State Of Denial

The story of the fall of Gaddafi as told by the insiders, defectors and military advisors who helped bring it about.

Special Series
Last Modified: 08 Dec 2011 10:32
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

State of Denial is the story of the fall of the Gaddafi regime as told by the insiders, defectors and military advisors who helped to bring it about.

Written and directed by Anne Reevell of Moonbeam Films, the film offers a revealing behind-the-scenes account of a revolution, a slice of history in which people took back power.

"The disintegration of the Gaddafi regime in Libya surprised and confused the world - not because it happened in the first place, but because Gaddafi's government remained convinced it could prevail - despite defections, NATO airstrikes and a popular mass uprising," says Reevell.

As the rebels continue to advance towards Tripoli, the Libyan authorities there are in a state of denial, convinced they can still talk to the British government, denouncing the foreign media, burning the homes of Libyan exiles and organising anti-NATO demonstrations in London. The message they relay says there is 'no compromise on leadership,' but do they mean it or are hairline fractures beginning to emerge?

Using the oral diary of a Tripoli-based insider, as well as interviews with the UK prime minister's senior advisor on Libya and leading figures in Benghazi and Tripoli, State of Denial explores the demise of Gaddafi's powerbase and charts the twists and turns of a regime in denial.

How The West Won Libya

By Pepe Escobar
October 22, 2011
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Onine"



They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway - an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" - he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.

Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a Libyan doctor who accompanied Gaddafi's body in an ambulance and examined it, said he died from two bullets, one to the chest, one to the head.

The TNC - which has peddled lies, lies and more lies for months - swears he died in "crossfire". It may have been a mob. It may have been Mohammad al-Bibi, a 20-year-old sporting a New York Yankees baseball cap who posed to the whole world brandishing Gaddafi's golden pistol; his ticket perhaps to collect the hefty $20 million dangled as the bounty for Gaddafi "dead or alive".

It gets curioser and curioser when one remembers that this is exactly what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her lightning visit to Tripoli, had announced less than 48 hours before; Gaddafi should be "captured or killed". The Fairy Queenie satisfied Clinton's wishes, who learned about it by watching the screen of a BlackBerry - and reacting with the semantic earthquake "Wow!"

To the winners, the spoils. They all did it; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Pentagon and the TNC. From the minute a United Nations resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya became a green card to regime change, plan A was always to capture and kill him. Targeted assassination; that's Barack Obama administration official policy. There was no plan B.

Let Me Bomb You To Protection

As for how R2P ("responsibility to protect" civilians), any doubters should cling to the explanation by NATO's secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen; "NATO and our partners have successfully implemented the historic mandate of the United Nations to protect the people of Libya." Anyone who wants to check NATO's protection of civilians just needs to jump on a pick-up truck and go to Sirte - the new Fallujah.

Reactions have been quite instructive. TNC bureaucrat Abdel Ghoga went Colosseum in the Roman Empire, saying, "The revolutionaries have got the head of the tyrant."

United States President Barack Obama said the death of Gaddafi means "we are seeing the strength of American leadership across the world". That's as "we got him" as one can possibly expect, also considering that Washington paid no less than 80% of the operating costs of those dimwits at NATO (over $1 billion - which Occupy Wall Street could well denounce would be more helpful creating jobs in the US). Strange, now, to say "we did it", because the White House always said this was not a war; it was a "kinetic" something. And they were not in charge.

It was up to that majestic foreign policy strategist, US Vice President Joe Biden, to be starkly more enlightening than Obama; "In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past."

World, you have been warned; this is how the empire will deal with you from now on.

Feel My Humanitarian Love

So congratulations to the "international community" - which as everyone knows is composed of Washington, a few washed-up NATO members, and the democratic Persian Gulf powerhouses of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This community, at least, loved the outcome. The European Union (EU) hailed "the end of an era of despotism" - when up to virtually Thursday they were caressing the helm of Gaddafi's gowns; now they are falling over themselves in editorials about the 42-year reign of a "buffoon".

