U.S. launches airstrikes on Libya

[Balta1701]

The important thing is that they aren't American's aren't standing on top of a sea of oil so who cares.

 

[Balta1701]

The men were armed and wore black ski masks. In broad daylight, they grabbed Adil Ali el-Aghouri from in front of his house last month, beat him, took him to a rebel military base and threw him in a prison cell.

 

Ever since, his relatives say, Aghouri has been held without charge or access to a lawyer. His only crime, they say, was to serve in the feared internal security police under Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi; they insist that he committed no atrocities.

 

“He’s in prison not because he broke any laws, but by the power of the gun,” said Aghouri’s brother, Muhammad. “This is about revenge.”

....

 

 

Rebel commanders have created a wanted list and placed suspects under round-the-clock surveillance. Secret militia units raid houses without court warrants and often interrogate suspects for hours. Those released have to sign a document stating their loyalty to the revolution.

 

As many as 30 civilians are being held at various rebel military bases around Benghazi without due process of law, said human rights activists, judges and prosecutors. In recent weeks, at least seven former members of the internal security police have turned up dead, their bodies riddled with bullets. Although it is not known who killed them, many suspect that they died at the hands of rebel-affiliated death squads.

Link

[Balta1701]

Only a brutal, power hungry madman would deploy helicopters in the middle of urban areas to fight in a civil war. The end result of that kind of firepower is going to be a massacre. The civilized world should do everything it can to stop the use of those weapons.

Britain and France are to deploy attack helicopters against Libya in an attempt to break the military stalemate, particularly in the important coastal city of Misrata, security sources have told the Guardian.

 

In a significant escalation of the conflict, the Apaches – based on HMS Ocean – will join French helicopters in risky operations which reflect deepening frustration among British and French defence chiefs about their continuing inability to protect civilians in Libya.

 

Apaches, which are being used in counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan, can manoeuvre and attack small targets in relatively built-up areas. Heavily armed Apaches and French Tiger helicopters are equipped with night vision equipment and electronic guidance systems. Forces loyal to the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, have shed their uniforms, are using civilian vehicles and hiding armour near civilian buildings, including hospitals and schools.

 

The decision to deploy the helicopters is a clear recognition that high-level bombing from 15,000 feet cannot protect civilians who continue to be attacked by rocket and mortar shells. It brings the Nato offensive much closer to the ground at a time when Britain and other Nato countries are insisting they have no intention of sending in troops.

[Soxbadger]

I really stopped arguing in this thread because I just cant justify spending time arguing about what is worse, action that results in death or inaction that results in death.

 

I believe in the former, that if we believe there is a chance that there will be a systematic killing of innocent lives, we should do what we can to protect those lives. The key part is "do what we can", that does not mean we can interfere in every war, it does not mean every time something bad happens we must come to the rescue, it means that, if the opportunity presents itself, Id rather try and fail, than have done nothing.

 

The articles about rebels killing innocents, it just doesnt matter because the result of action will always lead to unintended consequences and other action.

 

No solution is ever perfect, all we can ever try is to do is to make the best decision based on the information we have at the time. I still think that had Benghazi fallen to Gaddafi there would have been more deaths. And so in my opinion, we did the right thing.

 

But there is no way to prove what would have happened, which is why the sniping posts about people being dead, or terrible things being done by the rebels do nothing more than obscure the real actual tough decision.

 

Would the people of Libya been better off with Gaddafi or without.

[kapkomet]

Would the people of Iraq been better off with Hussein or without.

 

Oh wait, of course it's different. /waits for the lame WMD, Bush lied, etc. BS

 

But at the end, it's the same thing.

 

[Balta1701]

The House leadership had scheduled a vote on a War Powers resolution offered by Congressman Kucinich that would effectively have forced and end of the U.S. involvement in Libya.

 

That vote is no longer scheduled, apparently because there was a reasonable chance that the resolution would pass.

[southsider2k5]

The House leadership had scheduled a vote on a War Powers resolution offered by Congressman Kucinich that would effectively have forced and end of the U.S. involvement in Libya.

 

That vote is no longer scheduled, apparently because there was a reasonable chance that the resolution would pass.

 

You gotta love the bipartisianship.

 

[Balta1701]

House Speaker Boehner has offered a sidelining resolution that he hopes he can use to keep an actual War Powers resolution from ever coming to the floor.

 

The Speaker's proposed resolution would essentially express disapproval coming from the House and ask the White House to better explain what they are doing there, however, it would not have the form of a legitimate War Powers Act challenge of the sort that could actually force the White House to withdraw from Libya.

[StrangeSox]

House Speaker Boehner has offered a sidelining resolution that he hopes he can use to keep an actual War Powers resolution from ever coming to the floor.

 

The Speaker's proposed resolution would essentially express disapproval coming from the House and ask the White House to better explain what they are doing there, however, it would not have the form of a legitimate War Powers Act challenge of the sort that could actually force the White House to withdraw from Libya.

 

Greenwald is melting down over this.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...ibya/index.html

[Balta1701]

NATO appears to have significantly escalated the bombing campaign today, with heavy, full day daylight raids on multiple compounds in Tripoli, including raids lasting the whole day while the population of Tripoli was out and about and working. According to NATO itself, it's been mostly avoiding daylight raids on Tripoli to try to avoid killing civilians in the daytime. Guess that goal doesn't matter much any more.

