: Gaddafi Tried to Warn the West, but Nobody Listened
Before the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror, Louis XV predicted, “After me, the Deluge.” Before being overthrown, Libya’s secular dictator tried to warn the West of a new Reign of Terror, essentially foretelling, “After me, the Jihad.”
This was disclosed with the recent release of phone conversations from early 2011 between Muammar Gaddafi and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The West was then gearing up to use unrest in Libya as a pretext for military intervention and regime change. Gaddafi desperately tried to convey through Blair the folly of such a war, pleading that he was trying to defend Libya from Al Qaeda, which had set up base in the country. He said:
“They have managed to get arms and terrify people. people can’t leave their homes… It’s a jihad situation. They have arms and are terrorising people in the street.”
Gaddafi’s warning went unheeded, and NATO, led by the U.S. and France, launched an air war that toppled Libya’s government. Later that year, Gaddafi (himself a brutal oppressor, like all heads of state) was forced out of a drainage pipe, and then beaten, sodomized, and shot in the street by a mob. His corpse was then draped over the hood of a car.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had done more than any single person to advance the Libya War, was informed of Gaddafi’s death while on camera. Fancying herself a modern Caesar, she chortled, “We came, we saw, he died!”
Since then, Gaddafi has been proven tragically right. As Libya descended into civil war and failed-state chaos, jihadi groups connected to Al Qaeda conquered much of the country. Libya underwent the same American “liberation” that had already befallen Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia — and would soon be visited on Syria and Yemen.
Shortly after Gaddafi’s overthrow, some of the now-rampant jihadis helped the CIA run guns from Benghazi to fellow jihadis in Syria.
Benghazi had been a rebel stronghold. The Obama administration claimed a Gaddafi-perpetrated “genocide” was imminent in that city, using that claim as the chief justification for the war. There was zero indication of such an impending atrocity. But there was ample evidence of an Al Qaeda presence in Benghazi, as Gaddafi tried to tell Blair, saying that members had “…managed to set up local stations and in Benghazi have spread the thoughts and ideas of al Qaeda.”
After the regime change, on September 11, 2012, the jihadis turned on their U.S. allies in Benghazi, sacked the U.S. diplomatic compound, and murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Now ISIS has spread throughout Libya. Just days ago, ISIS perpetrated a truck bombing that killed dozens at a Libyan police academy in Sirte, a former Gaddafi stronghold. Indeed, Gaddafi informed Blair that jihadis had “attacked police stations” back in 2011.
Gaddafi further warned Blair:
“They want to control the Mediterranean and then they will attack Europe.”
And ISIS has, indeed, been battling to take control of Libya’s main oil ports in recent weeks. The group has also long been planning to use Libya as a base from which to launch attacks on nearby southern Europe. ISIS did strike Europe recently, most famously in Paris.
And it was not just Gaddafi personally who had been ringing such alarms to the Western powers thirsting for his blood. His intelligence officers produced reports demonstrating that heavy weapons being sent to the Libyan opposition, with NATO approval and Qatari financing, were being funneled to militants with ties to Al Qaeda. At least one of those reports was even prepared in English to facilitate its transmission to key members of Congress via U.S. intelligence.
Yet, there was no need for the West to rely on the Libyan regime for information about the jihadi threat. Indeed, as emails recently released by the State Department reveal, Hillary Clinton’s own right-hand man had informed her before Gaddafi’s overthrow that rebels were committing war crimes, and that “…radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command.”
As Brad Hoff reports, that same email discloses that, very early in the Libyan crisis, “British, French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi suburbs.”
Before the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror, Louis XV predicted, “After me, the Deluge.” Before being overthrown, Libya’s secular dictator tried to warn the West of a new Reign of Terror, essentially foretelling, “After me, the Jihad.”
This was disclosed with the recent release of phone conversations from early 2011 between Muammar Gaddafi and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The West was then gearing up to use unrest in Libya as a pretext for military intervention and regime change. Gaddafi desperately tried to convey through Blair the folly of such a war, pleading that he was trying to defend Libya from Al Qaeda, which had set up base in the country. He said:
“They have managed to get arms and terrify people. people can’t leave their homes… It’s a jihad situation. They have arms and are terrorising people in the street.”
Gaddafi’s warning went unheeded, and NATO, led by the U.S. and France, launched an air war that toppled Libya’s government. Later that year, Gaddafi (himself a brutal oppressor, like all heads of state) was forced out of a drainage pipe, and then beaten, sodomized, and shot in the street by a mob. His corpse was then draped over the hood of a car.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had done more than any single person to advance the Libya War, was informed of Gaddafi’s death while on camera. Fancying herself a modern Caesar, she chortled, “We came, we saw, he died!”
Since then, Gaddafi has been proven tragically right. As Libya descended into civil war and failed-state chaos, jihadi groups connected to Al Qaeda conquered much of the country. Libya underwent the same American “liberation” that had already befallen Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia — and would soon be visited on Syria and Yemen.
Shortly after Gaddafi’s overthrow, some of the now-rampant jihadis helped the CIA run guns from Benghazi to fellow jihadis in Syria.
Benghazi had been a rebel stronghold. The Obama administration claimed a Gaddafi-perpetrated “genocide” was imminent in that city, using that claim as the chief justification for the war. There was zero indication of such an impending atrocity. But there was ample evidence of an Al Qaeda presence in Benghazi, as Gaddafi tried to tell Blair, saying that members had “…managed to set up local stations and in Benghazi have spread the thoughts and ideas of al Qaeda.”
After the regime change, on September 11, 2012, the jihadis turned on their U.S. allies in Benghazi, sacked the U.S. diplomatic compound, and murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Now ISIS has spread throughout Libya. Just days ago, ISIS perpetrated a truck bombing that killed dozens at a Libyan police academy in Sirte, a former Gaddafi stronghold. Indeed, Gaddafi informed Blair that jihadis had “attacked police stations” back in 2011.
Gaddafi further warned Blair:
“They want to control the Mediterranean and then they will attack Europe.”
And ISIS has, indeed, been battling to take control of Libya’s main oil ports in recent weeks. The group has also long been planning to use Libya as a base from which to launch attacks on nearby southern Europe. ISIS did strike Europe recently, most famously in Paris.
And it was not just Gaddafi personally who had been ringing such alarms to the Western powers thirsting for his blood. His intelligence officers produced reports demonstrating that heavy weapons being sent to the Libyan opposition, with NATO approval and Qatari financing, were being funneled to militants with ties to Al Qaeda. At least one of those reports was even prepared in English to facilitate its transmission to key members of Congress via U.S. intelligence.
Yet, there was no need for the West to rely on the Libyan regime for information about the jihadi threat. Indeed, as emails recently released by the State Department reveal, Hillary Clinton’s own right-hand man had informed her before Gaddafi’s overthrow that rebels were committing war crimes, and that “…radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command.”
As Brad Hoff reports, that same email discloses that, very early in the Libyan crisis, “British, French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi suburbs.”
