Obama Successfully Demobilized the Anti-war Movement

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars

It is more evidence the antiwar movement is largely a left-vs-right distraction. A new study by U-M’s Michael Heaney and colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University shows that the antiwar movement in the United States demobilized as Democrats took over Congress and the White House.



“As president, Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan,” said Heaney. “The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama’s ‘betrayal’ and reinvigorated its protest activity.”

“Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions.”

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Don't Believe the False Budget Arguments (Video)

Youtube

http://www.wideawakenews.com/
http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Laurence-Kotlikoff-Fiscal-Meltdown/2011/0...
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2011-03-31-ceo-pay-2010.htm

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US politico in Libya to meet Kadhafi, seek deal

A Libyan rebel fighter scans the horizon in the desert
© AFP Odd Andersen

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A former US lawmaker with prior dealings with Moamer Kadhafi was in Tripoli Wednesday on a private mission seeking a peace deal that would include the departure of the Libyan strongman.

Curt Weldon, a Republican representative from Pennsylvania from 1987 to 2007, said in a New York Times column that he was in Libya "as the leader of a small private delegation, at the invitation of Colonel Kadhafi's chief of staff and with the knowledge of the Obama administration and members of Congress from both parties."

"Our purpose is to meet with Colonel Kadhafi today and persuade him to step aside," he said.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Weldon "did inform us of his plans to travel" to Libya, but added "he's not there on our behalf" and "is not carrying a message" from US President Barack Obama's administration.

"I don't know if it's helpful or unhelpful," Toner told reporters when queried about the impact of his trip. "He's not representing the US government."


Weldon, who in 2004 traveled to Libya as the head of a bipartisan congressional delegation to express support for Kadhafi's decision to give up his country's nuclear weapons, wrote that "there is no question that America should play a critical role in helping the Libyans build a new government."

He argued that both Obama and former US president George W. Bush failed to follow up on promises made in 2004 to help Libya with reforms.

Weldon said he would seek "an immediate United Nations-monitored cease-fire, with the Libyan army withdrawing from contested cities and rebel forces ending attempts to advance."

"The world agrees that Colonel Kadhafi must go, even though no one has a plan, a foundation for civil society has not been constructed and we are not even sure whom we should trust. But in the meantime, the people of Libya deserve more than bombs."

The mission comes as the key Western powers involved in the Libyan conflict were throwing their energies into negotiating a solution, as the war between government and rebel forces dug deeper into a stalemate.

The United States, France and Britain are reaching out to both the rebels and, indirectly, to officials in Kadhafi's regime, looking for a way to bring them together in talks, officials for both sides said.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Is America Addicted to War?

The top 5 reasons why we keep getting into foolish fights.

Wikimedia Commons Image

Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy

The United States started out as 13 small and vulnerable colonies clinging to the east coast of North America. Over the next century, those original 13 states expanded all the way across the continent, subjugating or exterminating the native population and wresting Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California from Mexico. It fought a bitter civil war, acquired a modest set of overseas colonies, and came late to both world wars. But since becoming a great power around 1900, it has fought nearly a dozen genuine wars and engaged in countless military interventions.

Yet Americans think of themselves as a peace-loving people, and we certainly don't regard our country as a "warrior nation" or "garrison state." Teddy Roosevelt was probably the last U.S. president who seemed to view war as an activity to be welcomed (he once remarked that "A just war is in the long run far better for a man's soul than the most prosperous peace"), and subsequent presidents always portray themselves as going to war with great reluctance, and only as a last resort.


In 2008, Americans elected Barack Obama in part because they thought he would be different from his predecessor on a host of issues, but especially in his approach to the use of armed force. It was clear to nearly everyone that George W. Bush had launched a foolish and unnecessary war in Iraq, and then compounded the error by mismanaging it (and the war in Afghanistan too). So Americans chose a candidate who had opposed Bush's war in Iraq and could bring U.S. commitments back in line with our resources. Above all, Americans thought Obama would be a lot more thoughtful about where and how to use force, and that he understood the limits of this crudest of policy tools. The Norwegian Nobel Committee seems to have thought so too, when they awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize not for anything he had done, but for what it hoped he might do henceforth.