Gaddafi would have been a most inconvenient guest of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as he would have relished recalling all the hand-kissing, the warm embraces and the juicy deals the West was begging to clinch after he was promoted from "Mad Dog" (Ronald Reagan) to "our bastard". He would also relish detailing all the shady backgrounds of those opportunists now posing as "revolutionaries" and "democrats".

As for the concept of international law, it lies in a drain as filthy as the one Gaddafi was holed up in. Iraqi dictator Saddam at least got a fake trial in a kangaroo court before meeting the executioner. Osama bin Laden was simply snuffed out, assassination-style, after a territorial invasion of Pakistan. Gaddafi went one up, snuffed out with a mix of air war and assassination.

Power vultures are congesting the skies. London-based Mohammed El Senussi, the heir to the Libyan throne (King Idris was overthrown in 1969) is ready for his close-up, having already established that he "is a servant to Libyan people, and they decide what they want". Translation; I want the throne. He's obviously the favorite candidate of the counter-revolutionary House of Saud.

And what about those Washington think-tank donkeys mumbling that this was the Arab Spring's "Ceausescu moment"? If only the Romanian dictator had improved his country's standard of living - in terms of free healthcare, free education, incentives for the newlywed, etc - by a fraction of what Gaddafi did in Libya. Plus the fact that Nicolae Ceausescu was not deposed by NATO "humanitarian" bombing. v Only the brain dead may have swallowed the propaganda of NATO's "humanitarian" 40,000-plus bombing - which devastated Libya's infrastructure back to the Stone Age (Shock and Awe in slow motion, anyone?). This never had anything to do with R2P - the relentless bombing of civilians in Sirte proves it.

As the top four BRIC members knew it even before the voting of UN Resolution 1973, it was about NATO ruling the Mediterranean as a NATO lake, it was about Africom's war against China and setting up a key strategic base, it was about the French and the Brits getting juicy contracts to exploit Libya's natural resources to their benefit, it was about the West setting the narrative of the Arab Spring after they had been caught napping in Tunisia and Egypt.

Listen To The Barbaric Whimpers

Welcome to the new Libya. Intolerant Islamist militias will turn the lives of Libyan women into a living hell. Hundreds of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans - those who could not escape - will be ruthlessly persecuted. Libya's natural wealth will be plundered. That collection of anti-aircraft missiles appropriated by Islamists will be a supremely convincing reason for the "war on terror" in northern Africa to become eternal. There will be blood - civil war blood, because Tripolitania will refuse to be ruled by backward Cyrenaica.

As for remaining dictators everywhere, get a life insurance policy from NATO Inc; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh were clever enough to do it. We all know there will never be R2P to liberate the Tibetans and Uyghurs, or the people in that monster gulag Myanmar, or the people in Uzbekistan, or the Kurds in Turkey, or the Pashtuns on both sides of the imperially drawn Durand Line.

We also know that change the world can believe in will be the day NATO enforces a no-fly one over Saudi Arabia to protect the Shi'ites in the eastern province, with the Pentagon launching a Hellfire carpet over those thousands of medieval, corrupt House of Saud princes.

It won't happen. Meanwhile, this is the way the West ends; with a NATO bang, and a thousand barbaric, lawless whimpers. Disgusted? Get a Guy Fawkes mask and raise hell.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.)

‘NATO Has Bombed Libya Back To Stone Age’

Published: 19 October, 2011, 22:21
Edited: 20 October, 2011, 09:30
Courtesy Of "Russia Today"

Former MI5 agent Annie Machon says that the US wants to reinforce the myths that public has been told about NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ intervention, while Libya is being bombed beyond the point of no return.

During her visit to Libya, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has used unusually blunt terms to describe what the United States wants to see happen in Libya, namely former dictator Muammar Gaddafi being killed or captured.

Machon says even though Gaddafi was an odious dictator and a thorn in the side of Western countries for three decades, for the majority of Libyans their quality of life was perfectly fine.

