Gunmen caused no trouble, just kidnapped Prime Minister :))
I admit, I had a chuckle. As far as I’m concerned, all these West-installed terrorists in Libyan power could be kidnapped, or better yet, shot. Would serve them well for Libya’s destruction.

Posted by: Harry | Oct 10 2013 7:47 utc | 3

Ali Who?
Who is this stooge anyway? The US Ambassador? Why would the Libyans want to kidnap him? Is he like some US Quisling or something?
Who pays for his salary and his hotel bills? If he claims to be the Prime Minister of Libya, why does he live in a hotel?
***
To sum up, nothing new or interesting here. Move along folks, it’s all quiet on the Western Front.

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Oct 10 2013 8:16 utc | 5

Funny enough, German Wikipedia gives information not to be found in English Wikipedia.
Translation: Zeidan was Libyan ambassador to India until 1980, after that a member of the opposition National Front for the Salvation of Libya (supported by Saudi Arabia and the CIA), and voted in as Prime Minister in 2012 by 93 of 200 votes against the Muslim Brotherhood candidate. His predecessor had been impeached, he also was a member of Zeidan’s (Saudi, CIA connected) group. Zeidan was snatched hours after he had met with al-Libi’s family.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 10 2013 9:39 utc | 7

I wonder if it was just a media stunt. Even if there was firing, it may have been just spectacle.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Oct 10 2013 10:32 utc | 9

This event won’t be surprising to anyone who has been following the chaos in Libya. It’s the natural result of what happens when NATO destroy a country and no one bothers to rebuild it.
You have a government that lacks authority because they were put in power by Sarkosy/Obama/Cameron’s bombs and not by the popular will. You have Jihadists, that NATO pretended were revolutionaries, now empowered and setting up shop. You have successionist movements now using the destruction of the nation-state to pushed there own claims of Independence (as in the South and East of the country).
In such a power-vacuum every man is his own militia. You have men from the Interior ministry kidnapping there own Prime Minister because the chain of command is so none existent.
And finally you have all the Humanitarian Imperialists like Juan Cole (Informed Comment) and Paul Woodward (War in Context) who called for this and then spent the last 2 years ignoring what a nightmare their experiment has become. People who cry crocodile tears for dead Libyans and dead Syrians in order to get a US war and then show no concern for the nightmares they are leaving behind.
It’s almost as galling as racist Israelis pretending they care about Syrian lives when we all know they don’t care about dead Muslims. Or Saudi Arabia pretending that they want Democracy for Syria.

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Oct 10 2013 11:10 utc | 11

Mission accomplished, I guess??
This is what NATO wanted to have in Syria..Libya is a dead/failed state..Amazing how Libyans themselves were duped into destroying their own country for nothing!!!

Posted by: Zico | Oct 10 2013 12:47 utc | 13

Again, as noted by earlier posters, these events highlight not the incompetence of the Zionist West but a deliberate plan of creating failed states.
Why wouldn’t the West – as they have done numerous times over previous decades – destroy/takeover a country and then install a brutal dictator/strongman instead of “accidentally”, “negligently”, etc etc allowing a vacuum to develop with smaller gangs/sects acting as the only entities wielding any power if it wasn’t intentional and part of a larger plan?
The US had no qualms whatsoever about doing so in ME and SA over and over again so these 21st century “deviations” from the norm are what make me believe that the goal has changed and hews much more closely to those drawn up by the Israelis decades ago: purposeful balkanization which will violently continue until the maps are redrawn.

Posted by: JSorrentine | Oct 10 2013 16:31 utc | 15

15,16 couldn’t just have been a grab for Libya’s billions?

Posted by: somebody | Oct 10 2013 16:57 utc | 17

19) not going to happen say the oil people on the ground – Libya is worse

“…As for Libya, whether in the south or the east, those demanding autonomy are small groups,” said Hadi Belazi, director of Petro Libya, a Tripoli oil services company. “In Libya, in some cases 10 or 15 people can close a pipeline and it’s not … even a whole tribe.”

It is complete anarchy.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 10 2013 17:53 utc | 19

Posted by: somebody | Oct 10, 2013 1:53:08 PM | 19
so at least we know it wasnt ‘about the oil’!

