Qaddafi Uses Helo's and Fighters Against His Own People.

[philw]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/world/africa/23libya.html?_r=1

CAIRO — Libya appeared to slip further from the grip of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Tuesday, as opposition forces in eastern Libya moved to consolidate control of the region, arming themselves with weapons taken from security warehouses, and fighting continued in Tripoli, witnesses said.

In Tripoli, the capital, the government was striking back at protesters challenging Colonel Qaddafi’s 40-year rule. Security forces and militiamen backed by helicopters and warplanes besieged parts of the city overnight, according to witnesses and news reports from Tripoli.

Fighting was heavy at times overnight, witnesses said, and the streets were thick with special forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi fighting alongside mercenaries. Roving the streets in trucks, they shot freely as planes dropped what witnesses described as “small bombs” and helicopters fired on protesters.

Hundreds of Qaddafi supporters took over the central Green Square in the capital after truckloads of militiamen arrived and opened fire on protesters, scattering them. Residents said they now feared to leave their houses.

“It was an obscene amount of gunfire,” said one witness. “They were strafing these people. People were running in every direction.”

Colonel Qaddafi, whose whereabouts have been unknown, appeared for roughly 30 seconds on state television at 2 a.m. on Tuesday to signal his defiance and deny rumors he had left the country. “I want to show that I’m in Tripoli and not in Venezuela,” he said, holding a large white umbrella while getting into a vehicle.

“I wanted to say something to the youths at Green Square and stay up late with them but it started raining,” he said, referring to his supporters. “Thank God, it’s a good thing.”

With the Internet largely blocked, telephone service interrupted, and access to international journalists constrained, information remained limited. There were conflicting reports about the situation late Tuesday morning in Tripoli, with some witnesses reporting ongoing gunfire and renewed strafing by warplanes, and others saying the streets were momentarily quiet and being cleaned of debris from the night’s violence.

With pro-government security forces either absent or defecting to join the opposition in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and the center of the week-long rebellion, citizens armed with guns organized into informal security committees, a resident reached by telephone said. Supermarkets and warehouses were open, as were local hospitals, caring for hundreds of people wounded during the government crackdown of the weekend, before defections to the people from the military brought a lull in the violence.

“There is collaboration between people like never before,” said Mohammed Abdul Rahman el Mahrek, 42, who has been living in the city for 15 years and said he supported the rebellion. The warehouses of security forces loyal to the government had been looted by the people with the help of the army, he said. “It is quiet,” he said, “but it is like the quiet before the storm.”

Two warplanes, he said, landed at the Benghazi airport on Monday, apparently after refusing to fire against protesters. The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said in Cairo on Tuesday that the runways there had since been destroyed. He gave no details, however.

Large areas of eastern Libya along the Mediterranean coast also appeared to be under the opposition’s control, said Ben Wedeman, a CNN correspondent who entered the region late Monday. Citizens with guns were everywhere, he reported, the streets were quiet, and the Libyan security forces at the border of Egypt had largely evaporated.

The border with Tunis in the western part of the country, however, was reinforced by Libyan security. People fleeing the country said they had their money and telephones confiscated, and were left “only with their clothes,” an Al Jazeera correspondent, Nazanine Moshiri, reported from the scene.

The extent of the casualties remained unknown. Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday that it was struggling to confirm the number of people killed in the uprising, saying it had confirmed 233 deaths, most in Benghazi. Another international group estimated that that at least 500 people had died.

International condemnation of the violence continued to build. “Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed,” said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in a statement. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said Monday he had spoken to Colonel Qaddafi and urged him to immediately halt attacks on protesters.

The rebellion is the latest and bloodiest so far of the uprisings that have swept across the Arab world with surprising speed in recent weeks, toppling autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia, and challenging others in Bahrain and Yemen.

Monday had begun with growing signs that Colonel Qaddafi’s grip on power might be slipping, with protesters in control of Benghazi, his security forces pulled back to key locations in the capital as government buildings smoldered, and a growing number of officials and military personnel defecting to join the revolt.

But the violence Colonel Qaddafi unleashed Monday afternoon on Tripoli demonstrated that he was willing to shed far more blood than the deposed rulers of either neighboring Egypt or Tunisia in his effort to hold on to power.