Yet a mere two years later, we find ourselves back in the fray once again. Since taking office, Obama has escalated U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and launched a new war against Libya. As in Iraq, the real purpose of our intervention is regime change at the point of a gun. At first we hoped that most of the guns would be in the hands of the Europeans, or the hands of the rebel forces arrayed against Muammar al-Qaddafi, but it's increasingly clear that U.S. military forces, CIA operatives and foreign weapons supplies are going to be necessary to finish the job.

Moreover, as Alan Kuperman of the University of Texas and Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune have now shown, the claim that the United States had to act to prevent Libyan tyrant Muammar al-Qaddafi from slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Benghazi does not stand up to even casual scrutiny. Although everyone recognizes that Qaddafi is a brutal ruler, his forces did not conduct deliberate, large-scale massacres in any of the cities he has recaptured, and his violent threats to wreak vengeance on Benghazi were directed at those who continued to resist his rule, not at innocent bystanders. There is no question that Qaddafi is a tyrant with few (if any) redemptive qualities, but the threat of a bloodbath that would "[stain] the conscience of the world" (as Obama put it) was slight.

It remains to be seen whether this latest lurch into war will pay off or not, and whether the United States and its allies will have saved lives or squandered them. But the real question we should be asking is: Why does this keep happening? Why do such different presidents keep doing such similar things? How can an electorate that seemed sick of war in 2008 watch passively while one war escalates in 2009 and another one gets launched in 2011? How can two political parties that are locked in a nasty partisan fight over every nickel in the government budget sit blithely by and watch a president start running up a $100 million per day tab in this latest adventure? What is going on here?

Read the 5 Reasons Full Article Here

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How much did YOU pay for war this year? (Video)

Youtube - BraveNewFoundation

Ever wonder how much you paid to fund the war? Use the Afghanistan War Tax Calculator to find out. We'll give you an I.O.U. for what you paid that you can forward to your Member of Congress. Ask for your money back! http://rethinkafghanistan.com/



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The Military Tax Collector is Here Again

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Libya war costs $4 million a day: US Air Force

The total cost of the operation for the entire US military was estimated at $500 million on March 28.

© AFP Mahmud Hams

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The war in Libya is costing the US Air Force $4 million a day but the cost likely will drop now that American fighter jets pulled out of the operation, the air force secretary said Tuesday.

As of Tuesday morning, "we're probably (at) about 75 million dollars for the cost of the operation thus far," said Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, the top civilian overseeing the service.

"And our best estimate was about four million dollars a day."
Speaking to defense reporters in Washington, Donley said the price tag "will probably be adjusted here as the US participation in strike operations has now gone away."

But Donley could not say how much the cost of the operation might be reduced after the withdrawal of US combat aircraft.

About 50 warplanes -- including fighter jets and ground-attack aircraft -- were deployed for combat flights over Libya in the past few days, while the air force has contributed 39 "support aircraft" for refueling, surveillance and other tasks, according to Donley.

He said the "strike" aircraft would return to European bases and remain on standby in case NATO requested help from Washington in the air campaign, launched March 19.

US combat sorties ended at 2200 GMT on Monday as NATO allies take over strike missions, under a UN-mandate to enforce a no-fly zone and protect civilians from the Libyan regime's forces,

The total cost of the operation for the entire US military was estimated at $500 million on March 28.

For relief efforts in Japan after that country's earthquake and tsunami, the air force had spent about $40 million evacuating 5,000-6,000 Americans and about $8-$9 million on humanitarian assistance, including food supplies, Donley said.

The air campaign in Libya and the disaster relief operation in Japan have aggravated mounting financial pressures on the Pentagon, as Congress has yet to approve spending to cover the current fiscal year for the military or the rest of the federal government.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Speculators, Cartels and Myths of Scarcity: How War Pushes up the Price of Oil

Oil Wars/Wikimedia image

Dean Henderson
Global Research

Last week, as if to justify his Libyan crusade, President Obama echoed the prevailing “peak oil” myth, stating that “we must accept the new reality that from here on out, demand for oil will always exceed supply”.  It was music to the ears of the Rockefeller/Rothschild energy cartel and tax-dodger oil traders in Zug, Switzerland alike.  Both know full well that oil companies pay around $18/barrel to get crude out of the ground.

