July 17, 2014

All Governance in Libya Remains Contested

An excerpt from, "New York Times Report: CIA-Backed Militias Linked to Benghazi, Libya Attack" by Patrick Martin, December 30, 2013:
A lengthy front-page report in Sunday’s New York Times provides additional confirmation that the attack on a US facility in Benghazi, Libya in September 2012 was the outcome of the Obama administration’s use of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in its war against the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

The Times article, based on dozens of interviews in Benghazi, asserts that the attack that killed four Americans, including US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, was carried out by Libyans who had previously been allied with the US government in the 2011 war that overthrew and murdered Gaddafi. Times correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick writes that the attack was not organized by Al Qaeda or any other group from outside Libya, but “by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi.”

The main US facility in Benghazi was not the small mission building in which Stevens and an aide died, but a larger unmarked compound described as “the Annex” that housed at least 20 people from the CIA. Two security guards at this building were killed by a mortar barrage eight hours after the attack that killed Stevens.

The disparity in staffing between the CIA compound and the diplomatic outpost is telling: the main mission of the US government in Benghazi was the CIA operation, which had spearheaded by the campaign against Gaddafi in 2011, but by 2012 was devoted to a different and even bloodier operation: recruiting manpower and supplying weapons to the Islamic fundamentalist insurgency against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
All Governance in Libya Remains Contested. Source: The Real News. Date Published: July 16, 2014. Description:
Vijay Prashad discusses the current political crisis in Libya as results from the parliamentary elections are soon to be released