cheese it, the cops!

more conspiracy theories

well i will say the way the obama administration publicly portayed the benghazi killings is at best a royal screw up. the very idea that they supposedly have no idea who developed the sort of false information purveyed by rice, carney, and others is bizarre. but there was no way some false cover-up story was going to hold up; no one could have seriously entertained that idea. nor, really, do i see why they should have; you pay tribute to the heroic dead and vow to do better on security in the future. so i think there's just some element we don't know about yet. at any rate, initially the acting director of the cia said the 'talking points' were redacted or falsified by the fbi. then they settled on the dni, etc. it's him; 'it's not my fault' would be a good replacement for 'e pluribus unum.'.

now here's a juicy possibility. note the rift between the fbi and the cia exposed in the petraeus scandal, where fbi agents are literally scrounging around in the director of the cia's emails as his fantasy world comes unglued and he prepares his resignation or tries to figure out how he can hang on after all. while that is happening, petraeus is distractedly watching susan rice on meet the press, like a soundtrack. i'm telling you we have no idea of the factions in this security state, and people could even be hanging other people's people out to dry, or sabotaging the other faction, or setting off suicide blackmail bombs, threatening to end careers. no doubt the factions were formed around different adultery/fine liquor/cialis/blackmail networks, etc. anyway, you can see how everyone might have been a bit bewildered right about then.

libya

why crispy why haven't you had anything to say about the killings in libya and the situation in the middle east? well, i didn't want to comment prematurely and appear "unpresidential." but i will say this. it must suck to be so irascible that any random youtube video can turn you into enraged rioter, much less killer. know what i mean? i mean who can avoid, in today's global world of today, youtube videos that suck? let stuff like that disturb your equanimity and you will never again know peace for a moment. you'll just be pissed off all the time, which really is not how you want to live. it must be like pms only worse. so perhaps we should approach such people with sympathy.

cain on libya redux

update:

just watched a cain news conference, where he wound round to libya today. i believe he just said that the government of libya now is infested by the taliban. that would be news. if i can post the video in a bit i will. [hangin with my ma down in va.]

pausing only to reload

i have to say, i don't really much care how gaddafi died. and even if i were libyan, i don't think i'd have an interest in putting him on trial; i'd rather have an accounting based on documents etc. but it's hard to believe anything except that he was abused and executed; it's going to end up being one of those 'he committed suicide by shooting himself seventeen times in the back'-type accounts.

now if i were on the transitional council, i'd want him dead. and if i lived through the battle of misrata, i'd want him dead. if i were pulling him out of a drainpipe, i might shoot him. maybe he was waving around a platinum pistol or whatever. look what is the point of trying him? pinning a murder on him beyond a reasonable doubt? do you have any doubt?

damned if you don't

the cia was closely connected to the gaddafi regime. that is evil and unacceptable. but if it was, then turning against that regime was a moral accomplishment.

brood of monsters

you know, dictator's families don't always consist of the most admirable people (see: baby doc). but gaddafi's brood of monsters takes the damn cake.

 

amazon.rape

it's easy to dismiss gaddafi as a buffoon or just giggle at the tastelessness. one thing i always thought was hilarious was his dozens of female bodyguards: his 'amazonian brigade.' but that was only funny from the outside. you start to get the picture of what gaddafi did to and how he thought about, the women of libya. arwa's piece today was an interview with a 19-year-old woman who said she was forced by gaddafi's men to execute rebels.

 

arwa damon reporting

it would surprise me if exxon-mobil operated facilities like this. one can only hope that khamis gaddafi did not die with inordinate speed or insufficient pain.

kickass

arthur silber kicks my ass on libya. but let me assay a couple of responses. now, maybe you could constitute an argument in pictures; maybe not. at any rate, pictures can certainly constitute evidence. indeed, direct visual or other sensory experience doesn't itself constitute an argument; it's just the kind of thing you can't make any sort of non-apriori argument without, and which might count for or against your premises etc. now on the other hand italicizing the word murder is not an argument, or for that matter evidence of anything. it might be worth asking how many people gaddafi murdered. you might ask the international criminal court.

