On Libya, Now They Tell Us

Exclusive: The Washington Post now admits that the key role of Islamists in Libya’s uprising “went largely unnoticed” before Muammar Gaddafi was toppled last month. But Robert Parry asks whose fault was that, since it was the Post and other Big Media that were acting more as propagandists for “regime change” than honest brokers.

By Robert Parry

During the six-month uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, major U.S. news outlets repeated again and again that the Libyan dictator was behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and they ignored warnings that militant Islamists were at the core of the anti-Gaddafi rebel army.

Indeed, for Americans to get alternative views on these points, they had to search out Web sites, like Consortiumnews.com, which had the audacity not to march in lockstep with the rest of the Western media. Only outside the mainstream press would you find significant questions asked about the certainty over Libya’s guilt in the Pan Am bombing and about the makeup of the rebels.

Now, after the United States and its NATO allies have engineered the desired “regime change” in Libya under the pretext of “protecting civilians” those two points are coming more into focus.

The New York Times and the Washington Post on Thursday finally acknowledged that radical Islamists, including some with links to al-Qaeda, are consolidating their power inside the new regime in Tripoli.

And, the proverbial dog not barking even as Libya’s secret intelligence files have been exposed to the eyes of Western journalists is the absence of any incriminating evidence regarding Libya’s role in the Lockerbie case. Earlier interrogations of Libya’s ex-intelligence chief Moussa Koussa by Scottish authorities also apparently came up empty, as he was allowed to leave London for Qatar.

Since Gaddafi’s fall, news outlets also have reported that Libyan intelligence agent, Ali al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing by a Scottish court and was later released on humanitarian grounds because of terminal prostate cancer, is indeed gravely ill, bedridden and seemingly near death.

Megrahi’s trial in 2001 before a panel of Scottish judges was more a kangaroo court than any serious effort to determine guilt even a Scottish appeals court expressed concern about a grave miscarriage of justice but the Western press continues to describe Megrahi, without qualification, as the “Lockerbie bomber.”

It also was common in the West’s news media to smirk at the notion that Megrahi was truly suffering from advanced prostate cancer since he hadn’t died as quickly as some doctors thought he might. After Gaddafi’s regime fell, Megrahi’s family invited BBC and other news organizations to see Megrahi struggling to breathe in his sick bed.

His son, Khaled al-Megrahi, also continued to insist on his father’s innocence. “He believes and we know that everybody will see the truth,” the younger Megrahi told the BBC. “I know my father is innocent and one day his innocence will come out.”

Asked about the people who died in the bombing, the son said: “We feel sorry about all the people who died. We want to know who did this bad thing. We want to know the truth as well.”

Convicted or Railroaded?

As more information becomes available inside Libya, the facts may finally be clarified about whether Gaddafi’s government did or did not have a hand in the bombing over Lockerbie. However, so far, the indications are that Megrahi may well have been railroaded by the Scottish judges who found a second Libyan defendant innocent and were under political pressure to convict someone for the crime.

After Megrahi’s curious conviction, the West imposed harsh economic sanctions on Libya, agreeing to lift them only if Libya accepted “responsibility” for the bombing and paid restitution to the families of the 270 victims. To get rid of the punishing sanctions, Libya accepted the deal although its officials continued to insist that Libya had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing.

However, amid this year’s propaganda campaign in support of the Libyan rebels, none of this uncertainty was mentioned in the New York Times, the Washington Post or other leading U.S. news outlets. Gaddafi’s guilt for Lockerbie was simply stated as flat fact, much as the same news organizations endorsed false claims about Iraq’s WMD in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of that Arab country.

Similarly, there was scant U.S. media attention given to evidence that eastern Libya, the heart of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion, was a hotbed for Islamic militancy with that region supplying the most per-capita militants fighting U.S. troops in Iraq, often under the banner of al-Qaeda.

Instead, Gaddafi’s claims that he was battling Islamic terrorists in the Benghazi region were widely mocked or ignored in the West. Even a report by analysts Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center got short-shrift.

In their report, “Al-Qaeda’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” Felter and Fishman analyzed al-Qaeda documents captured in 2007 showing personnel records of militants who flocked to Iraq for the war. The documents showed eastern Libya providing a surprising number of suicide bombers who traveled to Iraq to kill American troops.

Felter and Fishman wrote that these so-called Sinjar Records disclosed that while Saudis comprised the largest number of foreign fighters in Iraq, Libyans represented the largest per-capita contingent by far. Those Libyans came overwhelmingly from towns and cities in the east.

