US-Backed Terrorists Murder US' Own Ambassador in Libya

Πηγή: BLN
By Tony Cartalucci
Sept 12 2012

Editor's Note: With Russia openly accusing the West of using Al Qaeda as their direct, militant proxies in Syria and beyond, this latest attempt to purposefully provoke and incite Muslims across the Arab World is an attempt by the West to reestablish the perception that the US and Israel are at war with sectarian extremists, not partnered with them. The film allegedly at the center of the violence, most likely came from the Neo-Con "Clarion Fund" or a project of similar origin.

September 12, 2012 - "I have met with these brave fighters, and they are not Al-Qaeda. To the contrary: They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation. We should help them do it." - Senator John McCain in Benghazi, Libya April 22, 2011.

Image: Senator John McCain in the terrorist rat nest of Benghazi after marshaling cash, weapons, and political support for militants tied directly to Al Qaeda. McCain's insistence that the terrorists he helped arm and install into power were "not Al Qaeda" runs contra to the US Army's own reports which state that Benghazi's terror brigades officially merged with Al Qaeda in 2007. McCain's "Libyan patriots" have now killed US Ambassador Stevens with RPG's most likely procured with cash and logistic networks set up by NATO last year, part of a supranational terror campaign that includes violently subverting Syria - a campaign McCain also supports.
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McCain's "Libyan patriots" have now murdered US Ambassador John Christopher Stevens in the very city McCain spoke these words. An assault on the American consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, the epicenter of not only last year's violent subversion and destruction of sovereign Libya, but a decade's old epicenter of global terrorism, left Ambassador Stevens dead along with two of his aides.

The violence, Western media claims, stems from an anti-Islamic film produced in the US. In reality, the coordinated nature of the attacks on both the US Embassy in Libya, as well as its embassy in Cairo, Egypt, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, are most likely using the Neo-Conservative Clarion Fund-esque propaganda film as a false pretense for violence long-planned. The Clarion Fund regularly produces anti-Muslim propaganda, like "Iranium," specifically to maintain a strategy of tension using fear and anger to drive a wedge between Western civilization and Islam to promote perpetual global wars of profit.

NATO Knowingly Handed Libya to Al Qaeda

Indeed, the US Army's West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) noted that Benghazi and the neighboring city of Darnah served a disproportionately high role in supplying foreign fighters to wage terror against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan - foot soldiers brought in to fuel a destructive and divisive sectarian war that undermined a united Sunni-Shi'ia resistance to Western troops who had invaded.

Image: In Benghazi, in front of the very courthouse McCain and other representatives of the West's corporate-financier driven foreign policy voiced support for Libya's terror brigades, sectarian extremists took the streets waving the flag of Al Qaeda, even hoisting it atop the Benghazi courthouse itself. Despite a concerted effort by Western media houses to portray Libya as in the hands of progressive democratic secularists, the country was intentionally handed over to extremists to serve as a base of militancy to destabilize and destroy targets of Western interest around the word.
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The men McCain was defending were Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) militants, terrorists linked directly with Al Qaeda according to West Point reports (.pdf), and listed to this day by the US State Department, the UK Home Office (.pdf), and the UN as a "foreign terrorist organization." McCain was not only rhetorically supporting listed terrorists, but calling for material support including weapons, funds, training, and air support in direct violation of USC § 2339A & 2339B, "providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations."

These same terrorists are now not only the defacto rulers of much of Libya, but are leading death squads in Syria and arming militants in Mali, an exponential expansion made possible by a non-partisan effort including Republicans and Democrats, as well as Bush-era Neo-Conservatives who concurrently lead both anti-Islam propaganda while leading calls to arm the most radical sectarian extremist groups, including groups directly affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Syria is Next

Not only has US policy been exposed as not "promoting democracy" but purposefully spreading destabilization, violence, and terrorism, but the exact same militants behind the death of the US' own ambassador are literally leading US efforts to visit the same violence, destabilization, and chaos upon Syria.

Reuters, in their article, "Libyan fighters join Syrian revolt," reported, that Mahdi al-Harati, "a powerful militia chief from Libya's western mountains," who is actually a militant of the US, British, and UN listed terrorist organization Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), "now leads a unit in Syria, made up mainly of Syrians but also including some foreign fighters, including 20 senior members of his own Libyan rebel unit." Reuters would go on to explain, "the Libyans aiding the Syrian rebels include specialists in communications, logistics, humanitarian issues and heavy weapons," and that they "operate training bases, teaching fitness and battlefield tactics."

