[News] Libya - It Doesn’t Matter to Them If It’s Untrue. It’s a Higher Truth.

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Anti-Empire Report
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/02/it-doesnt-matter-to-them-ff-its-untrue-its-a-higher-truth/ 




It Doesn’t Matter to Them If It’s Untrue. It’s a Higher Truth.

by WILLIAM BLUM

“We came, we saw, he died.”
­ US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, 
giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi

Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic 
leader speaking of 9-11: “We came, we saw, 3,000 died 
 ha- ha.”

Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can 
also have a good laugh at how they deceived the 
world. The destruction of Libya, the reduction of 
a modern welfare state to piles of rubble, to 
ghost towns, the murder of thousands 
 this 
tragedy was the culmination of a series of 
falsehoods spread by the Libyan rebels, the 
Western powers, and Qatar (through its television 
station, al-Jazeera) ­ from the declared 
imminence of a “bloodbath” in rebel-held Benghazi 
if the West didn’t intervene to stories of 
government helicopter-gunships and airplanes 
spraying gunfire onto large numbers of civilians 
to tales of Viagra-induced mass rapes by 
Gaddafi’s army. (This last fable was proclaimed 
at the United Nations by the U.S. Ambassador, as 
if young soldiers needed Viagra to get it up!)

The New York Times (March 22) observed:

“
 the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in 
shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent 
battlefield victories, asserting they were still 
fighting in a key city days after it fell to 
Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.”

The Los Angeles Times (April 7) added this about the rebels’ media operation:

“It’s not exactly fair and balanced media. In 
fact, as [its editor] helpfully pointed out, 
there are four inviolate rules of coverage on the 
two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:
•   No pro-[Qaddafi] reportage or commentary
•   No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan 
people, east and west, are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)
•   No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe: Libya.)
•   No references to Al Qaeda or Islamic 
extremism. (That’s [Qaddafi's] propaganda.)”

The Libyan government undoubtedly spouted its 
share of misinformation, but it was the rebels’ 
trail of lies, both of omission and commission, 
which was used by the UN Security Council to 
justify its vote for “humanitarian” intervention; 
followed in Act Three by unrelenting NATO/US 
bombs and drone missiles, day after day, week 
after week, month after month; you can’t get much 
more humanitarian than that. If the people of 
Libya prior to the NATO/US bombardment had been 
offered a referendum on it, can it be imagined 
that they would have endorsed it?

In fact, it appears rather likely that a majority 
of Libyans supported Gaddafi. How else could the 
government have held off the most powerful 
military forces in the world for more than seven 
months? Before NATO and the US laid waste to the 
land, Libya had the highest life expectancy, 
lowest infant mortality, and highest UN Human 
Development Index in Africa. During the first few 
months of the civil war, giant rallies were held 
in support of the Libyan leader.

For further discussion of why Libyans may have 
been motivated to support Gaddafi, have a look at this video.

If Gaddafi had been less oppressive of his 
political opposition over the years and had made 
some gestures of accommodation to them during the 
Arab Spring, the benevolent side of his regime 
might still be keeping him in power, although the 
world has plentiful evidence making it plain that 
the Western powers are not  concerned about 
political oppression except to use it as an 
excuse for intervention when they want to; 
indeed, government files seized in Tripoli during 
the fighting show that the CIA and British 
intelligence worked with the Libyan government in 
tracking down dissidents, turning them over to 
Libya, and taking part in interrogations.

In any event, many of the rebels had a religious 
motive for opposing the government and played 
dominant roles within the rebel army; previously 
a number of them had fought against the United 
States in Afghanistan and Iraq. The new Libyan 
regime promptly announced that Islamic sharia law 
would be the “basic source” of legislation, and 
laws that contradict “the teachings of Islam” 
would be nullified; there would also be a 
reinstitution of polygamy; the Muslim holy book, 
the Quran, allows men up to four wives.

