France says “Yes, we think the Benghazi regime IS the government of Libya”.
The EU is now pissed at France. The news just reported that NATO voted “No” on a “No Fly Zone”. Confirmed by Fox news. Hillary Clinton says a No Fly zone didn’t work in Iraq, it won’t work in Libya.
France’s President is now proposing a joint England / France attack on Libya without the consent of NATO.
Market reaction:
Commodities are plummeting, especially food. Oil prices are dropping. Interest rates are dropping all over the world. the US dollar is holding steady (it’s close to a several year low)
There are reports that one of the Eastern Oil facilities is now on fire. The Media claims it was blown up by Qadaffi. I don’t trust their reports.
EU is tightening the screws on the Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund and the Libyan Central Bank. It’s all about the money.
The government forces are now cleaning the clocks of the Rebels. In a few days, they’ll be at the gates of Benghazi unless France unilaterally starts using planes to blow up tanks, in which case you can pretty much expect an asymmetrical war with Europe.
“The EU is now pissed at France.” – Easy to understand, and easy to do.
“Hillary Clinton says a No Fly zone didn’t work in Iraq, it won’t work in Libya.” – Well , if Billery says so it must be true. But wait, they are different countries, right? With different make-up of peoples in each country, right? Maybe she’s using too broad a stroke here – you know, kinda like when she said Iraq was turning into Vietnam?
I don’t believe much I hear about Libya from the media either Art. Your research has been more insightful than anything the media tries to feed us. When the media said a couple of days ago the rebels and govt forces had fought to a standstill I knew the govt forces were kickin’ rebel patotie.
So let me summarize: don’t believe the media, don’t believe the govt., don’t believe Billery, don’t believe France.
That about wraps it up.
The other day I was getting depressed that even the Voice of America was on the “ignore the facts, stick to the media narrative”, but after reading a few more stories I concluded there is an internal war going on within VOA right now.
They don’t have reporters per se, but they have access to the State department and intelligence resources. They’re relying heavily on the public services “AP is reporting that blah said blah”… But they are filtering out a lot of the propaganda crap… “the newsroom got a phone call from an anonymous source calling from a cell phone who says she was just raped by Libyan soldiers while they boiled her young child and then ate it for dinner, etc… ”
One of the mistakes we made in Iraq is being repeated – as George Bush and Fox News (and Hillary) were beating the drums of war, they did the “let’s go to the Hague and have the International Crimnal Court” convict him of crimes against humanity. The way the real world works is you hold the trial after the war is over and you’ve won. When you “convict” the leader of a sovereign nation of “war crimes”, he is now much more dangerous – there is no point left to negotiate or discuss terms of surrender. You’ve said his life is over, so he has nothing left to lose and no reason to cooperate. For now, Qadaffi is using proportionate response. He’s only been going after those he perceives to be those going after him.
Now Sarkozy has made it clear France is in the war even if by themselves. Germany, Russia, China and Italy are pretty clear they aren’t. I would suggest taking the Metro in Paris just got a bit riskier.
So let’s examine the end game. What if there is no intervention and the Libyan government forces control the entire Country except for Benghazi and lay siege to the city. Eventually the rebels hop on a plane to Malta or a bus ride to Egypt. What now? How do you back down? Does the international community say “never mind” and release the government’s money and end the embargo and try to pretend like this never happened? Or spend the next 10 years enforcing trade sanctions to force Qadaffi out. How well has that worked in Cuba? Are we at 45 years yet?