Posted by: brian | Oct 10 2013 20:24 utc | 21

O’Toole
I wouldn’t hold that Cole has shown “no” concern for what is happening in Libya, but he hasn’t given a hint of personal apology, nor even
applied the obvious lesson of any flaws, charitably put, in his favored ideological “liberal humanitarianism” justification. Irresponsible
to say the least.
Sorrentine: America tried to put in a strongman via phony elections but Sistani vetoed the move. Strong resistance by enemies of Israel who are not in awe of Zio-capitalist imperialism.

Posted by: amspirnational | Oct 10 2013 21:03 utc | 23

And as we all know, after calling Colonel “energy consultant” Steele out of retirement in 2003 to help train Shia death squads a la El Salvador I’m sure that no one just had any clue just as to how it would all end especially in seeing how, since Iraq, the US has taken a renewed liking to the “new-look” AlQaeda and other assorted Sunni jihadists. It was all just greed and the building up of rival forces in a nascent civil war probably was just an afterthought, right? Who could have known that the removal of a long-time secular dictator, the training/arming of rival domestic factions and the purposeful abandonment of any serious attempts at nation-building would leave Iraq – and Afghanistan, and Libya, and nearly Syria – ripe for partitioning? Really, who could have known that? Mystery.

Posted by: JSorrentine | Oct 10 2013 23:08 utc | 25

There’s good argument that Iranian-oriented Chalabi played the “invincible” neocons, as a matter of fact.
Shinseki saw the need for more troops-hardly a controversy. Overconfidence and the (thwarted) need to get past the
Vietnam syndrome. A loser there too.
Did I say the Zionist fifth columnists were driven by greed? No, that might be Finklestein, but its not Petras or me or
even Chomsky of late who has conceded ethnic motives were at play for a sector of the Elite.
As for Cheney and the Haliburton crew, of course greed is a driver.
There are varying components of the Elite with varying motives.
Not having the staying power to win in Vietnam or Iraq is hardly stunning.
Yes, the hyper-conspiratologists most all predicted circa 2003 that Iran would be practically neutered by now.
Glad you concede at least their timing was off.
No one denies they can still do damage during the retreat.

Posted by: amspirnational | Oct 10 2013 23:51 utc | 27

According to Time magazine, the group doing the kidnapping was called “The Operations Room of Libya’s Revolutionaries” which sounds to my ear like a distinct Americanism.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 11 2013 1:30 utc | 29

@24 – failed states seem the be the necessary outcome of irresponsible policies based on power delirium, suprematism, greed and wishful thinking, rather than the intention;
also that horrible sectarian strife you alluded to in #24 was to no avail – eventually the Us had to withdraw from Iraq after having tried by all possible means to dominate it; governor Garner, then governor Bremer, then Chalabi, then Allawi, then pinning hopes on Maliki … ; and always a different “last obstacle” between them and a Us-led “pacification”: Saddam “dead-enders”, “triangle of death”, “radical clerk Muqtada al-Sadr”, Al Qaeda in Iraq, …
neocons (and many others) were under the “paper tiger” syndrome (Billmon wrote a very insightful post on this): that you could replicate the “USSR scenario”: topple with surprisingly little effort a dictatorship and watch a Us-friendly government spring up (and they thought Afghanistan 2001 confirmed this view); when they finally were about to abandon this approach in the name of realpolitik, the Egyptians got rid of Mubarak without their help, so they ran to catch the Libya train (pulled by France and Uk who had their own private interests in that venture), etc etc in a perennial, painful and pathetic attempt to revive past memories of success stories (Paris 1945, basically, I’d say);
the deal with Putin over Syria was the first break they took in twenty years; Obama, Holland and Cameron would have given war another chance, but their countries were out of breath
the WOT now returns with this kidnap of Al-Libi to derail any possible rational policy;
so my basic thesis is: the West is out of control, driven by lobbies and rhetoric, while politicians float haplessly and irresponsibly over the various pressures they receive, without the vision and courage necessary to support long-term policies; and this dire state of politics involves the whole West basically because lobbies and ideology control the Us political system