Image: Libyan Mahdi al-Harati of the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), addressing fellow terrorists in Syria. Harati is now commanding a Libyan brigade operating inside of Syria attempting to destroy the Syrian government and subjugate the Syrian population. Traditionally, this is known as "foreign invasion."
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Reuters concedes that the ongoing battle has nothing to do with democracy, but instead is purely a sectarian campaign aimed at "pushing out" Syria's minorities, perceived to be "oppressing" "Sunni Muslims." 

Reuters' propaganda piece is rounded off with a Libyan terrorist allegedly threatening that "the militancy would spread across the region as long as the West does not do more to hasten the downfall of Assad," a talking point plucked straight from the halls of America's corporate-financier funded think-tanks. In fact, just such a think-tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative, recently published a statement signed by Bush-era Neo-Conservatives stating:

"America’s national security interests are intertwined with the fate of the Syrian people and the wider region. Indeed, Syria’s escalating conflict now threatens to directly affect the country’s neighbors, including Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Israel, and could provide an opening for terrorist groups like al Qaeda to exploit."Along with "War on Terror" proponent John McCain, Al Qaeda's LIFG and America's Neo-Con establishment are now operating in tandem, as well as in direct contradiction to a decade of "War on Terror" propaganda. It should be remembered that those who signed this statement, including Elliott Abrams, Max Boot, Ellen Bork, William Kristol, Paul Bremer, Paula Dobriansk, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Clifford D. May, Stephen Rademaker, Michael Weiss, Radwan Ziadeh, were among the very engineers of thefraudulent "War on Terror" that McCain himself is such a fervent supporter of. Radwan Ziadeh, last on the list, is in fact a "Syrian National Council" member - one of several proxies the US State Department is hoping to slip into power in Syria.

Russia, China, Iran, and Others Oppose Terrorism in Syria for a Reason

With Libya's "democratic progress" exposed as only tenuously covering up NATO's creation of a nation-wide safe haven for Al Qaeda terrorists to subsequently be deployed against the West's political enemies across he Arab World and beyond, it will be even more difficult, if not impossible to continue promoting this same "change" in Syria. Libya, through direct action of NATO, has been overrun by terrorists. Syria's government is desperately trying to prevent its people from being likewise overrun.

And even as the US buries its own ambassador, killed by terror brigades it itself armed and thrust into power through covert and direct military intervention, in a nation now wrecked by sectarian and tribal infighting, it insists on replicating its "success" in Syria.

Russia, China, Iran, and a growing number of nations have been opposing this campaign of supranational terrorism - with the death of Ambassador Stevens laying bare the true nature of America's proxy "freedom fighters," the list of global opposition will only grow, leaving only the most shameless and deeply invested to defend America's invasive and bloody foreign policy.

Few Good Options For Syria, But Arming The Rebels May Be The Worst

A Free Syrian Army fighter runs for cover during fighting against government troops in Idlib, northern Syria, March 10, 2012. U.N. envoy Kofi Annan, on a mission to mediate an end to the country's yearlong conflict, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday, but failed to achieve any breakthrough.

Πηγή: Time
By ARYN BAKER
March 12 2012

Frustration with a lack of movement in the ongoing conflict, many countries are pushing for military intervention. Why that could backfire.

Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations now tasked with finding a solution to the year-long crisis that has engulfed Syria, returned from Damascus on Sunday with little more than vague words of ill-placed optimism. “You have to start by stopping the killings and the misery and the abuses …. and give time (for a) political settlement,” he told reporters, saying that Syrian President Bashar Assad needed to embrace change and reform. “I have urged the president to heed the African proverb which says you cannot turn the wind, so turn the sail.” It would appear that Assad doesn’t think African proverbs translate very well in the Middle East. Syrian army troops poured into the rebel stronghold of Idlib over the weekend, threatening a repeat of the carnage visited on Homs last month where hundreds were killed, thousands left homeless and parts of the city annihilated by sustained shelling. International reaction has been defined by despair, frustration and paralysis as the death toll exceeds 7,500.

“How many more will die?” U.S. Senator John McCain demanded at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing meeting last week. “10,000 more, 20,000 more?” McCain’s argument that the U.S. has a responsibility to intervene in the Syrian uprising echoed similar resolutions from Arab League, though for the moment, at least, no one can quite decide what that intervention should look like. U.S. generals are already war-gaming the situation but on a scale of recent interventions, a military solution in Syria would more likely resemble Iraq than Libya.