now, maybe oil companies are happy to get rid of gaddafi, though they had been dealing with him successfully. on the other hand, gaddafi took roughly all of libya's oil wealth and deposited it in offshore family accounts. that is going to make capitalism look pretty good, and honestly though i might hate exxon-mobil, i'd rather have them controlling my oil resources than a kleptocrat. i actually think that's liable to benefit me more: exxon-mobil at least has some pr-type exigencies to consider. they even answer to their shareholders etc to some extent. admittedly, this is not the best choice one might face. 

media heroine

for the last few days, sara sidner's (and her crew's) reporting from libya for cnn has been astonishing. she rolled into tripoli from zawiya with the rebels and straight to green square when the rebels reached it. today she was actually reporting from inside the gaddafi compound as the rebels took it, right inside the firefight, chaos, and celebration. now she's back in green square. really, amazing, not least for extreme composure under fire.

over or not

the picture of tripoli right now seems contradictory. the headlines indicate that tripoli has already fallen to the rebels, basically without a fight. ok but gaddafi has not been captured. on cnn, matthew chance is in the media hotel, and he says that region of the city, including the hotel, is still in the hand of gaddafi's forces. something very bad might still happen.

stay human

look. you may be unhappy with the u.s. record of international intervention. you ought to be. maybe things will now descend into more disasters in libya: a new civil war, even. but right or left, black or white, straight or gay, capitalist or communist, you've strayed too far from your basic human responses and your basic opposition to oppression - if any - if you do not feel exhilarated as you watch the people of tripoli celebrate the end of their dictatorship. there were nato airstrikes. fundamentally, though, this was something that the people did themselves, as they did in tunis and cairo, as they will do in damascus and sanaa. that's one reason this isn't vietnam or iraq. the u.s. government has a rich record of pretending that people want us there, that we are liberators, etc., while engaging in massive (though usually completely incompetent) disinformation in the service of such claims. now, does anyone believe that the situation in libya is like that? then i want some evidence, and some explanation of what we're actually seeing.

thin line between victory and summary execution

saif al-islam (gaddafi's son): "we are winning every battle." he's reported to have been captured by the rebels.

out: autocracy

i guess after all the sarcasm, i'd be remiss not to acknowledge that assad finally lost his legitimacy. for some people, that's a very hard job. meanwhile the turnaround in libya would i suppose be encouraging to those of us who called for intervention. i like the notion of gaddafi in the bunker in the last stand, still basking in the adoration of his people to the last breath.

i have to say that - whatever actually happened in the airstrike - nato or whomever is actually making the decisions is obviously trying to kill gaddafi. this is a rational decision. and i think it would actually be hard to argue, whatever the various pseudo-legalisms involved - that assassination is not the quickest, cleanest way to 'protect civilians.'

i'm a little puzzled by what we're not doing in libya now. if we're really pulling back, and the rebels get crushed, it seems a bit hard to understand what we were doing in the first place. i suppose i worry that obama lacks resolve, or the courage of his convictions. but to do those operations, and deliver that speech, and then watch it all go to hell in the few days after that would be incomprehensible.

breaking news: as i urged earlier today, obama has indeed issued a finding, secretly authorizing a swack squad on gaddafi featuring sylvester stallone, jet li, jason statham, mickey rourke, dolph lungren, bruce willis, arnold schwarzenegger, and barry bonds: a broad coalition led by americans. they're going in, bringing an unprecedented geritol/humangrowthhormone fury. i'm just glad bo reads my blog. 

actually that was a very strong speech. his best moment as president.

watching obama's speech on libya. this will not surprise you, but i find the basic argument convincing.

ok i'll try! i admit: we have no idea how this is going to turn out. i do not know how this is going to turn out. but i think people's lives count the same close to home or across the globe, la rana. i think it's very likely that we will save more lives than we take, and that most of those we take will be servants of a screeching murderer. it seems to me that it is unlikely that the next regime will be worse than gaddafi's: there just aren't that many as a percentage that are. but the situation is incalculable, and i will really try to eat my words if so. i do not know what role oil plays in the calculations, lisa; i do know that i'd say the same either whether there was any oil in libya or not. 