Thus, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980-90s, the 
United States has supported Islamic militants 
fighting against a secular government. The 
American government has imprisoned many people as 
“terrorists” in the United States for a lot less.

What began in Libya as “normal” civil war 
violence from both sides ­ repeated before and 
since by the governments of Egypt, Yemen, 
Bahrain, and Syria without any Western military 
intervention at all (the US actually continues to 
arm the Bahrain and Yemen regimes) ­ was 
transformed by the Western propaganda machine 
into a serious Gaddafi genocide of innocent 
Libyans. Addressing the validity of this very key 
issue is another video, “Humanitarian War in 
Libya: There is no evidence“. The main feature of 
the film is an interview with Soliman 
Bouchuiguir, Secretary-General, and one of the 
founders in 1989, of the Libyan League for Human 
Rights, perhaps the leading Libyan dissident group, in exile in Switzerland.

Bouchuiguir is asked several times if he can 
document various charges made against the Libyan 
leader. Where is the proof of the many rapes? The 
many other alleged atrocities? The more than 
6,000 civilians alleged killed by Gaddafi’s 
planes? Again and again Bouchuiguir cites the 
National Transitional Council as the source. Yes, 
that’s the rebels who carried out the civil war 
in conjunction with the NATO/US forces. At other 
times Bouchuiguir speaks of “eyewitnesses”: 
“little girls, boys who were there, whose 
families we know personally”. After awhile, he 
declares that “there is no way” to document these 
things. This is probably true to some extent, but 
why, then, the UN Security Council resolution for 
a military intervention in Libya? Why almost eight months of bombing?

Bouchuiguir also mentions his organization’s 
working with the National Endowment for Democracy 
in their effort against Gaddafi, and one has to 
wonder if the man has any idea that the NED was 
founded to be a front for the CIA. Literally.

Another source of charges against Gaddafi and his 
sons has been the International Criminal Court. 
The Court’s Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, 
is shown in this film at a news conference 
discussing the same question of proof of the 
charges. He refers to an ICC document of 77 pages 
which he says contains the evidence. The film 
displays the document’s Table of Contents, which 
shows that pages 17-71 are not available to the 
public; these pages, apparently the ones 
containing the testimony and evidence, are marked 
as “redacted”. In an appendix, the ICC report 
lists its news sources; these include Fox News, 
CNN, the CIA, Soliman Bouchuiguir, and the Libyan 
League for Human Rights. Earlier, the film had 
presented Bouchuiguir citing the ICC as one of 
his sources. The documentation is thus a closed circle.

Historical footnote: “Aerial bombing of civilians 
was pioneered by the Italians in Libya in 1911, 
perfected by the British in Iraq in 1920 and used 
by the French in 1925 to level whole quarters of 
Syrian cities. Home demolitions, collective 
punishment, summary execution, detention without 
trial, routine torture ­ these were the weapons 
of Europe’s takeover” in the Mideast.

The worldwide eternal belief that American 
foreign policy has a good side that can be appealed to

On April 6, 2011 Moammar Gaddafi wrote a letter 
to President Obama, in which he said: “We have 
been hurt more morally than physically because of 
what had happened against us in both deeds and 
words by you. Despite all this you will always 
remain our son whatever happened. 
 Our dear son, 
Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu Oubama, your 
intervention in the name of the U.S.A. is a must, 
so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair.”7

Before the American invasion in March 2003, Iraq 
tried to negotiate a peace deal with the United 
States. Iraqi officials, including the chief of 
the Iraqi Intelligence Service, wanted Washington 
to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass 
destruction and offered to allow American troops 
and experts to conduct a search; they also 
offered full support for any US plan in the 
Arab-Israeli peace process, and to hand over a 
man accused of being involved in the World Trade 
Center bombing in 1993. If this is about oil, 
they added, they would also talk about US oil 
concessions
. Then came shock and awe!