Diplomatic alternatives, however, are in short supply. Negotiations between the government and the opposition have stalled before even getting off the ground: On Saturday, Assad said that he wouldn’t pull his troops back as long as “armed terrorists” — his term for anti-regime activists, operated in the country. Regime opponents say they won’t be part of any agreement that allows Assad and his circle to remain in power. The longer it takes to set a transition deal in place, warns the Washington Institute’s Andrew Tabler author of In The Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria, the worse it will get. “You will start seeing different regional players start funneling arms to their preferred factions. It will be a proxy war, with Iranians and Russians backing the regime, and Turkey and Qatar and the West backing the opposition.” Short of diplomatic pressure from Russia and China, whose leaders until now have refused to turn against the Syrian regime, it’s unlikely that Assad will step down of his own accord. All the more reason to act forcibly now, says Tabler. “People say we can’t intervene now, that it’s too messy. But what will it look like a year from now?” Either way, he says, the outlook is grim. “We are headed for a big storm, one that has the potential to suck in everyone in the region.”

Frustration with a lack of options has forced some countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to endorse what they see as the least bad option: arming the rebels. Will that start the carnage? Not likely, says the Council on Foreign Relations’ Ed Husain, an academic and author who has spent many years living in and studying Syria. Military assistance without diplomatic progress could end up causing even more casualties, he says, and the increased possibility of a sectarian conflagration would not be contained within Syrian borders. “If the opposition is armed it will ignite sectarian tensions. And those tensions have the potential to spread from Syria to Lebanon and Iraq and then to the tribes in the Gulf. It’s going to be bloody, and it’s going to be ugly.”

So what are the other options? To start with, says Husain, there has to be some recognition that the Free Syrian Army [FSA], which is made up of regime opponents and defected soldiers, shares some responsibility for the violence. Focusing on regime atrocities against civilians while ignoring the crimes of the Free Syrian Army will make it even more difficult to negotiate a way out of the crisis. Sunday’s drive by shooting of a celebrated Syrian boxer in Aleppo, which the state news agency blamed on the opposition, is just the latest in a string of high profile assassinations that have plagued the city. Members of the opposition have taken responsibility for some, but not all, of the attacks, saying that the victims were regime supporters. (Other opposition members say that the assassinations were committed by order of the government as part of a propaganda campaign). “We have to be fair,” says Husain. “The opposition is being provocative, it is kidnapping soldiers, assassinating businessmen and using civilians as human shields. You can’t go head to head with a tyrannical regime and assume that the repercussions won’t be extreme. Arming them will only make things worse.”

Syrian activists, particularly the ones that started the peaceful protest movement a year ago, are divided. “I believe in peaceful struggle,” says Wissam Tarif, a Beirut based activist who has been instrumental at getting video documentation of regime atrocities out of the country. “It may take longer, but we will be on the right side of history.” Of course, he says, drawing deeply on a cigarette. “I’m not in Homs. And when I see videos of guys being tortured and families being shelled, well, yes. These people need to be able to defend themselves.” There is a middle ground, he says. Militarization has to come with conditions, and it can’t happen without having a civilian leadership on the ground acting as a check. Since the government and the military’s officer corps is dominated by Alawites, members of Assad’s minority sect, many fear that revenge killings by the largely Sunni opposition would be difficult to contain. “Arming the FSA could end up like something out of Rwanda,” says Tarif. “They could start killing all the Alawites, then the international community would have to step in and defend them against the FSA. That would be the irony.”

Both activists and analysts agree that the best possible solution would be a kind of internal coup, where Alawites and other regime stalwarts start to pull their support. Already there have been signs of cracks. The Druze minority sect has started to stand against the regime, as have significant numbers of Christian priests and leaders who have historically stood with the regime. Despite the fact that Syria’s Sunni majority seems to have turned against Assad, significant religious leaders have not. Nor have influential businessmen of all sects. “It doesn’t cost Assad politically to see Christians or Druze or even Alawites turn against him,” says Tabler. “It would mean much more if you saw prominent Christian, Alawite or Sunni businessmen turn away. That would be far more powerful than even giving arms to the opposition, because in the end, his army will always have more bullets.”

The biggest failure of those who support the opposition, from activists to international governments, says Tabler, has been the inability to reach out to the regime’s key supporters to get them to turn against Assad. It’s a shortcoming that the Syrian National Council, one of the opposition umbrella groups, hopes to address soon. “We do need to do better when it comes to the minority groups,” admits member Moaz al-Sibaai, who is based in Saudi Arabia. “We need to make them feel comfortable that the new Syria will be for them too.” Still, he says, it’s not too late. “I don’t believe that the regime has torn up the fabric of tolerance that defines Syria yet. People will go back to their values once the struggle is over. Everyone has aspirations for a Syria without Assad, and I don’t think anyone will compromise that dream through sectarian war.” But the longer the conflict lasts, the more likely it is that the sectarian divides will be cemented into place.