Posted by: claudio | Oct 11 2013 6:44 utc | 31

@31 i dont believe the US went in aiming for civil war (i think they really were stupid enough to believe in the “cakewalk war will pay for itself” scenario). But I do believe that after the resistance began on all sides (sunni and shia) and it appeared that a very very bloody war was in store (for the US too) AND that the country might become a powerful Iranian ally the US fed the fighting as a matter of policy to destroy the Iraqi state and make an example of the kind of hell the US could create for its enemies.
And now we see the same exact scenarios whereever they put their hands, it is hard to argue that these civil wars are not either for the US a.means to an end or indeed the end.itself.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 11 2013 12:00 utc | 33

34) I would consider it Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

Or might be called self marketing. It certainly is too much of a common practice to be a conspiracy

By the end of the summer of 2011, Aaronson and Ellis had compiled a “database of 508 defendants whom the U.S. government considered terrorists. …. Of the 508 … 243 had been targeted through an FBI informant, 158 had been caught in an FBI terrorism sting, and 49 had encountered an agent provocateur.”
Aaronson realized “he could count on one hand the number of actual terrorists, such as failed New York City subway bomber Najibullah Zazi, who posed a direct and immediate threat to the United States.”
After his extensive and exhausting investigation, Aaronson found that “the FBI has built the largest network of spies ever to exist in the United States – with ten times as many informants on the streets today [as] … during the infamous Cointelpro operations under FBI director J. Edgar Hoover – with the majority of these spies focused on ferreting out terrorism in Muslim communities.”
…
One of the most fascinating aspects of the history of the FBI is how well the agency has been able to toot its own horn, and create its own myths over the years. The more criminals and “terrorists” it snags and helps prosecute, the more funding it receives – approximately $3 billion per year to fight terrorism according to Aaronson.
Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI became a self-perpetuating myth-making machine carved out of Hoover’s battle against communism, organized crime, and his war on civil rights and anti-war activists (Cointelpro). Now, in the post-Hoover, post-9/11 period, the war on terrorism allows the myth making to continue.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 11 2013 17:54 utc | 35

JS Sorrentine
“Hyper-conspiracy” is defeatism and, as “Somebody” alludes “apolitical.”
It’s also in certain instances decadent Western chauvinism, in this case the implicit assumption that e.g. Sunni and Shia Islam and Arab-Iranian-Paki nationalism are supine before unbeatable Zio-capitalist forces.
Other posters reacting to our discussion have already explained how the “facts on the ground” across the Mideast have left Israel in a more vulnerable position, not one on the road to creating a “World Court with capital in Jerusalem”
that ben Gurion and hyper-conspiratologists envisioned and seem to envision.
Hezbollah, not yet mentioned by other taught Israel a lesson in 2006 the ramifications of which alone puts a big monkey wrench in your panorama.
You failed to grasp the demarcation between Zionist motives (Feith) and Haliburton/Cheney motives.
“Somebody’s” description of the general extant circumstance….one that does not demand faked airphone calls and narrow explanations of building collapse presented as inarguable doctrine, is certainly viable.

Posted by: amspirnational | Oct 11 2013 18:35 utc | 37

38) Sure, it is really useful for mankind to know how towers collapse when you drive a plane into them. I guess we should do a series of controlled experiments driving planes into towers to find out.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 11 2013 19:43 utc | 39

guest77
@31 i dont believe the US went in aiming for civil war (i think they really were stupid enough to believe in the “cakewalk war will pay for itself” scenario). But I do believe that after the resistance began on all sides (sunni and shia) and it appeared that a very very bloody war was in store (for the US too) AND that the country might become a powerful Iranian ally the US fed the fighting as a matter of policy to destroy the Iraqi state and make an example of the kind of hell the US could create for its enemies.
Bush repeatedly lied to the American public about the degree of outside (or inside) AQ participation in the insurgency, which was in fact mainly domestic Sunni Iraqi nationalist, secular and religious. Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army was the minority
bulk of the Shia resistance, elsewise Shias being mainly cooperative-to a point. That point was Ayatollah Sistani’s
refusal to allow the US to move a US-Israeli puppet in via phony elections. I would put it that “after the resistance”
led to a “very very bloody war” the US did what it could (which wasn’t much, there not being sufficient troops and ability)
to fight it short-term, and that short-term itself was extended due to Bush’s lies scaremongering Al Qaeda’s takeover
of Iraq if the US left. I don’t believe any principal party in Iraq ever accused the US of directly funding any violent opponent, however, during this time period (until departure.) If anyone can find evidence that Allawi or Maliki or alSadr
or Sistani charged the US with secretly funding any rival militant insurgents, I would retract.
The situation in Syria is different of course. The US has indeed engaged in funding anti-Assad terrorists.

