US 'seeking country' to take in Gaddafi

[Feuer Frei!]

WTF? Umm, correct me if i'm wrong but isn't this guy a crim? Of the big type? Why are we looking after him? To ensure he can live out his days in a lovely little town with iced tea and cuban cigars?
Why, put him up somewhere in the US, plenty of space there, if they are so 'concerned' about him.

THE Barack Obama administration has launched an intense search for a country that could provide refuge to Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, The New York Times reported. But amid looming indictments against Gaddafi by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague for the atrocities committed against his own people during the ongoing popular uprising and for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, US officials only have a narrow list of potential host countries.
Three officials for President Barack Obama's administration told the Times they were considering finding a country that has not signed or ratified the Rome Statute, which requires countries to turn over anyone being indicted for trial by the ICC.
That approach raises the prospect that Gaddafi could find haven in another country in Africa, where about half of the continent's countries have not signed the treaty. The US is also not a signatory due to worries that is military officers and intelligence officers could be prosecuted.

"We learned some lessons from Iraq, and one of the biggest is that Libyans have to be responsible for regime change, not us," a senior Obama administration official told the newspaper. "What we're simply trying to do is find some peaceful way to organise an exit, if the opportunity arises."
The report came after weeks of bombings by NATO allies and pressure on both the military and Gaddafi aides have failed to oust the man who has ruled Libya with an iron fist for 32 years.
The US supported Britain and France in the nearly month-old operation against Gaddafi, launched out of alarm that Gaddafi would carry out wide-scale killings of civilians and fighters who rose up against him.
But the US has resisted French-led pressure to supply more planes, saying it will play a limited role amid a heavy US commitment in Afghanistan and residual military role in Iraq.
The US and other nations have voiced fears for the safety of civilians in Libya - particularly in the country's third city of Misrata, which the government has declared a "danger zone."
A senior US military official told the Times that NATO countries, which are dealing with an unprecedented level of complexity in their joint air campaign, were using different degrees of caution when striking targets that could cause harm to civilians or damage nearby mosques, schools and hospitals.
Some NATO pilots have refused to drop bombs on the targets due to related concerns, though planners for the allied air campaign cannot foresee which pilots will be matched to given targets, according to the official.
"Without a doubt, it is frustrating working through all this to get maximum effect for our efforts and dealing with all these variants," the official added.


SOURCE

[GoldenRivet]

he will fit in well in Washington DC

Can we make him a slave?

Edit: On a Serious note, I'd just chain him up in a town square and say "Heres your dictator, Have fun"

[joegrundman]

giving him an incentive to go is one of our best options right now. otherwise we have to go in and get him. And then we are the occupiers in another muslim country.

obviously this time it would be different though - throwing flowers etc.

btw Feuer Frei - what makes this guy a crim of the big type? Let's keep this to events of the last 20 years, ok? To really say this is all about Lockerbie is ..well..problematic I'd say.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

btw Feuer Frei - what makes this guy a crim of the big type? Let's keep this to events of the last 20 years, ok? To really say this is all about Lockerbie is ..well..problematic I'd say.

Well, let's look at his resume shall we?

Muammar al-Gaddafi overthrew the monarchy in Libya in 1969
In 1970, he threw the U.S. and U.K. military out of the nation and confiscated all Jewish and Italian owned property in the nation. (unlawful seizure of privately owned property)
1972 Muammar al-Gaddafi financed “Black September” that massacred athletes at the Munich Olympics.
1984 Had mercinaries fire machine guns into anti Muammar al-Gaddafi demonstration in U.K. (outside of the Libya Embassy) killing a police officer and wounding others
1986 Had direct hand in Berlin Discotheque bombing that killed and wounded many US armed forces.
1987 a merchant vessel, the MV Eksund, was intercepted carrying a load of weapons that Libya had given to the IRA proving that Gaddafi was funding and supplying international terrorism.
1988 Libyan agents detonated a bomb on Pan Am flight 103 killing 270 people.