“They’ve had free education, free health, they could study abroad. When they got married they got a certain amount of money. So they were rather the envy of many other citizens of African countries. Now, of course, since NATO’s humanitarian intervention the infrastructure of their country has been bombed back to the Stone Age. They will not have the same quality of life. Women probably will not have the same degree of emancipation under any new transitional government. The national wealth is probably going to be siphoned off by Western corporations. Perhaps the standard of living in Libya might have been slightly higher than it perhaps is now in America and the UK with the recession,” she said.
Machon agrees the US have been quite unashamed in their statements about wanting regime change in Libya, which she believes is highly illegal.

“It is also interesting to see that they are saying this openly when, of course, in the 1990s they were trying to assassinate him covertly through proxy organizations in Libya,” she said.

NATO countries have sent advisors to Libya and Machon believes that it was done to insure that humanitarian aid and human rights are upheld. However that might prove to be difficult. She says that nobody seems to be really trying to protect civilians in Benghazi or Sirte. Advisors or not, “Libya is descending into one awful mess.”

“Let’s not forget that the UN sanctions change of heart was put in place now on very dubious moral grounds – unsubstantiated rumors of genocide in Benghazi,”she argued. “[Advisors] are probably going there to try and help, but what’s been going on in places like Sirte has been breathtaking hypocrisy. NATO goes in to bomb Gaddafi’s regime out of existence because they are threatening civilians in Benghazi. And now we are looking at a whole range of human rights abuses.”

Meanwhile, for Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire website, the desired result of US intervention – to see Gaddafi killed or captured, as stated by Hillary Clinton – was also not “surprising.” 

“The policy of targeted assassination is very much a part of US foreign policy,”  Azikiwe told RT. “Gaddafi was also targeted for the last eight months for assassination…They put it out broadly with the international community that they want to, in fact, assassinate Gaddafi.”

And Clinton’s latest visit to Libya was “designed to bolster the NTC government there,” Azikiwe believes.

An eyewitness of NATO atrocities in Libya, Ali Alkasih, has recently returned from the besieged town of Sirte. He says the humanitarian situation is dire there and ordinary Libyans are tired of it, but if they were given a choice they would still prefer Gaddafi to the American presence.

“There is no water there, no medication, they don’t have even oxygen in the hospitals,” he told RT. “I have seen the situation in Sirte, I can assure you it is a disaster. It is a catastrophe. The international law or the international community came with the Resolution 1973, as they said, to protect civilians, but this is not happening at the moment."

“Most of the Libyans would rather live peacefully than having NATO or Gaddafi. We don’t want neither Gaddafi, nor NATO [sic]. If the solution was NATO, than Gaddafi is better, our life was better [[under Gaddafi]],” concluded Alkasih.

Secrets Not Saif

Gaddafi Shadow Haunts West's Dodgy Deals 

The late Colonel Gaddafi's son and key right-hand man Saif al-Islam, has reportedly crossed the border from the Libyan desert into Niger.

It's believed he's trying to negotiate a surrender to hand himself in, to the International Criminal Court.

If he does eventually stand trial, he could yet spill some of the secrets of the regime's murky dealings, with the same governments that helped
topple his father.

U.S. Debated Life Or Death For Qaddafi

Compiled By "CavalierZee"


Keep This Statement In Mind: "During a meeting with members of the NATO-rebels' TNC in Libya on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington wants to see Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi captured or killed."


MARK LANDLER of  "The New York Times" [Published: October 24, 2011], writes:

Last Wednesday evening, ...As part of an exercise to game out Libya’s future —the White House convened a 90-minute meeting to tackle a looming, delicate question: What should be done with the Libyan dictator?..The national security adviser, Tom Donilon, instituted the planning meetings in March, the same month Mr. Obama decided on a limited role in the NATO air campaign to support the rebels.

The group, consisting of officials from the State Department, Justice Department, the Pentagon and other agencies, broke into smaller teams to focus on specific problems..

When anti-Qaddafi forces swarmed into the capital in late August, Mr. Chollet said, the group had already set out the top 10 decisions that the president needed to make. 