Posted by: amspirnational | Oct 11 2013 21:50 utc | 41

RB
One of the problems with advocates of controlled demolition is they usually if not almost always seem to pretend that there have been no structural engineers and other experts who have provided authoritative detailed explanations of the building collapse contradicting their own.
I am not going to refer to any here because this blog is not intended to debate the subject. If any readers are interested
in the subject they can easily research both sides and weigh the arguments and even, if they deem the arguments inconclusive, decide if they believe those seeming much dominant majority of experts who contradict c.d. are merely government agents or are intimidated by the government.

Posted by: amspirnational | Oct 11 2013 22:23 utc | 43

This here is today’s state of affairs

A leading Sunni figure has said that Iraq is not likely to pass a hydrocarbon law anytime soon, as the government has little interest in pushing a draft through parliament.
Adnan Al-Janabi, a member of the Iraqiyya party, and the head of Iraq’s parliamentary oil and energy committee, told Reuters:
“It is at the bottom of the government’s list. The centralists of the ruling party have no interest to sustain a federal policy or pass a federal law … Therefore the government and IOCs (independent oil companies) will continue the risk of working in a legal vacuum.“
A draft for the unified Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been under discussion in parliament since 2007, but infighting among the country’s factions has so far thwarted attempts to pass the legislation.
Despite the absence of an oil law, foreign oil companies have signed contracts throughout Iraq. But all involved in the development of Iraq’s energy sector would breathe easier if legal guidelines were in place.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 12 2013 9:32 utc | 45

I’m afraid the “seeming much dominant majority of experts who contradict c.d. are” neither “government agents” nor are they “intimidated by the government.” They simply don’t give a damn, and none of them see any reason why they should jeopardise, or rather destroy, their own careers for anybody else’s sake, or even waste time on thinking about it. The network media employees are in a similar position. It’s not that they know the truth and have to force themselves to lie, or anything like that; they simply have no concept of truth whatever, and no interest in acquiring such a concept. In both cases, structural engineers or media employees, they simply want to get on with their careers, and don’t give a damn about anything else. Feather your own nest, that’s the American Way. But even if this explanation were utterly implausible sociologically, which unfortunately it’s not, it would make no difference to the facts. Buildings don’t do that. Take a look at this photo: you can see the incendiary cutting charges still burning on the ends of the sections of column as they break off. Who are you going to believe, your own eyes or a bunch of suits?
http://niqnaq.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/northtower.jpg

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Oct 12 2013 13:58 utc | 47

@44 somebody: This is why people think you are full of sh*t:
“The Iraq war was about access to Iraqi oil – nothing else. That goal was achieved, however the US is not the (only) one that is profiting.”
The Iraq war was not just about oil, not by a long shot. It was also a brazenly ideological war, pushing a right wing agenda in Iraq and at home. It was also important to Israel and the Israel-first neocons.
To paint it as “just about oil” lays all the blame at the feet of US corporate power. This view is simply the mirror of those who would like to lay the blame entirely on Israel and is equally mistaken in my view.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you don’t actually mean China was somehow complicit, though the way you state it and where you put your link, one may conclude that is what you are trying to do.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 12 2013 15:31 utc | 49

somebody
Here we disagree. Ray McGovern said it best. The Iraq war was about o-i-l, alright.
Oil, Israel, and Empire. You can probably easily find the columns where he used this
concise categorization.
It is too much for some to say an ethnic group of about 3% of the population have
the grotesquely disproportionate power to trigger war (which the oiligarchs caboosed on.)
It is not enough for others to say the same-the Zionist Lobby must be presented as virtually
all powerful.