NOW, move forward the George Bush, Tony Blair era. It is becoming evident that their entire agenda was to gain control of as much global oil as possible during their time in office. After the terrorist attacks on the US and UK, (Which still have a cloud of mystery hanging over them since both events happened at the same time as a “mock exercise” for the same event was being staged.), the US and UK easily gained public acceptance of attacking and taking control of Iraq’s oil supply and were threatening to do the same to Gaddafi. Gaddafi was suffering greatly from the UN, UK and US sanctions against him and was worried about Al Qaeda pushing for revolution in Libya. This is when George Bush and Tony Blair opened the door for Gaddafi to surrender his oil diplomatically rather than lose his dictatorship hold on his country.
In 2003 Gaddafi admitted WMD’s and allowed UN inspectors to come in and dismantle them (All but about 10 tons of mustard gas that he still owns.) At that time Gaddafi also denounced terrorism and the terrorist attacks on the US and UK.
In March 2004, Tony Blair visited Gaddafi personally in Libya and cut the deal that would give Bush and Blair total access to Libya’s oil wealth and bring Libya back into International trade. Mr. Blair received the first cash flow from Libya oil. In this agreement, Libya could sell trillions of dollars worth of oil, but had to pay damages for the Pan Am flight 103 act of terrorism. Gaddafi paid 270 Billion Dollars to settle the claim. (Note: Only 80% of that was paid. Gaddafi withheld 40% until the US removed sanctions and withheld the final 20% because the US would not remove them from the terrorist nations list) The same month, Britain and Bulgaria co-sponsored a U.N. resolution which removed the suspended sanctions.
On May 15, 2006, the US State Department announced that it would restore full diplomatic relations with Libya, once Gaddafi declared he was abandoning Libya’s weapons of mass destruction program.
In July 2007, French president Nicolas Sarkozy visited Libya and signed a number of bilateral and multilateral (EU) agreements with Gaddafi
The “makeover” of Libya was complete. Gaddafi had not changed. Gaddafi was still the criminal that committed all the acts of terrorism above. All that had happened was that he paid damages for one act and agreed to sell oil to the UK and US through companies associated with Blair and Bush.
In other words, Blair and Bush gave Gaddafi the ability to buy his way out of his crimes and into the wealth of the international oil groups. With the recent uprising in Libya in an attempt to overthrow Gaddafi, all of these facts are coming to light and the roles of George Bush and Tony Blair in pardoning a world renowned terrorist in exchange for commerce and financial gain is being questioned.

Let me ask you this joegrundman:
Surely the consequences of a man murdering again and again has to be addressed, doesn't it?
To say that we must keep his criminal acts to the last 20 years is ridiculous. What is the point of that.
You don't think he is a criminal?

He is a dictator, and has acted as such, countless times.
He must be held accountable. For his crimes in the last 20 years. And beyond.
It is our moral obligation. For were we to aid a person such as this to a holiday house somewhere in Africa or South Africa with freedom to move and do as he pleases, all the whilst chomping down on cigars and laughing at the weak moral fibres in the Western Culture's bones.
Oh yea, good move that.
In closing, here is an interview with
Tim McCormack, an adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague:
MARK COLVIN: The UN vote comes on top of recently issued international warrants for the arrest of Colonel Gaddafi and his family.

Tim McCormack is an adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. I asked him what the warrants meant.

TIM MCCORMACK: It means that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has the authority to investigate alleged crimes occurring in Libya that come within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Court without Libya having consented as a state party to the Statute of the Court.

MARK COLVIN: So in practice what does that mean?

TIM MCCORMACK: Means that he can lay charges against any person in Libya from Muammar Gaddafi down through his senior political and military elite and ask the pre-trial chamber for approval to issue arrest warrants which would go out internationally for the arrest of any of those named individuals.

MARK COLVIN: And for what sort of crimes?

TIM MCCORMACK: For war crimes, crimes against humanity or acts of genocide. At this stage the prosecutor has announced that he believes there have been crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Libya and they're the categories that he would be investigating.

MARK COLVIN: Does there have to be a declared war for war crimes to be committed? I mean this is essentially a civil war at the moment, I suppose?