Some of those plans were (according to the article):

- Mrs. Clinton, officials said, laid out the options for Libya, explaining the principles behind the International Criminal Court,... She told the Libyan officials that the decision of where to hold a trial was up to them.

The United States is offering the Libyans help in putting in place a justice system that could handle a trial of that magnitude.

Putting the colonel on trial, either in Libya or The Hague, was one of a host of situations for which the administration planned

- It also made plans for how the international community should react if Colonel Qaddafi obtained sanctuary in a third country, like Chad or Equatorial Guinea.

- Others included securing chemical weapons and portable antiaircraft missiles 

- The killing of Colonel Qaddafi, they said, was one of the three scenarios considered last Wednesday.

 

Less than 24 hours later, ... Colonel Qaddafi was dead. 

Below, we see how Hillary is euphoric at the news of Qaddafi's death.



Like Hannibal Smith (of the A-Team) says: "I love it when a plan comes together!"

Washington Wants Gaddafi Captured Or Killed

Gaddafi Receives The "Kiss Of Death" From Hillary Clinton"


By "CavalierZee"




US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says Washington wants to see the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi captured or killed. Professor Paul Sheldon Foote says that the Obama administration believes this killing would be a justified one.

The statement came during her surprise visit to Libya at a meeting with senior members of the country's National Transitional Council.

She has also pledged millions of dollars in new aid, including medical care for wounded fighters and additional assistance to secure weaponry, which many fear could fall into the hands of extremists.

Most of the new aid money will go toward finding and destroying thousands of Gaddafi-era shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles that are unaccounted for since the fighting began.

"The United States was proud to stand for you in your fight for freedom and we will continue to stand with you as you continue this journey," Clinton proclaimed during talks with National Transitional Council Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril and interim leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil.

Addressing leaders of the interim body, Clinton noted that the fighting wasn't over yet but vowed that NATO would continue to protect civilians as long as the threat continues.

Clinton is the most senior American official to visit Libya since the uprising against Gaddafi began in February and only the second secretary of state to visit in the past 50 years.

Speaking of the legitimacy of killing Colonel Gaddafi, Professor Paul Sheldon Foote from California State University says that if it is okay for Americans to kill current leaders, they will not have any problems with killing former ones.

"Warmongers in the Obama administration will argue that he [Gaddafi] is a former leader and therefore he's fair game," he declared. "Don't forget who Hilary Clinton is. In 2008 as a candidate for president she threatened to kill every man, woman and child and turn Iran into a waste basket."

Foote believes that behind this unannounced visit there is the desire of the Obama administration to put some American 'fingerprints' on the success.

"In addition to saying that they've killed Bin Laden, they want to say next year in Obama's campaign for re-election that they've brought a great victory in Libya," he said.

Keith Harmon Snow, a war correspondent and independent investigator, believes that killing Gaddafi would be an illegal targeted assassination and that there is obviously a hidden agenda behind Hilary Clinton's apparently spontaneous visit.

"There is a lot of fighting in Libya at present and almost everything we've been told, everything we've seen, is false. We are getting just a complete propaganda story of what's going on in Libya," he said. "Why is she there? Clearly to make it look to the American public like we are in absolute control of Libya. Cover up the atrocities, put a white, clean, shiny, happy, lovely face on the death and destruction."

¬Watch full interview with Keith Harmon Snow

Western Hugs With Gaddafi End With Shot To Head

This is the end result when you make deals with the devil, you are used, abused then discarded like trash.

1. Remember what was done to Saddam Hussein after all his years of loyal service to the West.

2. Remember how the Shah of Iran was left Nationless and was refused entry by Washington after his years of loyal service.

3. Remember what was ultimately done to Manuel Noriega.

4. Remember how Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt were abandoned by the West after all they did for us.

That was just a partial list.



Libya's chief forensic pathologist says an autopsy has confirmed that Moammar Gadhafi was killed by a shot to the head. NATO wraps up its campaign hailing a free Libya after Colonel Gaddafi is killed - but disturbing images of his final moments raise questions about the nation's future.