Two residents said planes had been landing for 10 days ferrying mercenaries from African countries to an air base in Tripoli. The mercenaries had done much of the shooting, which began Sunday night, they said. Some forces were using particularly lethal, hollow-point bullets, they said.

“The shooting is not designed to disperse the protesters,” said one resident, who wanted to be identified only as Waleed, fearing for his security. “It is meant to kill them.”

“This is not Ben Ali or Mubarak,” he added, referring to the deposed leaders of Tunisia and Egypt. “This man has no sense of humanity.” As rioters overwhelmed the streets around 1 a.m. on Monday, Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, delivered a rambling but bellicose speech threatening Libyans with the prospect of civil war and “rivers of blood” if they turned away from his father.

Apparently enraged by the speech, protesters converged on Green Square soon after and clashed with heavily armed riot police officers for several hours, witnesses in Tripoli said by telephone.

In a sign of growing cracks within the government, several senior officials broke with Colonel Qaddafi. The Quryna newspaper, which has ties to Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, reported that the justice minister, Mustafa Abud al-Jeleil, had resigned in protest over the deadly response to the demonstrations.

And in New York, the Libyan delegation to the United Nations defected as well. The deputy ambassador and more than a dozen members of the Libyan mission to the United Nations called upon Colonel Qaddafi to step down and leave the country in a letter drafted Monday.

“He has to leave as soon as possible,” said the deputy ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi, paraphrasing the letter. “He has to stop killing the Libyan people.”

He urged other nations to join in that request, saying he feared there could be a large-scale massacre in Tripoli and calling on “African nations” to stop sending what he called “mercenaries” to fight on behalf of Colonel Qaddafi’s government.

Abdel Monem al-Howni, Libya’s representative to the Arab League, also resigned, and Libyan diplomats continued to defect from government service on Tuesday, pledging alliance with the Libyan people and decrying the brutal crackdown. In Tunis, the Tunisian capital, the old green, red and black flag of Libya that has been adopted by the protesters as their symbol flew over the Libyan Embassy, replacing the solid green flag of by Colonel Qaddafi’s government.

Two Libyan fighter pilots ordered to bomb protesters changed their course and instead defected to Malta, according to Maltese government officials quoted by Reuters.

The United States ordered all nonessential personnel and family members at its embassy to leave the country, and the Egyptian government said two of its planes were allowed to land to evacuate Egyptians citizens from Tripoli. Several foreign oil and gas companies were moving on Monday to evacuate some workers as well. The Quryna newspaper said that protests have occurred in Ras Lanuf, an oil town where some workers were being assembled to defend a refinery complex from attacks.

Though the outcome of the battle is impossible to determine, some protesters said the bloodshed in Tripoli only redoubled their determination.

“He will never let go of his power,” said one, Abdel Rahman. “This is a dictator, an emperor. He will die before he gives an inch. But we are no longer afraid. We are ready to die after what we have seen.”

[fightingquaker13]

The key to success in life, if you are a mafioso or a dictator, is learning the value of the word "enough". If you get this simple concept, you can quit while the quitting is good and retire to the French Riviera with more stolen money than you can spend. If on the other hand, you wait one day too late? You end up like Mussolini, hung upside down. If I were Mohammar, I'd be in transit to an elsewhere. When your diplomats are disowning you and your airforce pilots are defecting with their (very expensive) planes and you are shippinf in mercenaries from Zimbabwe? These are serious signs that the day to retire was yesterday.
FQ13

[Pathfinder]

They're not necessarily "his" people.  Libya is a fiction much like Yugoslavia under Tito was - a bunch of ethnically and religiously different tribes and sub-groups bound together by an iron-fisted military ruler.

Tough on the people who want him out, but like Jefferson said, the Tree of Liberty has to be watered periodically with the blood of patriots and tyrants. In no way do I think this is a truly patriotic movement in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, etc. Rather, this is a revolt of people tired of the crap ginned-up by the MB against western-leaning (or neutral) gummints.

We are heading into - or are already in - some very interesting times.