TIM MCCORMACK: That's right. No, no declaration is required because the key element is that the crime occurred in the context of an armed conflict rather than a war and that terminology has been developed for 30 plus years to avoid any issues about whether or not we have a formal declaration at this state of war.

So we talk about the law of armed conflict but we still use the language of war crimes which is a legacy from the past.

MARK COLVIN: So what would be a war crime in this context?

TIM MCCORMACK: The wilful targeting of civilians, indiscriminate attacks either from the air or by artillery which fail to distinguish between rebel forces, I'm talking about war crimes committed by Gaddafi's forces, indiscriminate attacks which fail to distinguish between rebel forces and the civilian population.

MARK COLVIN: You're only talking about Gaddafi's forces? It's not possible that the rebel forces could have done the same thing?

TIM MCCORMACK: Absolutely possible and the prosecutor has made it clear that in his investigation of the situation in Libya he keeps an open mind about who may or may not have been responsible. So of course if the rebel forces also targeted, or allegedly targeted civilians as well as Gaddafi's troops, then they would be liable for prosecution for the same war crime.

MARK COLVIN: I suppose the precedent there is the Balkans war where you have prosecuted Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian war criminals.

TIM MCCORMACK: And even Kosovar Albanians in fact. Yes, all sides of the conflict.

MARK COLVIN: So however Slobodan Milosevic died in custody, these things seem to take a very long time. I'm still getting emails in my inbox pretty much every week from Africa about proceedings over the Rwandan massacres of 1994. It's a long time ago.

I mean how much of a threat is it to the Gaddafi family to think that they may be put in jail you know, in 15, 20 years time?

TIM MCCORMACK: I mean it's a very good question, Mark, and there is no contesting the fact that these trials do often take quite a long time. I think what the prosecutor really hopes is that by announcing his intention to investigate the situation in Libya that he's putting the Gaddafi and his senior leadership on notice; that what's happening there is being carefully scrutinised and may become the subject of applications for arrest warrants.

In terms of the possibilities in time of arrests of Gaddafi and others who might be charged, I guess that all depends on how things unfold on the ground. If rebels are actually able to prevail now with this outside intervention and Gaddafi is actually loses power, he may be transferred to The Hague much more quickly than we've been accustomed to seeing in the past.

Or, for example, in contrast with the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, who was subject to an arrest warrant a long ago as March last year and is still at large and very much entrenched in power in Sudan.

SOURCE OF INTERVIEW

And more:
Beyond the use of violence to intimidate Libyans, Gaddafi has been responsible for severely stunting Libya’s economy. His belligerence towards the West and stubborn refusal to extradite wanted terrorists earned his country years of UN economic sanctions. The United States’ response was to ban imports of Libyan oil, effectively removing the biggest market for Libya’s most valuable export from the equation.
In the mid-1990s, Gaddafi expelled 30,000 Palestinians from Libya in a vengeful response to the Israel-Palestinian Leadership Organization peace talks.
And now, in the last week as Libyans have risen against their autocrat, reports are coming in that peaceful protesters are being fired on by Gaddafi forces. Deaths are somewhere in the hundreds.


So, it seems our man isn't that less of a crim after all.

[joegrundman]

so srsly

you are saying that all this is about events more than 20 years ago? Why the resort to opportunism then? Why not, you know, deal with it while Libya was problematic, and not 20+ years later? Also i tell you that no one at an official level has said this has anything to do with retribution for events 20+ yrs ago**

the events of the last 20 yrs have shown instead someone who has tried more than anything else to do business. And your citation supports that.

but surely with the war crimes commissions and talk of genocide, rather than say, trying to put down an armed uprising supported by foreign special forces, imported weapons and high tech weapons used by allies, you are referring to massacres and genocides.

perhaps you can indicate to me which massacres and genocides have taken place, and refer to some evidence of them. surely there is evidence?