In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that 
briefly ousted Hugo Chávez, some of the plotters 
went to Washington to get a green light from the 
Bush administration. Chávez learned of this visit 
and was so distressed by it that he sent 
officials from his government to plead his own 
case in Washington. The success of this endeavor 
can be judged by the fact that the coup took place shortly thereafter.

In 1994, it was reported that the leader of the 
Zapatista rebels in Mexico, Subcommander Marcos, 
said that “he expects the United States to 
support the Zapatistas once US intelligence 
agencies are convinced the movement is not 
influenced by Cubans or Russians.” “Finally,” 
Marcos said, “they are going to conclude that 
this is a Mexican problem, with just and true 
causes.” Yet for many years, the United States 
provided the Mexican military with all the 
training and tools needed to crush the Zapatistas.

The Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, Cheddi 
Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice 
Bishop of Grenada in 1983 all made their appeals 
to Washington to be left in peace. The 
governments of all three countries were overthrown by the United States.

In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, 
a genuine admirer of America and the Declaration 
of Independence, wrote at least eight letters to 
President Harry Truman and the State Department 
asking for America’s help in winning Vietnamese 
independence from the French. He wrote that world 
peace was being endangered by French efforts to 
reconquer Indochina and he requested that “the 
four powers” (US, USSR, China, and Great Britain) 
intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement 
and bring the Indochinese issue before the United 
Nations. Ho Chi Minh received no reply. He was, 
after all, some sort of communist.

America’s presstitutes

Imagine that the vicious police attack of October 
25 on the Occupy Oakland encampment had taken 
place in Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or in any 
other ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) 
 Page 
One Righteous Indignation with Shocking Photos. 
But here’s the Washington Post the next day: A 
three-inch story on page three with a headline: 
“Protesters wearing out their welcome 
nationwide”; no mention of the Iraqi veteran left 
unconscious from a police projectile making 
contact with his head; as to photos: just one ­ 
an Oakland police officer petting a cat that was left behind by the protesters.

And here’s TV comedian Jay Leno the same night as 
the police attack in Oakland: “They say Moammar 
Gaddafi may have been one of the richest men in 
the world 
 200 billion dollars. With all of the 
billions he had, he spent very little on 
education or health care for his country. So I guess he was a Republican.”

The object of Leno’s humor was of course the 
Republicans, but it served the cause of further 
demonizing Gaddafi and thus adding to the 
“justification” of America’s murderous attack on 
Libya. If I had been one of Leno’s guests sitting 
there, I would have turned to the audience and 
said: “Listen people, under Gaddafi health care 
and education were completely free. Wouldn’t you like to have that here?”

I think that enough people in the audience would 
have applauded or shouted to force Leno to back 
off a bit from his indoctrinated, mindless remark.

And just for the record, the 200 billion dollars 
is not money found in Gaddafi’s personal bank 
accounts anywhere in the world, but money 
belonging to the Libyan state. But why quibble? 
There’s no business like show business.

The Iraqi Lullabye

On February 17, 2003, a month before the US 
bombing of Iraq began, I posted to the Internet 
an essay entitled “What Do the Imperial Mafia 
Really Want?” concerning the expected war. 
Included in this were the words of Michael 
Ledeen, former Reagan official, then at the 
American Enterprise Institute, which was one of 
the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq:

If we just let our own vision of the world go 
forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t 
try to be clever and piece together clever 
diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage 
a total war against these tyrants, I think we 
will do very well, and our children will sing 
great songs about us years from now.

After a year of the tragic farce that was the 
American intervention in Iraq I could not resist. 
I sent Mr. Ledeen an email reminding him of his 
words and saying simply: “I’d like to ask you 
what songs your children are singing these days.”

I received no reply.

Has there ever been an empire that didn’t tell 
itself and the world that it was unlike all other 
empires, that its mission was not to plunder and 
control but to enlighten and liberate?

WILLIAM BLUM is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. 
Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 
II, Rogue State: a guide to the World’s Only 
Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War 
Political Memoir. He can be reached at: <mailto:BBlum6 at aol.com>BBlum6 at aol.com




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