Category: Libya

SHOCKING: Libyan Mob Attack Kills Four, Including U.S. Ambassador
UPDATE: ‘Full-Blown … Crisis’
UPDATE: Hey, MSM, No Fair Shouting Questions at President Gutsy Call

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Just woke up to this news. When I went to bed last night, I knew that one American had been killed in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. But when I woke up — wow. This is stunning.

UPDATE: Washington Post:

U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed Tuesday in an assault on the American consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, the White House said.
In a statement issued by the White House early Wednesday morning, President Obama said he had directed an increase in security at U.S. diplomatic posts around the world. CNN reported that the Defense Department has dispatched two Marine anti-terrorism security teams to Benghazi to reinforce security there.
Stevens and the others were fleeing the consulate when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their vehicle, news reports from Benghazi said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton identified one of the dead as Sean Smith, a Foreign Service information management officer. The names of the other two people killed were being withheld pending notification of their families.

UPDATE II: Remember that yesterday, immediately after the attacks on our embassies in Egypt and Libya, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued an apology, which the White House then retracted, and as Allahpundit said:

Really looking forward to hearing Carney explain which part of the embassy’s earlier statement failed to represent the views of the U.S. government. I want to hear it in his own words; hopefully the press corps will make him elaborate.

This administration’s absurd policy deserves to be mocked, and often, and by someone who knows how:

UPDATE III: Toby Harnden of London Daily Mail:

The Obama administration is engulfed in a full-blown foreign policy crisis just two months before the presidential election with the two campaigns trading angry accusations over events in Libya, Egypt and Israel.
Footage of the body of Christopher Stevens, United States ambassador to Libya, slung over the back of a protester, was reminiscent of the 1993 ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in Somalia in 1993 when militia fighters lynched American aircrew in the streets of Mogadishu.
President Barack Obama’s staff will also be mindful that a shadow was cast over Jimmy Carter’s presidency by the Iranian hostage crisis after the US embassy in Tehran was stormed by Islamist extremists following the Iranian revolution.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE IV: The Lonely Conservative:

Obama Using the Carter Model
of Strength Through Confused Weakness

UPDATE V: On Twitter, David Limbaugh called this “unbelieveable”:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland cautioned reporters not to assume that the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo today reflected growing anti-American sentiment among the Egyptian people.
In response to a reporter’s comment that “it does seem as if there is a growing anti-American sentiment in Cairo,” Nuland said, “I would urge you not to draw too many conclusions because we’ve also had some very positive developments in our relationship with Egypt.”
Protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and tore down and desecrated the American flag, replacing it with a flag bearing the Islamic inscription, “There is no god but Allah.”

As anyone who has studied this problem knows, our State Department’s Mideast section is crammed full of alumni of elite schools where the foreign policy curriculum is based on the works of Edward Said and other anti-American academics.

UPDATE VI: “Never let a crisis go to waste”:

UPDATE VII: I watch MSNBC so you don’t have to:

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We Are Prepared to Come Kill You UPDATE: One American Killed, Another Wounded in Libyan Attack

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The other day I asked my wife where our 19-year-old son Bob was.

The answer: Hiking up a mountain with an 85-pound pack.

He recently enlisted in the Army, having scored a near-maximum on the ASVAB test, and will report to boot camp in a few months — some kind of delayed-entry deal — as an aspiring candidate for the elite Special Forces. Already a Red Cross certified lifeguard, he is so fired-up that he’s voluntarily doing PT (physical training) in advance, which is why he hiked up the mountain with an 85-pound pack.

Because he is preparing to kill our nation’s enemies.

My wife is concerned for our son’s safety. No, dear — let our nation’s enemies worry about their own safety. Because he’s coming to kill them.

Do you want to be America’s enemy? Really?

Egyptian protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy on Tuesday, tore down the American flag and burned it during a protest over what they said was a film being produced in the United States that insulted Prophet Mohammad. . . .
Once the U.S. flag was hauled down, some protesters tore it up and showed off pieces to television cameras. Others burned the remains outside the fortress-like embassy building in central Cairo. . . .
“This movie must be banned immediately and an apology should be made,” said 19-year-old Ismail Mahmoud, a member of the so-called “ultras” soccer supporters who played a big role in the uprising that brought down Hosni Mubarak last year.