Posted by: amspirnational | Oct 12 2013 17:38 utc | 51

51) There sure is an Israel lobby telling all kinds of nonsense. That does not explain why people fall for it.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 12 2013 17:54 utc | 53

more 52)This here is Stephen Zunes on the issue – don’t blame the Iraq debacle on the Israel lobby
And this here is a Gallup Poll of 2007

PRINCETON, NJ — An analysis of Gallup Poll data collected since the beginning of 2005 finds that among the major religious groups in the United States, Jewish Americans are the most strongly opposed to the Iraq war. Catholics and Protestants are more or less divided in their views on the war, while Mormons are the most likely to favor it. Those with no religious affiliation also oppose the war, but not to the same extent that Jewish people do. The greater opposition to the war is not simply a result of high Democratic identification among U.S. Jews, as Jews of all political persuasions are more likely to oppose the war than non-Jews who share the same political leanings.

I am prepared to ascribe all kind of evil to the Israel Lobby – I just cannot see any advantage here – except if the Israel Lobby is the same as the Arms Lobby which might be the case.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 12 2013 18:14 utc | 55

All this discussion about the Iraq War is a bit bizarre.
re 44 The Iraq war was about access to Iraqi oil – nothing else.
That is false. The Iraq war was more complicated than that, even in its launch. The major issues have been mentioned – Israeli desire to destroy their Arab neighbours, Bush’s desire to avenge the attempted assassination of his father. The latter worked on a personal level.
It is a long-standing Israeli policy to destabilise surrounding Arab countries such that they no longer pose a risk to Israel. You can probably find it in the writings of Ben Gurion, or even earlier, though I haven’t looked. That there were Neo-Con pro-Israelis in Bush’s circle, means that there was a chance to act. Even the quasi-independence of Kurdistan is part of that: encourage non-Arabs to break off.
Re the issue of oil. It is a simplistic idea of politicians, tha

Posted by: alexno | Oct 12 2013 19:00 utc | 57

RB
You’re right about Saddam and AQ insofar as there is no evidence he saw every move his insurgency would make after the invasion. He did not cooperate with AQ before the invasion and after the invasion he did not manage the insurgency he helped formulate before the invasion .
When I refer to anti-Saddam Baathists I mean Iraqi Baathists who had fallen out with Saddam or were purged or marginalized before the invasion but who still believed in Baathism. Perhaps in some cases
they were not so much “anti” as independent.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/ballout1.html
As far as the multitude of engineers, structural and others who have helped compose arguments
against c.d., I wouldn’t expect that you be content to read short Wikipedia quotes. The extensive papers
are posted and if you believe the dominant majority of engineers etc. are compromised and therefore not worth examining at length, it’s fine with me.

Posted by: amspirnational | Oct 12 2013 19:32 utc | 59

Re the issue of oil. It is a simplistic idea of politicians, that if you physically possess the oil fields, then you will have their revenues. In 1980, Saddam invaded Iran, in order to “protect” the Arabs of southern Iran. Curiously the invasion was aimed straight at the oil fields, which happen to be not far from the Iraqi border. Of course his invasion did not succeed, and oil was no longer an issue.
In 1990, after financial complaints against the Kuwaitis, Saddam invaded Kuwait, and evidently got control of the oil fields, and was expelled the following year. In neither case was Saddam able to profit from the oil fields.
Come 2003, and it sounds to me as though the people in Bush’s circle had the same idea: have physical possession of the oil fields, and you can allocate them to US companies. Unfortunately it didn’t work out like that. The Iraqi parliament refused to pass the oil law that the US wanted. The US did try: time and again they introduced their oil law for vote in the Iraqi parliament. I remember well, each time we were told by the media that the parliament would pass the law, that day even, but it never happened.
According to Somebody, they still haven’t passed an oil law. But that is another issue: the question of oil and Kurdistan.
The fact that the US did not in the end gain control of Iraqi oil, is not an argument that the US did not want it. They followed the logic of Saddam. But it doesn’t work, as these events have showed. An alien invasion leads to resistance, and no profit is made.
For a possible opposite case, look at the oil fields in Syria, which are supposed to be financing ISIS. I doubt that it is the case; I’ve only heard of local production and refining, which is then sold to Asad, in a curious cross-conflict agreement.

