Eastasia Is Our Enemy! Eastasia is our enemy! Eastasia is our friend! Eastasia has always been our friend! Pacifica is the enemy!
British Prime Minister Tony Blair met Thursday with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and said after the historic talks that the former pariah state could become an important partner in the war on terror … “I was particularly struck by Colonel Gadhafi’s … recognition that Libya’s own future is best secured by a new relationship with the outside world and of a common cause … in the fight against al-Qaida extremism and terrorism.”
Uh-huh. Looks like Blair and Bush have promoted Colonel G to be their new secular hard man in the Arab World. Maybe thay can take tea together with their other favourite dictator-de-jour, Pervez Musharraf. After all, they needed someone to replace Old Secular Saddam when he went off message and had to be fired. What’s in it for Colonel G? He has long recognised that religious-based pan-nationalist Islamism posed a significant threat to his own personal blend of secular, nationalist fascism-with-an-Arab-flava. It was no coincidence that it was Libya that issued the first international arrest warrant for Osama Bin Laden back in 1998. Of course, Colonel G had a direct reason to be pissed off at Al Qaeda after one of their agents (Anas al-Liby) in the pay of MI6 tried to assassinate Colonel G.
British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice … Five months after the warrant was issued, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania … The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government’s most wanted list with a reward of $25 million for his capture … Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative, al-Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000.
Obviously, Colonel G saw then and sees now that Osama’s personal charisma and rapacious ambition poses a threat to Colonel G’s own grip over the disenchanted, disenfranchised Libya youth and he wants to avoid Libya turning into another Algeria.
The first state to officially prosecute bin Laden was Libya, on charges of terrorism. Bin Laden wanted to settle in Libya in the early 1990s, but was hindered by the government of Muammar Gaddafi … Enraged by Libya’s refusal, bin Laden organized attacks inside Libya, including assassination attempts against Gaddafi … Gaddafi even demanded Western police institutions, such as Interpol, pursue … bin Laden, but never obtained cooperation.
There are, of course, earlier precedents for US-Libyan cooperation. Way back in 2002 it was the US, teaming up with notable human rights advocates Cuba, Nigeria, Iran, China, Libya, Saudia Arabia, and Syria, that tried to block a proposal before the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva designed to give more teeth to the Convention Against Torture. Even with the aid of most of the world’s tyrannies, the proposal to expand prison inspections was passed but, in a typical Bush Gang spoiler strategy that would be comical if it wasn’t so desperately evil, the US is now deliberately starving the inspection body of funding by insisting that the nations suspected of torturing their prisoners should pay for the inspections designed to discover whether they are, in fact, torturing their prisoners.
The protocol, which has been under negotiation for a decade, would be an optional, supplementary document. Its objective is “to establish a system of regular visits undertaken by independent and national bodies to places where people are deprived of their liberty, in order to prevent torture.” … Human rights activists say the United States is still trying to block the treaty by demanding that funding for prison monitors come from concerned national governments and not the regular U.N. budget.
Earlier here.