Big Oil rings up its usual quarterly record profit, speculators led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley tack on another $50/barrel and people get gouged at the gas pump.  Governments “tighten their belts”, economies contract and the myth of scarcity (root word: scare) encourages a race to the bottom for the global masses, alongside an historical concentration of power and wealth by the well-fed and fueled global elite.

A day after Obama’s endorsement of concentrated corporate power and casino capitalism, the US Department of Energy reported that the main US oil stage depot at Cushing, Oklahoma was holding 41.9 million barrels of crude oil, very near its capacity of 44 million barrels.  In other words, the US is awash in crude oil.
Here in South Dakota, the USDA announced that farmers plan to plant an additional 850,000 acres of corn- the most since 1931.  According to a March 10 bulletin from USDA, Brazil’s corn crop is 2 million tons higher than last year.  Yet corn futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trade at record prices.


According to the same USDA report, “U.S. wheat ending stocks for 2010/11 are projected higher this month on reduced export prospects. Projected exports are lowered 25 million bushels with increased world supplies of high quality wheat, particularly in Australia, and a slower-than-expected pace of U.S. shipments heading into the final quarter of the wheat marketing year.”  Yet wheat futures hover near record highs.

There is nothing alarming in the report about supplies of beef, poultry, eggs, milk, sugar or rice either.  Yet food prices continue to skyrocket.

The global elite know that both food and energy are paramount to life. Control over these two most basic needs means control over people.

After the 2008 acquisitions of Swift, Smithfield and National Beef Packers by Brazilian meat-packer JBS, there are three conglomerates that control over 80% of beef-packing in the US – Tyson, Cargill and JBS.  These same companies control most of the burgeoning cattle feedlot industry centered in SW Kansas and SE Colorado.  They also dominate the pork, chicken and turkey industries.  Cargill is the largest grain processor on the planet, handling a full one-half of global grain supplies.
  
Four giant companies are making a play to own not just all the oil, but virtually all energy sources on the planet.  In my book, Big Oil & Their Bankers…I dub them the Four Horsemen – Royal Dutch/Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and BP Amoco.
  
These companies control crude oil from the Saudi well-head to the American gas pump and profit from every step of processing, shipping and marketing in between.  While reactionary Republicans blame environmentalists for the lack of US oil production, it was these oil giants who capped permitted wells in Texas and Louisiana and moved production to the Middle East – where Bangladeshi, Filipino and Yemeni workers are paid $1/day to work the oil rigs.
  
Royal Dutch/Shell and Exxon Mobil are the heaviest and most vertically integrated of the Four Horsemen. These behemoths have led the charge towards horizontal integration within the energy industry, investing heavily in natural gas, coal and uranium resources.

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Oil Rises On Market Speculation Over Globalist War in Libya

Dees Illustration

Kurt Nimmo
InfoWars

Oil has spiked to a 30-month high on market speculation related to demand and the globalist war against the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi’s forces bombed an oil field south of the city of Ajdabiya and heightened concerns about the supply of oil from the African nation.

Crude for May delivery gained around 84 cents and topped $108.78 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It is the highest spike since September 24, when prices hit $108.30 a barrel. Brent oil for May settlement climbed as much as $1.05, or 0.9 percent, to $119.75 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.


“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the situation in Libya may be prolonged,” said Christopher Bellew, a senior broker at Bache Commodities Ltd. in London, told Bloomberg. “The more one looks at uprisings in the Middle East, the more one realizes they will not be easy to resolve. At the same time, oil demand is relatively inelastic to higher prices.”

Oil has climbed 28 percent since American and British intellignece prompted a rag tag gang of Gaddafi opponents to take up arms against the Libyan government.