Posted by: alexno | Oct 12 2013 19:46 utc | 61

I didn’t say anything the first time Rowan, but since you brought up this photo twice… what exactly gives you the idea that anything can be gleaned from the photo of a disaster site from a few thousand feet away by non-experts that could qualify as evidence?
Some people saw the devil in the smoke, what do you see? You expect others to see what you see?
You are certainly very bright, so of course that making people think critically about 9/11 is going to happen through discussing the long history of US criminality around the world and US involvement with groups like Al Qaeda. It will not come through shoving an image in front of someone face and demanding to know what they see in it like some bizarre Rorschach test.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 12 2013 20:05 utc | 63

@63 “You are certainly very bright, so of course that making” to “You are certainly very bright, so of course you know that making”

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 12 2013 20:07 utc | 65

61) I agree. Still, the people who backed the war made short term profits.
62) I am arguing that the pro Israel stance was part of the “sell” but not the reason for invading Iraq and that “sell” was not directed at the US Jewish community but Christian Fundamentalists.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 12 2013 20:13 utc | 67

re 67. At that time the “sell” was the same as the reasons for invading Iraq, because popular opinion was not taken account of. Today the same thing would not be true.

Posted by: alexno | Oct 12 2013 22:54 utc | 69

“The Iraq war was about access to Iraqi oil – nothing else”
Oh horseshit.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Oct 13 2013 1:05 utc | 71

69/71 Reasons would be real US interest in it. The only I can detect is oil. And even that is questionable as you correctly point out. Remains personal gain.
Ahmed Chalabi met the Neoconservatives in 1985. Let’s face it, it was a very hard sell, it took a few presidents and a lot of time.

As a young man, he said, he spent several years in America, earning an undergraduate and a master’s degree in mathematics from M.I.T., and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago. Chalabi began studying the uses of power in American politics, and the subject developed into a lifelong interest. One episode in American history particularly fascinated him, he said. “I followed very closely how Roosevelt, who abhorred the Nazis, at a time when isolationist sentiment was paramount in the United States, managed adroitly to persuade the American people to go to war. I studied it with a great deal of respect; we learned a lot from it. The Lend-Lease program committed Roosevelt to enter on Britain’s side—so we had the Iraq Liberation Act, which committed the American people for the liberation against Saddam.” The act, which Congress passed in 1998, made “regime change” in Iraq an official priority of the U.S. government; Chalabi had lobbied tirelessly for the legislation.

However, the whole operation might have been a CIA invention in the first place

The genesis of Brooke’s assignment was the decision not to unseat Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War. In May, 1991, President George H. W. Bush signed a covert “lethal finding” that authorized the C.I.A. to spend a hundred million dollars to “create the conditions for removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer who was assigned to Iraq at the time, said that the policy was all show, “like an ape beating its chest. No one had any expectation of marching into Baghdad and killing Saddam. It was an impossibility.” Nonetheless, the C.I.A. had received an influx of cash, and it decided to create an external opposition movement to Saddam.
The C.I.A. had been forced to abolish domestic operations after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies, and it had folded many of its overseas programs when the Cold War ended. So it outsourced the Iraq project to the Rendon Group. According to Brooke, the company signed a secret contract with the C.I.A. which guaranteed that it would receive a ten-per-cent “management fee” on top of whatever money it spent. The arrangement was an incentive to spend millions. “We tried to burn through forty million dollars a year,” Brooke said. “It was a very nice job.”
From an office near Victoria Station, the Rendon Group set out to influence global political opinion against Saddam. Given Saddam’s record of atrocities against his own people, it wasn’t a hard sell. “It was a campaign environment, with a lot of young people, and no set hierarchy,” Brooke recalled. “It was great. We had a real competitive advantage. We knew something about the twenty-four-hour media cycle, and how to manage a media campaign. CNN was new at that point. No one else knew how to do these things, but Rendon was great at issue campaigns.” The group began offering information to British journalists, and many articles subsequently appeared in the London press. Occasionally, he said, the company would be reprimanded by project managers in Washington when too many of those stories were picked up by the American press, thereby transgressing laws that prohibited domestic propaganda. But, for the most part, Brooke said, “It was amazing how well it worked. It was like magic.”
In addition to generating anti-Saddam news stories and creating a travelling “atrocity exhibit,” which documented the human-rights abuses of Saddam’s regime, the Rendon Group was charged with the delicate task of helping to create a viable and unified opposition movement against Saddam. “That is when I first met Dr. Chalabi,” Brooke said.