there is very unlikely to be an american occupation of libya. it is not politically viable, either domestically or in the middle east. there might be a un peacekeeping force with american involvement. or there might be a decent rebel-type regime. or there might be a nightmare of one kind or another. i do not know.

there are better and worse uses of military force, in my opinion. if someone could have stopped rwanda, darfur, the killing fields, they should have. of course, the regime they unleashed might have been worse. very unlikely, however. i'm glad the world didn't lay down for hitler. does that mean i love stalin, or even truman? definitely not. is libya rwanda? well, maybe not. but it would have gotten extremely bad extremely fast for a lot of people. does neoliberalism suck? definitely, though i'm still a little fuzzy on its parameters. have we prosecuted bad wars? absolutely. should we have saved the people of bengazi? i think so.

watching arwa damon's amazing reporting for cnn from bengazi. alright on saturday the libyan army rolled into town in tanks, with artillery, and started firing indiscriminately into residential neighborhoods. many were killed. rebels drove them out; gaddafi's forces re-grouped and massed outside of town. on sunday it is very likely that they would have taken bengazi, killing thousands of non-combatants in a city of 800,000. but airstrikes decimated gaddafi's positions outside of town; they could not attack. people celebrated, thanked allah for their lives and the lives of their children. the situation in mizratah has been similar or worse, but communications are completely cut off. this was happening right at the moment the operation began. 

i take all these objections and positions on libya seriously, let me say. i realize that there are incredibly difficult questions of all sorts, including what comes next, whether un or us/eu or nato intervention is itself totalitarianism. i don't think you can have a big bombing campaign without killing people other than soldiers. but i just want to say again: gaddafi is a fucking nightmare, and he was just about to slaughter or indeed in the middle of slaughtering people who were resisting his completely indefensible dictatorship. anyone who could do something about it should have. that we're not taking the same steps in yemen or bahrain is problematic, though each of these situations of course has its own incredible complications. but that we aren't is not itself an argument that we shouldn't in libya.

we are trying to save actual human beings from an actual ravening monster. that is a right reason to deploy military force. from the moment the revolts started in tunisia and egypt, my first thought was: could gaddafi go? he needs to go. he would kill everyone to stay in power, and he's got chumps who will help him. unlike egypt or tunisia, or even maybe yemen as it seems the army is turning, there is no other way through except just to watch the slaughter, and then watch him pass along his murderous despotism to his sons. kill him now, is my advice. then revive him by heroic measures and kill him again.

Asked about the explosion, Vice Adm. William E. Gortney said in a Washington news conference that the United States was not trying to kill the Libyan leader. “At this particular point I can guarantee that he’s not on a targeting list,” he said, saying that the United States military was working to weaken his military capacity rather than remove him.

surely we are trying to target gaddafi. if not, we're chumps.

There, hundreds of supporters offered themselves up as human shields, cheering to newly minted dance songs about their adoration for their leader. “House by house, ally by ally,” the catchiest song went, quoting a Qaddafi speech. “Disinfect the germs from each house and each room.”

look. i have caught some shit for being a "pro-war anarchist," and i like catchy pro-genocide songs as much as the next pop fan, but surely every decent person wants to gaddafi deleted from the species. i'm not a pacifist. i realize that in an anarchist world you wouldn't have tomahawk missiles and aircraft carriers. but given that we don't live in such a world, i say that if you are in a position to prevent this fuckhead from slaughtering thousands of people, you ought to. an anarchist isn't likely to be a fan of a murderous dictator, though he might point out that every state transforms its entire population into potential victims. but that doesn't mean that obama is the moral equivalent of gaddafi, or that it isn't admirable for sarkozy, problematic though he is on many grounds, to assemble a coalition to bitch-slap that motherfucker.

you might ask whether i supported the war in iraq on the same grounds. well, all things being equal, saddam should have been wood-chipped too. but he was not right in the middle of mass murder. i actually argued at the time that any arguments the bush admin was putting forward that had any plausibility were better arguments for intervening in darfur. but libya just seems like a clear extremely urgent case. i think saleh in yemen would be a good victim too if we were to continue. i fear that we're still going to try to keep him holding on. but it might break down into true massacre at any moment.