This week marked the end of Colonel Gaddafi's grip on Libya. But the mystery surrounding his death in captivity has sparked international calls for an investigation, with the official account that he was killed in a crossfire widely questioned.

Libya's now looking to hold elections within eight months. But as RT's Anissa Naouai reports from Tripoli, there is much cynicism over whether things will change post Gaddafi.

Then, Hillary Gloats at Qadaffi's demise:

"We Came, We Saw, He Died!"



The following is my retort in reponse to the below comment which was posted to my entry titled:
"Gaddafi’s Last Moments Alive"

COMMENTS:

Rahul said...

That the last words of Ghaddafi ji should have been 'Don't shoot' is enough to prove that Ghaddafi ji was a peaceful non-violent man. He wanted his peaceful religion to spread far and wide in Europe and America not by violence but by peaceful means of legal or illegal immigration, and then production of more and more children by the immigrants. He was a master strategist, who could beat the manipulating non-believers by his sheer presence. His dream of Islamization of Europe and America is certainly going to be fulfilled; only Ghaddafi ji would not be there to witness the scenes.

12:49 AM 

CavalierZee said...

Well, we've taken care of his "master strategy" by:

1. Allowing the Libyans to exterminate each other for several months.

2. Killing quite a few of them in the process, via: air strikes, targeted killings, through drones.

3. Bombing Libya's infrastructure back to the stone age.

WE should be praised for our master strategy:

1. Dealing with that dictator for 42 years. Using him, then discarding him like trash after he was no longer of any use to us.

2. Selling him weapons, and "WMD's"

3. Applying economic sanctions for many years.

4. Welcoming him back into the "international community" as a rehabilitated hero (forget about his so-called "terrorist" past).

5. Destroying Libya and demanding his killing.

Like our great stateswoman, Hillary Clinton said:

a) "we prefer that he is captured or dead." then,

b) "we came, we saw, he's dead."

Now, we swoop in like vultures, to "rebuild" Libya, after aiding in its destruction. Install another dictator, or better yet, some terrorists, so we can remain in that area for another few decades, sell them weapons again, apply more sanctions, destroy the country again, regime change again , and repeat the process again.

I tell ya, the West is the best. Aren't we?

'Killing Gaddafi To Cover-Up For West Deals'

Death Of Libya's Gadhafi Avoids Awkward Trial

October 20, 2011 05:53 PM
Courtesy Of "The Daily Star"

LONDON: Moammar Gadhafi's apparent death from wounds received during the fall of Sirte means a long and complex trial that could have divided Libya and embarrassed Western governments and oil firms will be avoided.

A senior National Transitional Council (TNC) military official said the former Libyan leader died after capture having earlier been injured in a NATO airstrike on a convoy fleeing the town. Earlier reports and rumours of his capture had sparked celebrations across Libya and helped oil prices lower.

Had he been taken alive, there would have been potentially acrimonious debate over whether he should be tried in Libya or extradited to the International Criminal Court, which issued a warrant for his arrest along with his oldest son and spy chief earlier this year.

Any trial might have given the flamboyant, often idiosyncratic Gadhafi a podium from which to harang both Libya's new rulers and Western powers, as well as potentially try to embarrass them on issues they would rather forget. As Libya was nudged back from international isolation in the last decade, international oil companies signed deals worth billions.

But worse still for the transitional government and NATO, analysts say, would have been for Gadhafi to have remained at large, perhaps simply disappearing into the Sahara to form new militias and destabilise Libya and its neighbours.

"It is hugely symbolically important," Alan Fraser, Middle East analyst for risk consultancy AKE, said of the killing.

"It helps the NTC move on. If Gadhafi has been killed instead of captured, that means they will also avoid a long drawnout trial that could have been very divisive and revealed awkward secrets."

Human rights groups had long said it was important for the Libyan leader to be held to account and any local trial would have offered Libya's new government a chance to showcase its improved accountability.

