HILLARY EMAILS REVEAL TRUE MOTIVE FOR LIBYA INTERVENTION
Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed
currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s
intervention
Brad Hoff
January 6, 2016
The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz
over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary”
selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo
fared on Facebook.
But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails:
- admissions of rebel war crimes,
- special ops trainers inside Libya from
nearly the start of protests,
- Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed
opposition,
- Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil,
- the
nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and
- concern over
Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency.
Hillary’s Death Squads
A March 27, 2011, intelligence brief
on Libya, sent by long time close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary’s
unofficial intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, contains clear
evidence of war crimes on the part of NATO-backed rebels. Citing a
rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal
reports to Hillary [emphasis mine]:
Under
attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have
begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are
making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort
to encourage additional defections.
(Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…).
While
the illegality of extra-judicial killings is easy to recognize (groups
engaged in such are conventionally termed “death squads”), the sinister
reality behind the “foreign mercenaries” reference might not be as
immediately evident to most.
While over
the decades Gaddafi was known to make use of European and other
international security and infrastructural contractors, there is no
evidence to suggest that these were targeted by the Libyan rebels.
There is, however, ample documentation
by journalists, academics, and human rights groups demonstrating that
black Libyan civilians and sub-Saharan contract workers, a population
favored by Gaddafi in his pro-African Union policies, were targets of
“racial cleansing” by rebels who saw black Libyans as tied closely with
the regime.[1]
Black Libyans were
commonly branded as “foreign mercenaries” by the rebel opposition for
their perceived general loyalty to Gaddafi as a community and subjected
to torture, executions, and their towns “liberated” by ethnic cleansing.
This is demonstrated in the most well-documented example of Tawergha,
an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which
vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed NTC Misratan
brigades.
These attacks were well-known as late as 2012 and often filmed, as this report from The Telegraph confirms:
After
Muammar Gaddafi was killed, hundreds of migrant workers from
neighboring states were imprisoned by fighters allied to the new interim
authorities. They accuse the black Africans of having been mercenaries
for the late ruler. Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans have been rounded
up since Gaddafi fell in August.
It
appears that Clinton was getting personally briefed on the battlefield
crimes of her beloved anti-Gaddafi fighters long before some of the
worst of these genocidal crimes took place.
Al-Qaeda and Western Special Forces Inside Libya
The same intelligence email
from Sydney Blumenthal also confirms what has become a well-known theme
of Western supported insurgencies in the Middle East: the contradiction
of special forces training militias that are simultaneously suspected
of links to Al Qaeda.
Blumenthal
relates that “an extremely sensitive source” confirmed that British,
French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan
militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi
suburbs.
While analysts have long
speculated as to the “when and where” of Western ground troop presence
in the Libyan War, this email serves as definitive proof that special
forces were on the ground only within a month of the earliest protests
which broke out in the middle to end of February 2011 in Benghazi.
By March 27 of what was commonly assumed a simple “popular uprising” external special operatives were already
“overseeing the transfer of weapons and supplies to the rebels”
including “a seemingly endless supply of AK47 assault rifles and
ammunition.”
Yet only a few paragraphs
after this admission, caution is voiced about the very militias these
Western special forces were training because of concern that,
“radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al
Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its
military command.”
The Threat of Libya’s Oil and Gold to French Interests
Though
the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 claimed the
no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians, an April
2011 email sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.
The
email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the
attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan
oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s
reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent
Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”
Most
astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that
Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a
similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating
as a prime African currency. In place of the noble sounding
“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine fed to the public, there is
this “confidential” explanation of what was really driving the war
[emphasis mine]:
This
gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to
be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden
Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African
Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).
(Source
Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold
and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence
officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began,
and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.)
Though
this internal email aims to summarize the motivating factors driving
France’s (and by implication NATO’s) intervention in Libya, it is
interesting to note that saving civilian lives is conspicuously absent
from the briefing.
Instead, the great
fear reported is that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree
of economic independence with a new pan-African currency.
French
intelligence “discovered” a Libyan initiative to freely compete with
European currency through a local alternative, and this had to be
subverted through military aggression.
The Ease of Floating Crude Propaganda
Early
in the Libyan conflict Secretary of State Clinton formally accused
Gaddafi and his army of using mass rape as a tool of war. Though
numerous international organizations, like Amnesty International,
quickly debunked these claims, the charges were uncritically echoed by Western politicians and major media. It
seemed no matter how bizarre the conspiracy theory, as long as it
painted Gaddafi and his supporters as monsters, and so long as it served
the cause of prolonged military action in Libya, it was deemed credible
by network news.
Two foremost examples
are referenced in the latest batch of emails: the sensational claim
that Gaddafi issued Viagra to his troops for mass rape, and the claim
that bodies were “staged” by the Libyan government at NATO bombing sites
to give the appearance of the Western coalition bombing civilians.
In a late March 2011 email, Blumenthal confesses to Hillary that,
I
communicated more than a week ago on this story—Qaddafi placing bodies
to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of
Allied bombing—though underlining it was a rumor. But now, as you know,
Robert Gates gives credence to it. (See story below.)
Sources
now say, again rumor (that is, this information comes from the rebel
side and is unconfirmed independently by Western intelligence), that
Qaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to
troops. The incident at the Tripoli press conference involving a woman
claiming to be raped is likely to be part of a much larger outrage. Will
seek further confirmation.
Not only did Defense Secretary Robert Gates promote his bizarre “staged bodies” theory on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” but the even stranger Viagra rape fiction
made international headlines as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice
made a formal charge against Libya in front of the UN Security Council.
What
this new email confirms is that not only was the State Department aware
of the spurious nature of what Blumenthal calls “rumors” originating
solely with the rebels, but did nothing to stop false information from
rising to top officials who then gave them “credence." It appears, furthermore, that the Viagra mass rape hoax likely originated with Sidney Blumenthal himself.
Note: [1] The most comprehensive and well-documented study of the plight of black Libyans is contained in Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (publ. 2012, Baraka Books) by Maximilian Forte, Professor Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/?AID=7236