Hey, Ismail: Do you think this flag-burning stuff is smart? You want to turn this into war? You want my son to come kill you?

I don’t know anything about this movie you and your “ultra” mob are all excited about, Ismail, but attacking a U.S. embassy isn’t the kind of thing that Americans take lightly, no matter what gutless apologies you get from the pussies at the State Department. And the same goes for that mob of violent savages in Benghazi:

Gunmen and security forces clashed at the U.S. consulate office in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Tuesday as the armed group protested over a film being produced in the United States, a security official said. . . .
“There are fierce clashes between the Libyan army and an armed militia outside the U.S. consulate,” Abdel-Monen Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya’s Supreme Security Committee, said.
“The U.S. consulate’s security guards inside the building fired at the militia as it was trying to enter and attack it.”

See, I’ve got skin in the game, so to speak, and this is what enrages me about the folly of appeasement, which only invites such attacks.

This administration’s idiotic policy blunders — and not some movie — are to blame for the signals of weakness that make these thugs think they can attack us with impunity.

Weakness inspires aggression, and war arises not from the power of our enemies, but from the foolishness of our leaders.

America would not be attacked if we were respected. We are not respected because our enemies believe we are weak and cowardly, and they believe this because our leaders don’t often enough remind them that our sons are strong and do not fear them.

The American people will be safer — and the entire world will be safer — when we have leaders who deserve the confidence of a nation willing to send its sons to war if need be, but who yet pray for peace. America’s strength is the best hope for peace.

The enemies of America are the enemies of peace, and they should be warned: My strong son — like the sons of so many thousands more Americans — is prepared to come kill you.

UPDATE: Dana Loesch at Breitbart.com:

An American has been killed on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 as Islamist mobs attacked and burned the U.S. consulate in Libya. . . .
It is so far the only death from mob attacks in Libya and Egypt over Islamist anger at an alleged film in production by Coptic Christians focusing on Islam. The United States spent 9/11 apologizing for hurting Islamists feelings in Egypt which caused them to desecrate our flag and storm the walls of the U.S. embassy and our Libyan consulate.

Annihilate these savages. Hunt them down and kill them, and kill any of those other vicious fanatical bastards who try to stop us.

Journalist Says She Was Molested in Custody by Egyptian ‘Security’ Forces

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Is this a logical sequel to the “Arab Spring”?

The US-based Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy has been released, according to her personal Twitter account, after 12 hours in detention at the hands of Cairo security forces. A later tweet from the account @monaeltahawy said that she was sexually and physically assaulted while being held inside the interior ministry in Cairo, in the early hours of Thursday morning. . . .
At 10:30am on Thursday, the former Reuters Middle East correspondent who has been lauded for her recent coverage of the Egyptian uprising, began tweeting that she had spent 12 hours in detention under the authority of interior ministry and military intelligence officials and that she had suffered a serious sexual assault by up to half a dozen members of the Egyptian security forces. She also said that she had been kept blindfolded for hours and also posted a picture of her severely bruised hand and then both her arms in casts.

A few more “Arab Autumn” headlines from Memeorandum:

Egyptian Generals Apologize for
Bloodshed but Reject Calls to Leave Power

U.S. urges Americans
to leave Syria “immediately”

Leaked UN report reveals torture,
lynchings and abuse in post-Gaddafi Libya

A few weeks ago, discussing Libya on Red Eye, Kevin Williamson used the phrase “desert savages,” which is politically incorrect, but when we see savagery like this, who can say it isn’t also accurate?

No Surprise: Sharia Law in Libya

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What “liberation” means in the Islamic world:

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its “basic source”. …
Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia — that banning polygamy.
In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya’s economy integrate further into the western world, he announced that in future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, in line with Sharia.

Wow. How shocking. Who could have possibly predicted this?