[crusader rabbit]

Top Sunni cleric says army should kill Kadhafi
 
DOHA (AFP) – Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa on Monday that any Libyan soldier who can shoot dead embattled leader Moamer Kadhafi should do so "to rid Libya of him."

"Whoever in the Libyan army is able to shoot a bullet at Mr Kadhafi should do so," Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born cleric who is usually based in Qatar, told Al-Jazeera television. (emphasis mine)

He also told Libyan soldiers "not to obey orders to strike at your own people," and urged Libyan ambassadors around the world to dissociate themselves from Kadhafi's regime.

Famous in the Middle East for his at times controversial fatwas, or religious edicts, the octogenarian Qaradawi has celebrity status in the Arab world thanks to his religious broadcasts on Al-Jazeera.

He has in the past defended "violence carried out by certain Muslims."

The West accuses the cleric of supporting "terrorism" because he sanctioned Palestinian suicide attacks in Israel. Britain and the United States have refused to grant him entry visas.

The cleric, spiritual leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and longtime resident of Qatar, heads the International Union for Muslim Scholars.
 

Watch the Brotherhood.  They are not the apolitical, peaceful bunch portrayed by our own leftist press.  These boys are intent on creating a caliphate and establishing sharia throughout the globe.

[fightingquaker13]

They're not necessarily "his" people.  Libya is a fiction much like Yugoslavia under Tito was - a bunch of ethnically and religiously different tribes and sub-groups bound together by an iron-fisted military ruler.

Tough on the people who want him out, but like Jefferson said, the Tree of Liberty has to be watered periodically with the blood of patriots and tyrants. In no way do I think this is a truly patriotic movement in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, etc. Rather, this is a revolt of people tired of the crap ginned-up by the MB against western-leaning (or neutral) gummints.

We are heading into - or are already in - some very interesting times.

Path
A word of caution. The Muslim Brotherhood is religious and Muslim. That said, its about as unified as the Christian "Right" here. Remember there are a lot of folks preaching the social gospel, some saying Christians, or at least the Church, should focus on the Great Commission not politics, the old school Jerry Falwell types, the younger Mega Church pastors and it goes on. And that that's just white Protestants. Bring in the Black Church, the Catholics, it gets murkier. Are Christians pro or con on the death penalty? What about the war? The environment? Education? Welfare? Immigration? What is the face of Christian politics in America? Damned if I know and I am a Christian political scientist. Its even worse for the MB. These regimes tolerated religion, not politics. Charities and youth groups were fine, but nothing political. So you have the classic conflict, hardliners and reformers, a younger group of leaders and old farts, neither of whom have a lot of political experience. I'm not wearing rose colored glasses here. I'm just saying that just like the black church in the South, the mosque was one of the few places folks could safely gather. It doesn't mean they all agree. What comes out is any one's guess, but I would judge it by the fruits and wait to see what they present. Hell, its not like we have any other viable options anyways. When in doubt, smile.
FQ13  

[Sponsor]

[billt]

It's funny how mixing politics and religion never works out very well. You would think the muslims would have grasped this concept by now.  Bill T.

[philw]

It's funny how mixing politics and religion never works out very well. You would think the muslims would have grasped this concept by now.  Bill T.

slow learners

[JC5123]

I say good for Qaddafi. These protesters are not fighting for freedom. They are fighting for control so they can enact their own version of despotism. Anyone who thinks that these countries will be better off if the current governments are tossed is dreaming. Every one of them will be a miniature Iran. I've said this before, but I still think that Slobodan Milošević had the right idea.

[tombogan03884]

It's funny how mixing politics and religion never works out very well. You would think the muslims would have grasped this concept by now.  Bill T.

That's one of the mistakes Westerners continue to make.
Islam is NOT a religion where one has their faith and then their political philosophy.
It is an ideology, just like Communism, that governs all thought and actions.
The very word "Islam" means submission.
Submission to the will of Allah, the specific words of the Koran, and the interpretations decided by Allah's self appointed representitives on earth.
In other words, shut your face and learn your place.
Ever notice that in every single case ever recorded of religious violence on of the 3 "people of the book" are involved ?
Usually either Christians or Muslims.

JC is correct