But critics complained many international and locally organized warcrimes trials can sometimes turn into long, drawnout legalistic events or even drift towards becoming show trials. Former leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic often either refused to acknowledge their jurisdiction or use them to berate their new captors.

The ousted leader might well have used the opportunity to open old political wounds and inflict as much new political damage as he could.

"Colonel Gadhafi's death is a mixed event for the new Libyan authorities," said Daniel Korski, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a long-term supporter of NATO intervention.

"They avoid a drawn-out judicial drama a la Slobodan Milosevic, which could have rallied people in the ex-dictator's support, but his death also robs the new Libyan government of the opportunity of showing themselves better than he was.... His death, in such violent circumstances, also risks creating a martyr figure out of a man whose deeds in life would never have merited such acclaim."

International media would have jumped on any juicy details on how Western states wooed Gadhafi, helped bank his billions and rebuild his oil industry. Many large firms struck deals with Tripoli including Italy's ENI, France's Total, Britain's BP and others.

That risk has not entirely gone away. Some of Gadhafi's sons may still be at large and could potentially stand trial themselves.

If Libya's NTC had wanted to try Gadhafi locally, they would have had to swiftly build an entire legal system within which to do so. Gadhafi's Libya had little in the way of credible legal infrastructure and there might have been serious questions over the legitimacy of any process.

With Osama bin Laden killed in a U.S. special forces raid earlier this year and al Qaeda and Taliban leaders also increasingly targeted through drone strikes, some worry assassination or "accidental" killing of foes -- rather than messy trials or imprisonment in places like Guantanemo Bay -- has become an all too attractive option.

"To say that it is better for everyone that he be killed rather than captured is to say that the legal approach has disadvantages, and that is to surrender to cynicism," said Rosemary Hollis, head of the Middle East studies program at London's City University. "It's hard to see that as a good thing. In Gadhafi's case, on previous form had he been put on trial he would simply have rambled endlessly and would have ended up undermining his own credibility."

With his death, she said, there was a risk the death might further incense some of his more diehard supporters and other radicals, particularly if it emerged he was killed by the NATO strike or executed after capture. Other analysts warn Gadhafi's death may be far from the end of Libya's troubles.

"If you look at Iraq, Saddam Hussein's capture did not stop the insurgency," says Anthony Skinner, Middle East director of risk consultancy Maplecroft. "They are both very different countries, but Libya also has ethnic divisions and whatever happens there are a lot of issues to solve."

Gaddafi's Body On Display

Graphic Images Of The Slain Dictator. Viewer Discretion Is Highly Advised!!!

In A Misrata Morgue

  

Gaddafi Foretold End Of Arab Dictators

Gaddafi Foretold End Of Arab Dictators

As Muammar Qaddafi's regime buckles under the weight of a combined NATO and rebel assault, social networking sites are awash with scenes and memories from the Libyan leader's four-decade rule.

Earlier this week, for example, a photo of Qaddafi, embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and ousted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali grinning at a summit in Libya darted around Facebook and Twitter.

Today, Adel Abdel Ghafar, a graduate student in Australia, surfaced one more gem: a video of Qaddafi warning Arab leaders at a 2008 summit in Syria that they might soon suffer the same fate as Iraq's Saddam Hussein and be overthrown by foreign powers.

"A foreign force occupies an Arab country and hangs its leader while we are looking and laughing," he declares, according to the video's English translation.

"In the future it is going to be your turn too," he adds, to laughter from the audience.

An Al Jazeera report at the time noted that some of the Arab officials "looked stunned" by Qaddafi's words "while others broke into laughter at his frankness." 

The clip below shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (who's currently facing international censure for suppressing his own uprising) giggling, though an apparent edit to the video makes it hard to say with certainty that he's laughing at Qaddafi's warning.

Qaddafi, who had been repairing his broken relationship with the U.S. since 2003 by renouncing his weapons of mass destruction program and partnering with the U.S. on counterterrorism operations, also cautioned that America's friendship could not be trusted. 