Moammar Qaddafi Is Dead

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ABC News:

Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has been killed, Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said today.
The flamboyant tyrant who terrorized his country and much of the world during his 42 years of despotic rule was reportedly cornered by insurgents in the town of Sirte, where Gadhafi was born and which was a stronghold of his supporters.
President Obama will make remarks at 2 p.m. this afternoon confirming and discussing Gadhafi’s death.
National Transition Council leaders said Gadhafi’s son, Motassim, was also killed though another son, Saif Al-Islam, fled Sirte in a convoy. Three of Gadhafi’s children are in Algeria, and NTC leaders say they will ask the neighboring country to send them back.
“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed,” Jibril said at a news conference in Tripoli.

Woke up this morning in Las Vegas and saw the news on TV, complete with video of a bloodied Qaddafy being hauled by rebels in the back of a pickup truck.

UPDATE:  The Washington Post: “Video on Arab TV stations shows Moammar Gadhafi was captured alive and wounded.”

UPDATE II: UK Mirror:

As the NATO strike on Gaddafi’s convoy hit the lead vehicles his aides started trying to exit from cars and escape on foot, realising the game was up.
Then as Gaddafi and several aides tried to run into the safety of a drainage ditch they were shot dead by rebel fighters pursuing them on foot.

UPDATE III: NewsMax has details of how Qaddafi was killed while attempting to escape from his hometown, Sirte:

Gadhafi’s only way out was a risky one – to pile into a convoy of vehicles and try to make a break for it.
They didn’t get very far. Less than three miles out, the five vehicles carrying [the ousted Libyan dictator] … came under sustained fire, initially from a Hellcat missile and then from French fighter jets.
Gadhafi and his bodyguards desperately tried to turn back into the besieged city … but it was a forlorn bid.
As the convoy became crippled the Mad Dog of the Desert made one final bid to save his life. He leaped from his car and into a 2ft. storm drain in Sirte’s District Two, on the far west of the city.
But he was soon spotted and dragged from his hiding place. Rebel soldiers say he begged for his life, urging them “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” but his pleas for mercy went unheeded.
The rebels killed him on the spot, shooting him once in the temple and in both legs.

And thus ends what began March 19 when NATO launched “Operation Odyssey Dawn.” For the first two months, the ragtag Libyan rebels seemed doomed to failure, and President Obama was harshly criticized here and elsewhere. Now that the mission has at last succeeded, congratulations are in order.

Who Should Be Embarrassed, Mr. Yoo?

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by Smitty

John Yoo at the National Review:

Obama did the right thing to order U.S. forces in [to Libya], but it was done reluctantly, with the administration claiming it was not really at “war,” limiting the U.S. and its allies to enforcing a no-fly zone only, and then trying to reduce our participation in airstrikes. Obama’s foot-dragging prolonged the Libyan civil war and will reduce our ability to influence the post-Qaddafi regime, which may well have strong extremist elements.
But I think the new Republican isolationists in the House (and among the presidential candidates) will come out looking even worse. They opposed the president’s constitutional authority to use force abroad to protect U.S. national-security interests, yet they failed to put forward any serious proposals of their own for U.S. foreign policy in the region (aside from pulling out wholesale, I suppose). They not only contradicted the consistent position of Republican administrations on the war-powers issue, but they had no alternatives to put forward on what to do about Libya. These House members had plenty of company from the Democratic party’s antiwar Left, of course — but if they all thought the war was illegal and a bad idea, do they want to give Libya back to Qaddafi now?

There are ditches on either side of the foreign policy road:

  • Isolationist
  • The Team America: World Police, i.e. Hegemon

Picking WWI as a pivot point, or the Spanish-American War if you like, the U.S. moved toward the latter from the former, and picked up steam after WWII. After the fall of the Soviet Union, TAWP is looking rather threadbare.

Given the context of this Administration’s creepshow foreign policy, starting somewhere around Mel Zelaya in the Honduras and stumbling forward erratically from there, a lack of confidence in the President would seem mere prudence, a protection of the slupee from the ditch, not a source of embarrassment. Also, given this Administration’s flaunting of Congress on much of domestic policy (budge, anyone?), and the ongoing economic crisis, asking after the bills is due dilligence. OK, it scores points with the Tea Parties, too.

