Confirming account of Craig Murray, former UK diplomat.

“A curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the “rebels”. There have been no surgical air strikes for quite a while.

As Escobar hints this could be part of deal requiring of the Interim Council that they sideline the revolutionary youth. This could be presented as an attempt to streamline the rebel army.

Pepe Escobar

Asia Times

2nd April, 2011

You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya – the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

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“They want to organize better, but it is difficult. I have to do something,” Mehdawi said. “We have weapons. The rebels will form their own forces.”

The scenario below is consistent with a high-jacked revolution. The strategy of the rebel leadership is to draw in the West rather than to base themselves on the revolutionary forces, the revolutionary youth. At the beginning all the talk was of the enthusiasm and revolutionary elan of the volunteers being too much for Gaddafi’s mercenaries: now they are dismissed as totally inept. It looks like the Interim Council simply made a point of denying them military leadership: now they are actively marginalising them. Are they doing this in collaboration with US/UK special forces? Are US boots on the ground their only option? It looks like it. The situation is now polarized around the issue of western intervention rather than the issue of democracy. As a result Gaddafi has far more credibility than before.

Miami Herald

2nd April, 2011

Libyan rebels with military training began on Friday turning away inexperienced volunteers from the front lines here in an effort to salvage their battle against Moammar Gadhafi’s better trained forces.

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Tariq Ali

Guardian

29th March, 2011

The US-Nato intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular and by so doing to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity and trying to restore the status quo ante.

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Pepe Escobar

Asia Times

31st March, 2011

The current stalemate in Libya could last weeks, if not months. In that case, balkanization looms. Think of eastern Libya with Benghazi as capital, oil-rich and with a United States-installed puppet regime (a Libyan Hamid Karzai, like the Afghan president). It would be like a kind of northern Africa Saudi Arabia (the House of Saud would love it).

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Pepe Escobar

Asia Times

30th March, 2011

Lies, hypocrisy and hidden agendas. This is what United States President Barack Obama did not dwell on when explaining his Libya doctrine to America and the world. The mind boggles with so many black holes engulfing this splendid little war that is not a war (a “time-limited, scope-limited military action”, as per the White House) – compounded with the inability of progressive thinking to condemn, at the same time, the ruthlessness of the Muammar Gaddafi regime and the Anglo-French-American “humanitarian” bombing.

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Today’s Zaman

27th March, 2011

Italy will propose that it and Germany back a joint plan on Libya that involves a ceasefire, a humanitarian corridor and exile for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said.

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All Africa

25th March, 2011

Ankara — Turkish volte-face Thursday evening to make a sizeable military contribution to NATO’s intervention in the Libyan crisis, after two weeks of fierce opposition to the Alliance’s mingling with Arab affairs, has further blurred Ankara’s position in the Northern African conflict.

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Herald

26th March, 2011

It came as British forces revealed they had bombed four tanks threatening civilians in the north African state on Thursday.

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