Mark Pervan, head of commodity research at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Melbourne, told Bloomberg upcoming elections in Nigeria may also impact oil prices. A vote to elect lawmakers was rescheduled on April 2. More than 50 people have died in election-related violence since July, according to Amnesty International. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and largest oil producer.

Last week a leading neocon responsible for the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and the lies that led the United States into an undeclared war against Iraq – and ultimately led to the murder of nearly 1.5 million Iraqis – told Fox News it is irrelevant who controls the flow of oil. Douglas Feith said despite who controls the oil in Libya or elsewhere in the Middle East, governments will be obliged to sell it on the international market.


Neocon Douglas Feith is not worried about the oil supply

Feith admitted that conflict does interrupt the production of oil and impact prices. He did not discount the possibility that the CIA created terror group al-Qaeda may eventually control oil.

A former leader of an al-Qaeda linked group in Libya claims that there are around 1000 fundamentalist Islamic fighters in the country that have joined the uprising against Gaddafi.

The plan to invade Iraq and oust the former CIA operative Saddam Hussein and replace him with former Petra Bank chairman Ahmed Chalabi began well before a neocon-dominated Pentagon decided to invade the oil producing country enfeebled by more than a decade of brutal economic sanctions.

Kurt Nimmo is the editor of Infowars.com and author of Another Day in the Empire.

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The U.S. Government Must Go!

Dees Illustration

Mike Rozeff
Lew Rockwell

A chorus of U.S. and international officials keeps chanting that "Gaddafi must go" because, they keep repeating, he has lost legitimacy.

Let’s turn the tables. How legitimate is the U.S. government? I’m not talking about the popularity of particular persons like Obama, Bush I, Bush II, or Clinton. Changing faces, political parties, and administrations in Washington is a lost cause. I’m talking about national government itself. Should Washington be dismantled? Has Washington lost legitimacy as a government? If so, as a remedy, as a guide to action, as an objective to work toward, the U.S. government must go!
There are many valid ways to criticize the U.S. government. Any small government or anarchist perspective gives rise to a critique. Any adherent of constitutionality has another critique. For example, Lysander Spooner’s critique is devastating. Anyone who looks to the government’s effectiveness in serving the public will have yet another perspective. Anyone who restricts attention to economic and monetary matters will find plenty to criticize. Anyone who focuses on rights and liberties will be able to make important criticisms.

Here my perspective is to question the legitimacy of the U.S. government. Legitimacy is the perspective being used loudly by many world leaders against Gaddafi. I wonder, can we camp on their grounds and turn their own ideas against them?

World heads of state do not usually shine the light of legitimacy on one another, much less on themselves. Oh no, they are very quiet and reserved in that area. They don’t want people questioning their legitimacy, so they don’t raise the idea. Libya is atypical. Some leaders are using the rhetoric of legitimacy against Gaddafi. They believe that they can confine its use to him. They believe that they can restrict illegitimacy to instances of outright violence and ignore hidden violence. This serves their purposes.

In the post-Soviet era, criticisms by world leaders of the U.S. tend to be restrained, muted and timid. The world’s states are essentially in cahoots with one another. Many are beholden to the U.S. or tied in via relations of one kind and another. They cannot be too critical. Many have their own domestic problems and don’t want to stir up nests of hornets.

We are not so confined. If we use Obama’s criterion that violence against one’s people is a sign of government illegitimacy, then how many world governments are themselves legitimate? They all use violence and the threat of violence to maintain themselves. The fact that the threats of violence are effective and prevent outright blood on the streets doesn’t remove the presence of violence as the government’s means of controlling its citizens. Once we look under the hood at the motor of government, we find violence. At what point does such violence mean that the government’s leaders or the government itself – its very form – have lost legitimacy?

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US pulls support for Yemen leader: report

The US government is dropping its support
for Yemen's embattled president, reports say
© AFP Ahmad Gharabli

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government is dropping its support for Yemen's embattled president and is helping negotiate his departure, the New York Times reported, citing US and Yemeni officials.

Washington has long supported President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power since 1978, and the administration of President Barack Obama has largely refrained from criticizing him in public.

