The Libyan uprising always contained more extreme Islamists than portrayed by its supporters inside and outside Libya. There is a measure of truth in Muammar Gaddafi's claim to Tony Blair that the jihadis had "managed to set up local stations and in Benghazi have spread the thoughts and ideas of al Qaeda." His claims sound... Read More

The self-inflicted wounds of Hillary Rodham Clinton just keep manifesting themselves. She has two serious issues that have arisen in the past week; one is political and the other is legal. Both have deception at their root. Her political problem is one of credibility. We know from her emails that she informed her daughter Chelsea... Read More

The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd captured the moment last weekend when she referred to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as “the midwife to chaos” in Libya. Dowd apparently came to that conclusion after watching Clinton bobbing and weaving and admitting and denying as she was confronted with the partial record of her failures... Read More

Hillary Clinton was battered for 10 hours on 22 October by Republican Congressmen seeking to blame her for security failings, when she was secretary of state, that led to the murder of United States ambassador Christopher Stevens in the US consulate in Benghazi on 11 September 2012. The Republican purpose in grilling her for so... Read More

At long last, Hillary Clinton testifies on the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and her emails as secretary of state. Here are some suggested questions. Although these suggestions are based on the public record, we need to assume that the members of the House Benghazi Committee have seen far more than the public has.... Read More

What if former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been pulling the wool over our eyes for years? What if, while she was secretary of state, she ran two secret wars, one in Libya and one in Syria? What if there already were wars in each of those countries, so she used those wars... Read More

In a column I wrote in early July, based on research by my colleagues and my own analysis of government documents and eyewitness statements, I argued that in 2011 and 2012 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waged a secret war on the governments of Libya and Syria, with the approval of President Obama and the... Read More

When theydestabilizedLibya andoverthrewstrongman Muammar Gadhafi in 2011 the U.S. and its Canadian and European allies unleashed a series of events that accounts for the steady flood into Europe of migrants from North Africa. There are, purportedly,"up to 1 million"poor, uneducated, possibly illiterate, predominantly male, and by necessity violence-prone individuals, poised to board rickety freighters in... Read More

Few recall that David Cameron led Britain into one war in Libya that overthrew Gaddafi, but was disastrous for most Libyans. Without this conflict, the drowned bodies of would-be emigrants to Europe would not be washing up in their hundreds on Libyan beaches. To get the full flavour of what went wrong, it is worth... Read More

Remember the time when Libya was being held up by the American, British, French and Qatari governments as a striking example of benign and successful foreign intervention? It is worth looking again at film of David Cameron grandstanding as liberator in Benghazi in September 2011 as he applauds the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and tells... Read More

The image of the Libyan revolution in 2011 was something of a fabrication in which the decisive role of Nato air power was understated. The same may be true of the counter-revolution in Libya that is being ushered in by ex-general Kalifa Hifter’s slow-motion coup which gathered support last week but without making a decisive... Read More

Libya is tipping toward all-out civil war as rival militias take sides for and against an attempted coup led by a renegade general that has pushed the central government towards disintegration. In a move likely to deepen the crisis, the army chief of staff, whose regular forces are weak and ill-armed, called on Islamist-led militias... Read More

Be careful what you wish for. In 2011, a Libyan rebellion began against autocrat Muammar Gaddafi. It undoubtedly reflected the wish of many Libyans for a new world of their own without his heavy hand or that of his secret police and secret prisons. Wishing to be rid of a ruler long seen as a... Read More

The Libyan former prime minister Ali Zeidan fled last week after parliament voted him out of office. A North Korean-flagged oil tanker, the Morning Glory, illegally picked up a cargo of crude from rebels in the east of the country and sailed safely away, despite a government minister's threat that the vessel would be "turned... Read More

If we are so smart, why are we so dumb? I am referring to the "intelligence" that our spy agencies have gathered at great cost in both massive secret black-box budgets and, much more importantly, the surrender of our personal freedom to the snooping eyes of our modern surveillance state. "We know everything but learn... Read More

It is revealing to read Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advisories addressed to British citizens about security, or the lack of it, in countries where the Government otherwise plays down the dangers. I used to enjoy reading scary FCO advisories about Iraq eight or nine years ago, warning travellers not to set foot there because... Read More

Seldom has the failure of a state been so openly and humiliatingly confirmed as happened in Libya last week with the brief kidnapping the Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from his hotel in Tripoli by a militia allied to the government and without a shot being fired. Despite his swift release, the message is very clear:... Read More

Seldom has the failure of a state been so openly and humiliatingly confirmed as happened in Libya this morning with the brief kidnapping the Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from his hotel in Tripoli by a militia allied to the government and without a shot being fired. Despite his swift release, the message is very clear:... Read More

[I got my Defcons flipflopped in the original post.  Herewith corrected.  According to Wikipedia, the US military has only gone to Defcon 2 once, for the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Even 9/11 was only Defcon 3.  The different levels also have catchy descriptions, like "Cocked Pistol" and "Double Take", that are used during exercises.  So if... Read More

A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources. Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of... Read More

Looking at the way this post scans on this site and over at Counterpunch, it occurs to me that I should have blockquoted the excerpts from the HRW report to make it clear they were direct quotes and not my paraphrases. So I've done that! Further my speculation that Edward Snowden, as a CIA guy,... Read More