So the question to the Really Smart Folks like Yoo might be: is there a better operating point, around the crown of the road, between these ditches?

I think neither isolationism nor full forward presence is workable, especially in the globalized environment. Also suffering badly: the U.N. Anyone who thinks the U.N. should just fix stuff is probably a Left, or mad, but I repeat myself.

Is there really a level of effort below hegemon? Can you draw down forward deployments and economize, without ensuring a follow-on war? I’m guessing no.

At any rate, grant BHO his victory lap. As with Osama, you can’t both deny Obama the kudos and hold the man accountable for the rest of the economic disaster we face. Well, you can, if you’re a Lefty ingrate. That said, the War Powers act of 1973 bears review, as a part of the hegemony question. The fact that there has been dissent is patriotic, not a cause for embarrassment.

Libyan Regime Collapses; Rebels Enter Tripoli; Qaddafi Sons Reported Captured

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Looks like Moammar Qaddafi’s dictatorship has finally been vanquished:

TRIPOLI, Libya — Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s grip on power dissolved with astonishing speed on Monday as rebels marched into the capital and arrested two of his sons, while residents raucously celebrated the prospective end of his four-decade-old rule. . . .
The rebel leadership announced that the elite presidential guard protecting the Libyan leader had surrendered and that their forces controlled many parts of the city, but not Colonel Qaddafi’s leadership compound.

That’s from the New York Times. From the Washington Post:

TRIPOLI, Libya — Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s four-decade-long rule over the country was crumbling at breakneck speed as hundreds of rebel fighters swept into Tripoli and took control Monday of the symbolically significant Green Square in the heart of the city.
With rebel leaders saying late Sunday that Gad­dafi’s compound was surrounded, that his son Saif al-Islam had been captured and that his presidential guard had surrendered, the six-month-old battle for control of Libya appeared to be hurtling toward a dramatic finale. . . .
With communications to the capital sporadic, some rebel claims could not be confirmed, and some experts cautioned that a tough urban battle may yet lie ahead between the lightly armed and untrained rebels and the elite government forces kept in reserve for the defense of the capital.
But reporters traveling with rebel forces said Gaddafi’s defenses were melting away faster than had been expected. There were reports of entire units fleeing as rebels entered the capital from the south, east and west, and his supporters inside the city tearing off their uniforms, throwing down their weapons and attempting to blend into the population.

Video from the Associated Press:

Via Memeorandum, additional blog coverage from Gateway Pundit, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, and The Lonely Conservative.

Qaddafi Cornered as Rebels Attack Tripoli

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More than five months after the launch of Operation Odyssey Dawn — which was supposed to have toppled Moammar Qaddafi’s regime in a matter of days — Libyan rebels say they’re finally on the verge of victory:

Euphoric Libyan rebels have pushed to the western outskirts of Tripoli without meeting any resistance after they overran a major military base that defends the capital.
Associated Press reporters with the rebels said they reached the Tripoli suburb of Janzour around nightfall Sunday. They were greeted by civilians lining the streets and waving rebel flags.
Hours earlier, the same rebel force of hundreds drove out elite forces led by Muammar al-Qaddafi’s son in a brief gunbattle. The fighters hauled off truckloads of weapons and advanced full speed toward the capital. . . .
An Associated Press reporter with the rebels saw them take over the base of the Khamis Brigade, 16 miles west of the capital, on Sunday. The base has been defending Qaddafi’s stronghold of Tripoli. After a brief gunbattle, Qaddafi’s forces fled.
Qaddafi’s 27-year-old son Khamis commands the 32nd Brigade, also known simply as the Khamis Brigade, one of the best trained and equipped units in the Libyan military. . . .

Qaddafi’s “days are numbered,” the White House says again for the umpteenth time. From Day One of this operation, Obama, Hillary and other administration figures have repeatedly declared that Qaddafi’s “days are numbered,” but they didn’t tell us the number was “at least 150,” and even now we don’t know how many of those numbered days still remain.

As long as Qaddafi is killed or captured before Nov. 6, 2012, the White House will proclaim it a triumphant vindication of the president’s policy.