But US officials have told allies that they see Saleh's position as untenable due to the widespread protests, and believe he should leave office.
Negotiations over Saleh's departure began more than a week ago, the newspaper reports.

The talks center on a proposal for Saleh to surrender power to a provisional government under his vice-president until there can be new elections. That principle "is not in dispute," an unnamed Yemeni official told the US newspaper, but the timing has to be worked out.

Washington's goal is for the US conterterrorism operation in Yemen to remain unaffected, the Times reported.

The ongoing clashes between Saleh and the protesters "has had a direct adverse impact on the security situation throughout the country," an unnamed US official told the Times.

"Groups of various stripes -- Al Qaeda, Houthis, tribal elements, and secessionists -- are exploiting the current political turbulence and emerging fissures within the military and security services for their own gain,," the official told the newspaper.

"Until President Saleh is able to resolve the current political impasse by announcing how and when he will follow through on his earlier commitment to take tangible steps to meet opposition demands, the security situation in Yemen is at risk of further deterioration," the US official said.

Yemeni police on Sunday killed an anti-regime protester and wounded scores more on, medics and witnesses said, as Saleh called for an end to protests demanding that he step down.

The protestor's death took the toll to nearly 100 from the crackdown on protests that erupted in the Arabian Peninsula country in late January, according to international human rights watchdogs.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Libya more 'vital' to Europe than US: Obama ex-advisor

Robert Gates: Libya is "not a vital interest (to the United States) in the sense that it affects the vital security of the nation," and "It is more in the vital interest of Europeans... when you consider the effects of massive immigration, the effects of terror, the oil market."

Dees Illustration

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Libya endgame is more "vital" to Europe than the United States, a former White House adviser said Sunday, and urged Arab and African allies to step up as Washington slims its role in the conflict.

Retired general James Jones, who until last October served as President Barack Obama's national security adviser, acknowledged on Sunday talk shows that strongman Moamer Kadhafi's ouster was the ultimate goal in the military campaign, but said there was little clarity on how that will be accomplished.

With the UN-approved military strikes against Kadhafi's forces in their third week, the Pentagon has stepped back from a leadership role in the air campaign, stressing it does not want to engage in yet another major war.
Libya is "not a vital interest (to the United States) in the sense that it affects the vital security of the nation," he told ABC News program "This Week."

"It is more in the vital interest of Europeans... when you consider the effects of massive immigration, the effects of terror, the oil market."

European countries, led by Italy, France and Germany, are the top consumers of Libyan crude, and total Libyan output amounts to less than two percent of world production.

A US-led coalition launched the first air strikes against Libya, but NATO began to take command of the air bombing operations last Wednesday.

"What we're doing here is making sure that our allies also take on their share of responsibilities, which they are," Jones told CNN's "State of the Union" program.

He said the United States was still flying "about 50 percent of the missions," but mostly in support roles such as search and rescue and refueling.

The Arab world and Africa, players who "have much more influence on Kadhafi than we do," must now step up, said Jones, who praised the involvement of nations such as Qatar, the first Arab state to fly sorties over Libya to enforce a no-fly zone.

Some Arab nations have been targeted for criticism for standing on the sidelines in the Libya crisis.

"The participation of the Arab League in this mission I think is hugely important, and the African Union has to step up also. This is their neighborhood, and they need to play a major role in how this is going to work out," Jones said.

While Washington has insisted its involvement in Libya, where Kadhafi forces were threatening a bloodbath in rebel-held eastern cities, was meant to avert a humanitarian disaster, Jones said the true goal was the ouster of Kadhafi.

Exactly how that is accomplished has been a point of debate, and Jones appeared to reflect the growing frustration over the best way to achieve such a goal.

"We know that the ultimate -- the end state -- is to have regime change in Libya. And how you get there from where we are now... without the partitioning of Libya, without Kadhafi staying in power for a long period of time, that is the problem," he told CNN.

"But unfortunately, most people want perfect clarity in a situation where clarity doesn't exist."

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich on Freedom Watch (Video)

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What’s the difference between Obama’s Libyan war and neoconservatism?