So basically US governments got lobbied, bribed, fed and fooled by their own CIA creations. In addition to planes getting flown into symbolic and strategic places by their own CIA creations. That’s the sorcerer’s apprentice losing control?

Posted by: somebody | Oct 13 2013 3:51 utc | 73

@74 Hasbara? Why I never… I’m clearly a left gatekeeper, you jerk.
You can’t even identify that, but were supposed to trust you can identify the source of smoke puffs in a photograph from a quarter mile away? Puh-lease.
You obviously completely missed my point to Rowan, but then what else is to be expected from people who want to scream “Shill!” the moment there is even a suggestion that your methods of reaching people might be a little (or rather, completely, as displayed here) misguided.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 13 2013 5:26 utc | 75

Okay Rowan, how have you come to this conclusion that that is what you see? Is it that you were going through random 9/11 photos and, having some experience from your professional life in the way thermite looks after it burns, you determined this?
Or did you, perhaps, read this online and draw your conclusions based on what someone there said?
I’m not even saying you are wrong, of course, you may be right for all I know. But the fact that this is your method of argument – now suddenly because, having no way to distinguish what flashes of thermite smoke must look like except for your word on some photo you’ve jammed in my face – that now suddenly i’m some kind of idiot who believes in magic?
How incredibly persuasive.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 13 2013 6:19 utc | 77

‘The moving company’: Urban Moving Systems, if you don’t mind my jamming more evidence in your face. How have I come to my conclusion? Simply by letting the obvious speak for itself. But no matter, as JSorrentine says, you will keep throwing empty rhetoric at me in the hope of making the whole thread so tedious as to be unreadable. So I shall stop here.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Oct 13 2013 6:32 utc | 79

79:-)) just that you do not prove anything. You take an event that might be anything, indeed like a Rorschach test and from then on you fantasize.
Republican and Democrat presidents were lobbied from the 1950’s onwards by a cold war hawk born in New York in 1913 (Israel did not exist then) with the name of Albert Wohlstetter, the Neoconservatives he patronized just marketed his ideas and inherited his lucrative lobbying network.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Wohlstetter began to focus on the new dangers facing the remaining superpower. He was particularly concerned with the Persian Gulf, having led a Defense Department study in the 1970s showing that the Pentagon had overestimated American military access to the region and undervalued its strategic import. Following the Gulf War, he lambasted the first Bush administration for allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power.
It was a view shared by Wolfowitz and Perle, among others. Wohlstetter also called on the United States to aid Iraqi dissidents aiming to overthrow Hussein, allying himself closely with Ahmed Chalabi. (Perle, now a leading supporter of Chalabi’s bid to lead the new Iraq, says Wohlstetter introduced him to the Iraqi exile.) And Wohlstetter became obsessed with the ethnic cleansing going on in Bosnia, hammering Western leaders for preventing the victims from arming themselves. For him, Iraq and Bosnia were closely linked, and emblematic of the dangers confronting a post-Cold War America.
In the 1995 Wall Street Journal piece, he wrote: ”The successful coalition in the Gulf War stopped too soon and… left in place a Ba’ath dictatorship nearly sure to revive its programs for getting weapons of mass terror that would menace its neighbors and some countries far beyond them. That told Slobodan Milosevic, who is not a slow learner, that the West would be even less likely, four months later, to stop his own overt use of the Yugoslav Federal Army to create a Greater Serbia purged of non-Serbs.”

Posted by: somebody | Oct 13 2013 8:17 utc | 81