Next Phase Of Operation Seize Libyan Banking/Oil/Water Coming Up

Imperialist Powers Prepare Escalation of Libyan War

"The United States, Britain and France are moving towards a significant escalation of the war against Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, with leaders of the US-backed rebellion calling for the deployment of ground troops from the NATO powers, as well as stepped-up bombing.

The impetus for escalation comes from the evident failure of the initial intervention, which combined heavy NATO bombing with an offensive by the US-backed rebel forces based in eastern Libya, with their headquarters and political center in Benghazi.

Over the weekend, Gaddafi’s forces continued to hold the military initiative in both eastern and western Libya. In the east, heavy shelling of the key crossroads city of Ajdabiya sent “hundreds” of anti-Gaddafi fighters into headlong retreat, according to press reports. At the same time, Gaddafi’s forces tightened their siege of Misrata, the only major city in western Libya under opposition control, pushing into the center of the city.

Press reports from Ajdabiya suggested a major setback for the anti-Gaddafi forces. The New York Times reported on its web site late Sunday, “Scores of rebel pickup trucks and other vehicles could be seen leaving the eastern approaches of Ajdabiya, headed toward the rebel capital of Benghazi, about 85 miles north. Explosions could be heard in the city... Many of the fighters were clearly jittery and frightened.”

Misrata is Libya’s third-largest city, with a population of nearly 600,000. Anti-Gaddafi forces seized control of it when the Libyan rebellion first broke out in mid-February. It is now being attacked from the west, south and east by Gaddafi’s troops, while opposition forces cling to a zone along the coast, including the port, their last lifeline to the outside world.

A spokesman for the city council in Misrata appealed Saturday for NATO to send troops to defend the port, according to the Washington Post. Much of the city has been reduced to rubble by incessant shelling and rocketing, and Gaddafi’s forces have been hit repeatedly by NATO warplanes.

Misrata has replaced Benghazi, the rebel capital in eastern Libya, as the main focus of a propaganda campaign to justify further imperialist military intervention on “humanitarian” grounds. Obama invoked the supposed danger of mass slaughter in Benghazi as the pretext for beginning the bombing of Libya last month. Now the same type of argument is being made in relation to Misrata.

In their joint letter published Friday, Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy described the Gaddafi government’s attack on Misrata as a “medieval siege…to strangle its population into submission.”

Government spokesmen and media pundits in the US, Britain and France have openly compared the city to Srebrenica, the Bosnian town where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces in a single day in 1995.

The analogy is ludicrous on many levels, not least of which is the scale of the bloodshed. According to the Washington Post—which can hardly be accused of pro-Gaddafi bias—“Doctors reached through Skype said five people died in Misrata on Saturday, bringing the death toll there to 36 in the past three days alone and at least 276 since the siege began in late February.”

There is no doubt that conditions are terrible in Misrata; that is the nature of civil war. But the claims of mass murder and even genocide have a political purpose: to justify support for the US-NATO war against Libya, particularly from liberal and “left” organizations in the United States and Western Europe. These groups have shifted openly and decisively into the camp of imperialism, abandoning the “antiwar” posture they adopted during the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.

In the US, the main support for the war in Libya comes from congressional Democrats and liberal media outlets like the New York Times, now allied with the remnant of discredited neoconservatives who spearheaded the invasion of Iraq.

In Europe, the German Greens, the French New Anti-Capitalist Party and the British pseudo-lefts in the orbit of the Labour Party have all fervently backed military intervention to overthrow Gaddafi, with the Greens denouncing German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her reluctance to commit German troops and warplanes.

On Friday, the US and British media gave extensive coverage to a claim by the US-based Human Rights Watch that Gaddafi’s forces were using cluster bombs in Misrata. A spokesman for the regime in Tripoli said that Libya did not even possess cluster bombs in its military inventory.

The charge is completely hypocritical, given that the United States has flatly rejected international appeals to ban cluster bombs, which spread thousands of tiny bomblets when they explode, each one capable of killing or maiming people.

Cluster bombs were widely used by the US forces in Iraq and by the Israeli military during its invasion of south Lebanon in 2006. There are hundreds if not thousands of instances where Iraqi and Lebanese children have been killed or wounded after picking up the bomblets, which can remain embedded in the soil for years.

Again, the primary purpose of such charges is war propaganda. As the British newspaper The Observer wrote Sunday: “Evidence that Gaddafi’s forces are now targeting cluster bombs on civilian neighbourhoods of Misrata is likely to fuel calls for accelerated action from NATO…”

I'm just sickened that anyone would believe the lies that fuel this blatant fascist conquest. It's such a transparent outrage because the lies are so stupid and the warmongers really don't give a shit anymore to cover up their actions. Notice that? They get in front of the cameras, pull something out of their assholes and then carry on with their crimes. They just don't care, as if debate doesn't enter into the equation anymore.
This is full tilt fascism boogie now, and I despise it with this criminal mob as much as when the Bush mob did it.
By the way, here are many videos of our good buddies the rebels engaging in american style democracy.