David Rieff
The New Republic

Well, that was quick! It usually takes some time for the gap between how a White House justifies a military adventure to the public, and the reality of what is really going on to be revealed. It took the fall of Saddam Hussein for the Bush administration’s pretext for war—the threat of weapons of mass destruction—to be shown up as a fabrication. But from President Obama’s televised address on the evening of March 29, in which he claimed that the intervention in Libya was not about regime change, to the Reuters story revealing that he had signed an order allowing covert U.S. operations in Libya at least a week before the speech, and possibly longer, took—what?—24 hours. And so in we go to Libya, as both neoconservatives and liberal interventionists have been pressing for all along.

In his speech, the president insisted that there was no comparison between Iraq and Libya, and that broadening the U.S. military mission “to include regime change would be a mistake.” In reality, of course, that is exactly what Washington has done. President Obama made much of U.N. sanction and the multinational nature of the no-fly zone, and boasted that the United States had now handed over the lead role to our “allies and partners in NATO.” But this is disingenuous nonsense. From a military perspective, NATO without U.S. military assets is not a particularly redoubtable force. It is true that, politically, the French government pressed hard for more aggressive military moves to support the Libyan insurgency. But despite President Obama’s assertions to the contrary, the overwhelming preponderance of bombs, missiles, and bullets fired at Colonel Qaddafi’s forces have been from U.S. ships and aircraft.

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Liberals Willing to Trade Blood for Oil Under Obama

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Scahill: US wages covert war in Yemen (Video)

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US senators seek to force Libya vote

US Sen. Rand Paul
© AFP/Getty Images/File Chip Somodevilla

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two senators concerned about US military strikes on Libya warned Friday they aimed to force a vote on whether President Barack Obama has the authority to wage war without congressional approval.

"We believe the answer is that he does not," Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee said in a letter to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Paul and Lee said they would block legislation pending in the Senate until Reid schedules a debate and vote on a resolution offered by Paul that states Obama "does not have the power to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
"While we realize there are other matters the Senate had planned to work on, it is our belief that there is very little we are doing that rises to the level of a constitutional question regarding war," they wrote.

"We do not take this responsibility lightly, and we believe the Senate is abdicating its responsibility at this very moment," they said in the letter, which Paul's office made public.

"The bombing and military action against the Libyan government will be two weeks old by the time we return to session next week. That means congressional debate on this war is two weeks overdue," they said.

Jon Summers, a spokesman for Reid, said the Obama administration had done a "good job of consulting with Congress and conveying as much information to us as is possible."

"Further, the Senate has had hearings and briefings, which Senators Paul and Lee have been invited to attend, throughout the week to carefully examine the effectiveness of our operations, and will continue to do so as operations continue," he said.

The US Constitution reserves to Congress the right to declare war, though US presidents have often deployed forces without first getting lawmakers' explicit say-so, despite a 1973 law that aimed to curtail their ability to do so.

The War Powers Act allows the president to use force in response to an attack on the United States, its territories, or its armed forces, but calls for notifying Congress within 48 hours and says US troops must start to withdraw 60 days later unless specifically authorized to remain by lawmakers.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal

Arab League/Wikimedia image

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya – the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, “This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner.”

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to “seduce” three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

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MUST SEE: Kucinich Exposes the Entire Libya Agenda on The House Floor (Video)

Youtube - DJKucinich
Congresman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) speaks for a powerful hour on the House floor about the illegality of the Libya war.  This is a MUST SEE speech as he reveals the entire agenda behind the Libya attack. He connects the dots to the CIA quite convincingly.  And he asked the big philosophical questions: "Our dear nation stands at a crossroads. The direction we take will determine not what kind of nation we are but what kind of nation we will become. Will we become a nation which plots in secret to wage war? Will we become a nation that observes our Constitution only in matters of convenience? Will we become a nation which destroys the unity of the world community painstakingly pieced together from the ruins of World War II, a war which itself followed a war to end all wars?"


You MUST WATCH Part 2 and beyond to hear Kucinich thrash Obama and the Congress

RELATED ARTICLE: 
Liberals Trade Blood for Oil Company Profits Under Obama

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