** i will say that IMO cameron (co-main cheerleader in the early stages of this event) was motivated by the megrahi case. In that the maneuvering to get Megrahi freed, and then not actually die put Britain in a position of being looked at badly by the US. This is not a position that britain is comfortable in, and especially the new conservative government saw an opportunity to expunge that, and also firmly associate that mess with the Labour party.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

you are saying that all this is about events more than 20 years ago?

Nope, not saying that at all, infact no-where in this thread have i said that. If you are referring to this, the OP, "committed against his own people during the ongoing popular uprising and for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103", then see underlined word. Secondly, those aren't my words, in case you weren't sure. Do i jump on the Hague's ICC's band wagon? Hell yea.

Why not, you know, deal with it while Libya was problematic, and not 20+ years later?

Agree, why not? However, this is worth pondering over:

During the 1970’s and 1980’s, Gaddafi was roundly mocked for an over-inflated ego of such grand proportions that he routinely spoke of himself in world-historical terms. A self-styled “Che Guevara” of the Arab world, Gaddafi mostly annoyed the neighboring despotic regimes.
They saw not a revolutionary in Gaddafi, but a competitor, someone who endangered their geopolitical influence. As such, they repudiated Gaddafi for his ill-conceived invasions of Egypt and Chad—and stepped up efforts to decrease his political power in the region. A kind of “cold peace” took hold between Libya and its neighbors for the next two and a half decades, as neighboring despots ignored Gaddafi’s eccentricities in exchange for a piece of Libya’s oil wealth.
The West did not anticipate Gaddafi’s war against the Libyan people. Neither, it seems, did the Arab states. Gaddafi hid below the radar of Western and Arab leaders for nearly a quarter of a century, engaging in a pseudo-isolationism that allowed his political activities to go mostly unchecked. After he lost his battle for dominance in the Arab world, you see, Gaddafi reinvented himself.

No longer the Arab incarnation of Che, Gaddafi retired his military garb and replaced it with royal dress inspired by Libya’s former King Idriss. Abandoning his doomed political maneuvers in the Middle East, Gaddafi now saw himself as a pan-African prophet, destined to take up the project of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and imbue the African citizens to the south with a new sense of anti-colonial zeal. An African liberator who would raise the collective consciousness of the sub-Saharan population, taking Fanon’s postcolonial message to the masses.
Thus, Gaddafi went South of the Sahara—and, indeed, all around it—and spent the next two decades there delivering populist speeches, sleeping in tents, kissing babies, organizing photo ops, bribing sub-Saharan autocrats and funding intrastate conflict. On witnessing some of his campaigns throughout southern Africa, one could legitimately wonder if he ever spent any time in his home country. As many people outside of Libya ignored Gaddafi for a very long time, the people of sub-Saharan Africa got to know him quite well.
As a result, millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa were not at all surprised by Gaddafi’s fierce repression. After all, Gaddafi had been pillaging their resources, cozying up to their dictators and exploiting their conflicts for decades before his crimes against the Libyan people caught the world’s attention.
A re-invention of sorts, and under the radar of Western leaders. 2 key points as to why nothing was done back then.
But why is that an arguement in the first place? Why was nothing done back then? Well, if we have a chance to bring to justice someone then does this question really matter in the present? Moot really.

Also i tell you that no one at an official level has said this has anything to do with retribution for events 20+ yrs ago**

Yea, so?

the events of the last 20 yrs have shown instead someone who has tried more than anything else to do business. And your citation supports that.

Where?

but surely with the war crimes commissions and talk of genocide, rather than say, trying to put down an armed uprising supported by foreign special forces, imported weapons and high tech weapons used by allies, you are referring to massacres and genocides.
perhaps you can indicate to me which massacres and genocides have taken place, and refer to some evidence of them. surely there is evidence?

Sure:

http://newafricaanalysis.co.uk/index...or-war-crimes/

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/20...12/145202.html

Oh yea and who could forget this:

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/200...ison-massacre/

In relation to the word massacre(s), isn't that what is occurring?
The massacre of his own people, systematically?
Or should we rather use a word like killing? Which would be wrong and underemphasizing the eradication, brutal at that of people who don't see eye to eye with him.