[Jenksismyhero]

Yay, a billion or more will be spent on this stupid and pointless "war" from that war-mongering, empire-expanding, foreign policy-ruining Obama

 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/11d5624c-920f-11...l#axzz1OnW8AWox

 

[Soxbadger]

I wouldnt say stopping the systematic killing and raping of innocent civilians is "pointless", but to each their own.

[Balta1701]

When all the people are dead; there will be no more oppression or suffering

[Soxbadger]

Yes I agree that we should just sit on the sidelines while terrible things happen because if we intervene other people may die. So instead we should let certain people kill other people, because at least that way some people survive regardless of how terrible they are.

 

If your position is that we should let tyrants kill people, because in attempting to stop them, we may kill innocent people, we just have a fundamental difference of opinion on what the reaction should be to genocide.

[Balta1701]

Yes I agree that we should just sit on the sidelines while terrible things happen because if we intervene other people may die. So instead we should let certain people kill other people, because at least that way some people survive regardless of how terrible they are.

 

If your position is that we should let tyrants kill people, because in attempting to stop them, we may kill innocent people, we just have a fundamental difference of opinion on what the reaction should be to genocide.

Once again you've undermined your own position. You don't believe strongly enough in this goal that you have to laughably call Libya a genocide. You have to exaggerate.

 

A legit genocide is a unique thing. A dragged out civil war is a totally different beast. This is a 3+ month civil war we've been in the middle of.

 

If there was a legit genocide going on and we just used airstrikes for 3 months, we'd have a million corpses and we'd be doing some real soul searching about why we let it happen. Instead, we've imposed a 3 month stalemate where they are still fighting hard for the same territory they were in April.

[Soxbadger]

Undermined what point?

 

You said "when all the people are dead", that sounded like a philosophical stance, not specifically relating to Libya.

 

So I responded with my philosophical stance. I wasnt referring to Libya at all, so I didnt undermine my position.

 

My position on Libya is that we dont know what Gaddafi would have done had he reached Benghazi, so its kind of hard to say if there would have been a genocide or not. Its hard to tell because the UN intervened.

 

I clearly stated that it was a fundamental difference about the reaction to genocide, because your previous post suggested that you should never get involved because getting involved will result in dead people.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

I stand by my "pointless" statement. Either we go in and end the f***ing thing, or we don't (I vote we never should have been involved to begin with). Anything in between is pointless and a waste of money.

[Balta1701]

I stand by my "pointless" statement. Either we go in and end the f***ing thing, or we don't (I vote we never should have been involved to begin with). Anything in between is pointless and a waste of money.

Jenks is 100% right.

[Balta1701]

Gates calls out NATO.

In one of his last major addresses before his retirement this month, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that NATO's sometimes shaky air campaign in Libya had "laid bare" the shortcomings of the alliance, which he said was facing "collective military irrelevance" after years of inadequate defense spending by most of its members.

 

...

"Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they cannot," Gates said. "The military capabilities simply aren't there."

[Balta1701]

Secretary Gates praised Norway in his speech for being one of the only NATO members to come through with actual assistance in Libya.

 

Less than half a day later, Norway announced that it would begin scaling back its operations in Libya and will fully withdraw its planes by August 1.

[Balta1701]

The UK Defense Ministry is now warning the politicians that they won't be able to sustain the Libya operation past the end of the summer without breaking other commitments.

Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, said the navy had planned for a six-month commitment but that the government would have to make "challenging decisions" about what it wanted to do thereafter.

 

Stanhope also conceded that if the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and its Harrier jump jets had not been mothballed last year, they would have been deployed to the Mediterranean.

 

This would have been cheaper – and made operations more reactive – than flying planes from the Italian base at Gioia del Colle, he said.

 

But he insisted the constant jibes about the loss of the ship and the aircraft were having a "corrosive" effect on navy morale. "There is far too much about what could have been," he said.

[Balta1701]

Well, considering that the Libyan operation will seemingly take years unless we give up, this actually has a chance of getting decided before the big Court before that operation ends.

Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Walter Jones continued their bipartisan quest to end the U.S. military’s participation in the conflict in Libya, filing a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against President Obama to “challenge the commitment of the United States to war in Libya absent the required constitutional legal authority.”

 

The lawsuit challenges what the lawmakers see as “the executive branch’s circumvention of Congress and its use of international organizations such as the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to authorize the use of military force abroad, in violation of the Constitution.”

 

“With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated. We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies,” Kucinich said in a statement announcing the suit.

[Balta1701]

NATO begins privately admitting that it hasn't learned the lessons of World War 2.

Almost three months into the campaign of air strikes, Britain and its Nato allies no longer believe bombing alone will end the conflict in Libya, well-placed government officials have told the Guardian.

 

Instead, they are pinning their hopes on the defection of Muammar Gaddafi's closest aides, or the Libyan leader's agreement to flee the country.

 

"No one is envisaging a military victory," said one senior official who echoed Tuesday's warnings by Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, head of the navy, that the bombing cannot continue much beyond the summer.

Some other good stuff in there about how division within the opposition has prevented the formation of a unified military opposition.

[Balta1701]

Obama administration offers a fairly unique defense...the Libya campaign is too small to count.

“We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” Mr. Koh said. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped, or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”

If Congress were to go along with that, it'd be a dramatic expansion of Presidential war powers.

[southsider2k5]

Obama administration offers a fairly unique defense...the Libya campaign is too small to count.

If Congress were to go along with that, it'd be a dramatic expansion of Presidential war powers.

 

That makes sense with the other war he is waging in "secret".