"Even you, the friends of America, no, I will say we, we, the friends of America, America may approve of our hanging one day," he said, in a declaration that seems particularly relevant today as the U.S. demands that Qaddafi cede power to the rebels.

Qaddafi's comment about the vulnerability of Arab leaders takes place around 1:37 in the video below, and his line about America around 2:35.



WARNING: Extremely GraphicMaterial Below. Viewer Discretion Is Highly Advised!!!

Earliest Footage of Gaddafie Just After His Capture

A bloody gaddafie just after he survived the NATO airstrike which wiped out his body guards and entourage




New - Rebels Beat A Captured Moammar Gaddafi As He Pleads for His Life (October 20th,2011)

New video just in - Rebels beating and slapping a bloodied Moammar Gaddafi as he holds out his hand pleading for his life.



Qaddafi’s Last Moments - Longer Version

Qaddafi captured alive and pretty much torn apart before being executed.



High Quality Video Of Dead Qaddafi




Newly Released Moammar Gaddafi Death Images - Graphic - (October 20th,2011)

Newly released death photo's,some High Quality, showing the lifeless body of former Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi after he was captured by opposing Rebel Forces in Sirte,Libya.

Warning Very Graphic!

         

New - Gaddafi's Son Mutassim Gaddafi Dying in Bed After Capture Sirte,Libya - (October 20th,2011)

Mutassim Gaddafi dying in a bed w/ neck wound in his last moments.





http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/mutassim-gaddafi-reportedly-dead-moussa-ibrahim-and-other-gaddafi-loyalists-reportedly-captured-or-dead/2011/10/20/gIQAySBc0L_blog.html

When the final stronghold of Moammar Gaddafi loyalists fell to the
Libyan fighters Thursday, it is believed the ousted leader was captured and killed in the fighting.

New reports suggest Gaddafi wasn’t the only senior member of the fallen regime to be killed or taken into custody.

Mutassim Gaddafi was also found dead in Sirte, according to the Libyan information minister, along with several major Gaddafi loyalists.

Reports that Abubakr Yunus Jaber, chief of Gaddafi's armed forces, was found dead in Sirte, and that Moussa Ibrahim, a former spokesman for Gaddafi, was captured. 

Motasim Qaddafi Captured Alive Then Executed?

WARNING: Extremely Graphic Images. Viewer Discretion Is Highly Advised!!!

The first video shows Motasim, son of Muammar Qaddafi, captured alive today but injured and being taken away on a vehicle.



The second video shows him dead in the back of a vehicle. It is not known how he died inbetween the two videos. (Note this is Motasim, not Saif Al-Islam)

High Quality Video Of Dead Qaddafi

WARNING: Extremely Graphic Images. Viewer Discretion Is Highly Advised!!!

Clear Photo Of Gaddafi's Head:
[Courtesy Of "LiveLeak"]

Gaddafi’s Last Moments Alive

WARNING: Very Graphic Images. Viewer Discretion Is Highly Advised!!!

Gaddafi Captured Alive and Wounded



Gaddafi's Lifeless Body On The Back Of A Truck

Muammar Gaddafi Killed In Sirte

Breaking News!!!

WARNING: Very Graphic Images. Viewer Discretion Is Highly Advised!

Al Jazeera has acquired exclusive footage of the body of Muammar Gaddafi after he was killed in his hometown, Sirte.

Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, vice chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council, confirmed that the ousted leader had been killed on October 20, 2011 near Sirte.

"We announce to the world that Muammar Gaddafi has been killed at the hands of the revolutionaries," Ghoga told a news conference in Benghazi.

The news came shortly after the NTC captured Sirte after weeks of fighting.



Fugitive Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has died of wounds sustained during his capture after NTC forces took over his hometown and stronghold of Sirte.

The first image made by a cellphone camera has recently been released.