[Castout]

Someone should tell him worldly power is not that good. Living your old time in peace should be a much better option.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Castout

Someone should tell him worldly power is not that good. Living your old time in peace should be a much better option.

Ofc, good luck with that though.
Most of these characters want to go out with a bang, not a whimper though. Which in turn has terrible consequences.

[Jimbuna]

I tend to agree with Frei....if the Americans are so concerned for him they can grant him US asylum.

[Skybird]

Assisting a terrorist, mass murderer and criminal of the worst category to escape legal prosecution and finding him a save haven? Isn't that complicity in crime?

"We have learned some lessons from Iraq" - Iraq was wrongly planned and an error by intention, yes. But can this be a reason now to act wrongly again, just at the pother extreme ending of the same scale?

Hunt him, find him, kill him. Him and his clan. They all are not much different and have all sucked the Lybians' blood and turned it into the obscene wealth they personally live in.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

I tend to agree with Frei....if the Americans are so concerned for him they can grant him US asylum.

They already have a probloem to act by that logic in case of Guantanamo. Those prisoners they labelled after many years as innocent (correctly or incorrectly does not matter for the moment), they expected other nations to let in - but they did not let them in themselves. If the men were innocent, why not, then? If the men were guilty and dangeorus, why do they expect that other countries should accept to get them?

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Assisting a terrorist, mass murderer and criminal of the worst category to escape legal prosecution and finding him a save haven? Isn't that complicity in crime?

It certainly appears that way. On the surface.
The US would justify this course of action by arguing the point that by allowing him a safe haven now will avoid more blood shed.
By stopping the violence now we have saved the region!
Noble motif, perhaps but at what price? What signal does this send out to other war mongers, dictators, future mad hatters who think it is their god-given right to do with their country (and to other countries) as they please.
No-one has the balls to take a hard line to these sorts of people!

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Skybird

They already have a probloem to act by that logic in case of Guantanamo. Those prisoners they labelled after many years as innocent (correctly or incorrectly does not matter for the moment), they expected other nations to let in - but they did not let them in themselves. If the men were innocent, why not, then? If the men were guilty and dangeorus, why do they expect that other countries should accept to get them?

Good points and those I also tend to agree with.

[joegrundman]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Nope, not saying that at all, infact no-where in this thread have i said that. If you are referring to this, the OP, "committed against his own people during the ongoing popular uprising and for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103", then see underlined word. Secondly, those aren't my words, in case you weren't sure. Do i jump on the Hague's ICC's band wagon? Hell yea. Agree, why not? However, this is worth pondering over:

it's true that outside copy/paste you have't said very much. however i made the mistake of assuming because you were posting to support your position, the posts in some way reflected your opinion. my apologies.

this refers to when i said this is all about events more than 20 yrs ago. you deny it, yet you chose to justify it with one text that lists events all of which are more than 20 years old, and a second text which lists only measures gaddafi took in the last 10 years or so in order to get back into the community of nations.

Sorry for misunderstanding you?

Originally Posted by Kristin Rawls

During the 1970’s and 1980’s, Gaddafi was roundly mocked for an over-inflated ego of such grand proportions that he routinely spoke of himself in world-historical terms. A self-styled “Che Guevara” of the Arab world, Gaddafi mostly annoyed the neighboring despotic regimes.
They saw not a revolutionary in Gaddafi, but a competitor, someone who endangered their geopolitical influence. As such, they repudiated Gaddafi for his ill-conceived invasions of Egypt and Chad—and stepped up efforts to decrease his political power in the region. A kind of “cold peace” took hold between Libya and its neighbors for the next two and a half decades, as neighboring despots ignored Gaddafi’s eccentricities in exchange for a piece of Libya’s oil wealth.
The West did not anticipate Gaddafi’s war against the Libyan people. Neither, it seems, did the Arab states. Gaddafi hid below the radar of Western and Arab leaders for nearly a quarter of a century, engaging in a pseudo-isolationism that allowed his political activities to go mostly unchecked. After he lost his battle for dominance in the Arab world, you see, Gaddafi reinvented himself.

