than go that route, it would be better to make East Libya a protected zone like that of the Kurds in Iraq post Gulf War I. Gaddafi is very adept in the use of mercenaries and the manipulation of tribal loyalties. It may be awhile before he’s gone unless NATO really wants to go all out. In the meantime, some sort of ‘normalcy’ in the East would be good for the people. And, of course, the oil companies, but then they’ll benefit no matter what scenario plays out. They always do.