NATO Nations Set To Reap Spoils Of Libya War

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, like his counterparts in the UK, Italy, the US and other countries, is keen to garner oil contracts once a new government emerges in Libya [Reuters]


As Rebels Take Tripoli, Foreign Powers Are Eyeing The Prize Of Libya's High Quality Crude Oil.

By Rachel Shabi
Last Modified: 25 Aug 2011 17:20
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"


It looks like the more telling news on Libya has migrated to the business pages.  With jubilant reporting of Gaddafi's imminent downfall seizing headlines, it's the financial pages that have the clinical analysis. So, for instance, it is in this section that the Independent reports a "dash for profit in the post-war Libya carve up".


Similarly, Reuters, under the headline, "Investors eye promise, pitfalls in post-Gaddafi Libya" noted that a new government in that country could "herald a bonanza for Western companies and investors".


Before Tripoli has completely fallen, before Gaddafi and his supporters have stepped down and before the blood dries on the bodies that have yet to be counted, Western powers are already eyeing up what they view us just rewards for the intervention.


There are no more illusions over how far NATO forces exceeded the UN security resolution that mandated its campaign. For months, NATO officials insisted it was operating within brief - an air campaign, designed to protect civilians under threat of attack. But now it is described as an "open secret" that NATO countries were operating undercover, on the ground.


Add to that the reluctance to broker a negotiated exit, the practice of advising, arming and training the rebels, and the spearheading of an escalation in violence and it looks like NATO's job morphed from protecting civilians to regime change.


Oil For Regime Change


And there's a reason for this sudden rush of honesty over its involvement. As alluded to by the Economist, each country's contribution to the NATO effort in Libya is expected to have some impact on how much of the spoils it gets in the looming post-war period.  


The French Le Figaro newspaper is keen to talk up Libya as "Sarkozy's war", while the British Telegraph drops references to the involvement of British military and intelligence officers, including MI6 and the RAF.


Aiding the Libyan rebel forces of the National Transitional Council has created a debt of gratitude. In the context of responsibility for what happens next in Libya, an anonymous British official told the Economist that NATO's involvement in the Libyan uprising means that: "Now we own it."


As Reuters reports, "Western companies look well positioned as billions of dollars in oil exploration and construction contracts come up for grabs as part of the reconstruction effort."


Leaving aside the massive profits from the rebuilding that Libya is now going to need, there are vast oil spoils to distribute. The Libyan oil industry produced 1.6 million barrels a day prior to the war. The country is thought to have 46 billion barrels of reserves - the largest in Africa.  


Winners and Losers


And this is what the information manager at the rebel-controlled Arabian Gulf Oil Company, Libya's largest oil producer, had to say about who it now intends to trade with: "We don't have a problem with Western countries like the Italians, French and UK companies. But we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil." Those last three countries weren't involved in the NATO mission in Libya.


None of that is to bemoan the downfall of a terrifying dictator who has kept Libyans crushed and brutalised for decades. Gaddafi's demise is welcome; the courage of Libyans who fought his regime is staggering and only a stone would fail to be moved by their celebration of freedom now.


But it does not negate those factors to point out that NATO countries have not previously seemed bothered by the bloodiness of this dictator's 42-year-rule - or that the striking feature of the West's relationship to the Middle East has been its cynical alliances with repressive rulers, propped up to shut down their populations while opening up resources to foreign access.   


It is exactly this track record - of being a corrosive influence and a self-interested broker - that has made Middle Eastern countries wary of any Western intervention in the tide of revolutions now sweeping the region. Libyan rebels asked for help, but were wary of what was viewed as a necessary alliance with Western forces.  It does the flow of Arab uprisings a disservice to now glorify NATO's mission. A liberal intervention for humanitarian ends may be the comfortable hook; but securing assets and resources, as usual, is the real goal. 


Follow Rachel Shabi on Twitter at: @rachshabi


Rachel Shabi is a British journalist specialising in the Middle East and the author of the award-winning book, Not the Enemy - Israel's Jews from Arab Lands.


Her reports from Jerusalem were shortlisted for this year's Orwell prize for political journalism.