No longer the Arab incarnation of Che, Gaddafi retired his military garb and replaced it with royal dress inspired by Libya’s former King Idriss. Abandoning his doomed political maneuvers in the Middle East, Gaddafi now saw himself as a pan-African prophet, destined to take up the project of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and imbue the African citizens to the south with a new sense of anti-colonial zeal. An African liberator who would raise the collective consciousness of the sub-Saharan population, taking Fanon’s postcolonial message to the masses.
Thus, Gaddafi went South of the Sahara—and, indeed, all around it—and spent the next two decades there delivering populist speeches, sleeping in tents, kissing babies, organizing photo ops, bribing sub-Saharan autocrats and funding intrastate conflict. On witnessing some of his campaigns throughout southern Africa, one could legitimately wonder if he ever spent any time in his home country. As many people outside of Libya ignored Gaddafi for a very long time, the people of sub-Saharan Africa got to know him quite well.
As a result, millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa were not at all surprised by Gaddafi’s fierce repression. After all, Gaddafi had been pillaging their resources, cozying up to their dictators and exploiting their conflicts for decades before his crimes against the Libyan people caught the world’s attention.
A re-invention of sorts, and under the radar of Western leaders. 2 key points as to why nothing was done back then.

when copying and pasting someone else it is good form to provide a link and make it clear you did that, but i accept this was probably just a slip up on your part and you did not intend to pass it off as you own writing.

nonetheless, the text is notably short of crimes, and seems mostly to say gaddafi is weird (which we know), and adopted a pan-african strategy, including using development aid to gain influence. Which is not afaik a crime against humanity

Originally Posted by ff

But why is that an arguement in the first place? Why was nothing done back then? Well, if we have a chance to bring to justice someone then does this question really matter in the present? Moot really.

this bit is yours, right? if for you it is about justice/revenge, well whatever

Yea, so?

ok, ok, it is about justice/ revenge and whatever the official line is irrelevant, right? the motives of the actors involved, both stated and unstated are irrelevant

Where?

well i suppose if you spent more time writing your posts than cutting/pasting you'd be more aware of what you had included.

it was the second of the two texts you cited earlier - the first listing crimes more than 20 years old, the second listed steps libya had taken to regain trade rights with the west, including dismantling wmd, paying damages to lockerbie victims, negotiating trade deals and attempting to negotiate himself off the list of terrorist supporting nations

Sure:

http://newafricaanalysis.co.uk/index...or-war-crimes/

this article did not include any details

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/20...12/145202.html

this article made reference to 3 (three) extra judicial killings of captured rebel fighters. Not sure that 3 individuals is a scale of crime sufficient for a whole war-crimes thing.

Oh yea and who could forget this:

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/200...ison-massacre/

but this one relates to a 1996 event which i confess i have never heard of. The allegation is serious, I grant you.

In relation to the word massacre(s), isn't that what is occurring?
The massacre of his own people, systematically?
Or should we rather use a word like killing? Which would be wrong and underemphasizing the eradication, brutal at that of people who don't see eye to eye with him.

that prison story is a separate one - and serious.

but the present issue - how do you know it is a systematic massacre, and not an armed rebellion in civil war with the loyalists. How do you know the rebellion is even a majority of the population? they don't seem to control that much of the country. So you tell me, how do you fight a civil war, if any killing is a massacre and therefore illegal?

Should all rebellions be allowed to win, at all times? Is suppression of armed uprising always wrong?

Anyway it doesn't matter - the west has got itself into this, and it can't get out without daffy leaving. That means he either leaves voluntarily, or we have to go in and get him. The rebellion isn't popular enough to do it themselves. they aren't even popular enough to do it with some anglo-french airsupport. which means we have to go in to libya and create the facts.

since another occupation is not something we are really keen on, an alternative is to find someone who'll offer daffy asylum and let him go, and hopefully get a new regime in libya that can restore stability, make a few pro-western concessions and we can all go home happy we aren't stuck there for the next 7 years