“The vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their hometown in the Sinjar Records resided in the country’s Northeast, particularly the coastal cities of Darnah 60.2% (53) and Benghazi 23.9% (21),” Felter and Fishman wrote.

The authors added that Abu Layth al‐Libi, Emir of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), “reinforced Benghazi and Darnah’s importance to Libyan jihadis in his announcement that LIFG had joined al‐Qa’ida.”

Top Libyan Terrorists

Some important al-Qaeda leaders operating in Pakistan’s tribal regions also are believed to have come from Libya. For instance, “Atiyah,” who was guiding the anti-U.S. war strategy in Iraq, was identified as a Libyan named Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.

It was Atiyah who urged a strategy of creating a quagmire for U.S. forces in Iraq, buying time for al-Qaeda headquarters to rebuild its strength in Pakistan. “Prolonging the war [in Iraq] is in our interest,” Atiyah said in a letter that upbraided Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for his hasty and reckless actions in Iraq.

After U.S. Special Forces killed al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden on May 2 in Pakistan, Atiyah became al-Qaeda’s second in command until he himself was reportedly killed in a U.S. drone strike in August. [See Consortiumnews.com “Time Finally Ran Out for Atiyah.”]

However, to most Americans relying on the major U.S. news media, little of this was known, as the Washington Post itself acknowledged on Thursday. In an article on the rise of Islamists inside the new power structure in Libya, the Post wrote:

“Although it went largely unnoticed during the uprising that toppled Gaddafi last month, Islamists were at the heart of the fight, many as rebel commanders.

“Now some are clashing with secularists within the rebels’ Transitional National Council, prompting worries among some liberals that the Islamists, who still command the bulk of fighters and weapons, could use their strength to assert an even more dominant role.”

On Thursday, the New York Times led the front page with a similar article, entitled “Islamists’ Growing Sway Raises Questions for Libya.” It began:

“In the emerging post-Qaddafi Libya, the most influential politician may well be Ali Sallabi, who has no formal title but commands broad respect as an Islamic scholar and populist orator who was instrumental in leading the mass uprising.

“The most powerful military leader is now Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of a hard-line group once believed to be aligned with Al Qaeda.”

Belhaj was previously the commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was associated with al-Qaeda in the past, maintained training bases in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks, and was listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

Though Belhaj and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group deny current allegiance to al-Qaeda, Belhaj was captured during George W. Bush’s post-9/11 “war on terror” and was harshly interrogated by the CIA at a “black site” prison in Thailand before being handed over to Gaddafi’s government which imprisoned and Belhaj claims tortured him.

The Times reported that “Belhaj has become so much an insider lately that he is seeking to unseat Mahmoud Jibril, the American-trained economist who is the nominal prime minister of the interim government, after Mr. Jibril obliquely criticized the Islamists.”

The Times article by correspondents Rod Nordland and David D. Kirkpatrick also cited other recent developments of growing Islamist influence inside the Libyan rebel movement:

“Islamist militias in Libya receive weapons and financing directly from foreign benefactors like Qatar; a Muslim Brotherhood figure, Abel al-Rajazk Abu Hajar, leads the Tripoli Municipal Governing Council, where Islamists are reportedly in the majority; in eastern Libya, there has been no resolution of the assassination in July of the leader of the rebel military, Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, suspected by some to be the work of Islamists.”

It may be commendable that the Post and Times are finally giving serious attention to this unintended consequence of the NATO-backed “regime change” in Libya, but the fact that these premier American newspapers ignored the Islamist issue as well as doubts about Libya’s Lockerbie guilt while the U.S. government was whipping up public support for another war in the Muslim world raises questions about whether any lessons were learned from Iraq.

Do these prestige news outlets continue to see their role in such cases as simply getting the American people to line up behind the latest war against a Mideast “bad guy” or will they ever take seriously their journalistic duty to arm the public with as much information as possible?

[For more on these topics, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a two-book set for the discount price of only $19. For details, click here.]

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book,Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.

13 comments for “On Libya, Now They Tell Us

  1. David
    September 24, 2011 at 22:41

    So what? It’s their business. They’ll deal with it. Once in the corridors of power the so-called “Islamists” will have to deal with reality in Libya and I can assure you that the vast, vast majority of its citizens are not Muslim extremists.

    BTW, I look forward to the day when our media points out the obvious fact that Israel is controlled by Zionist zealots who believe that Jews are “chosen,” by God, special, superior to non-Jews. America’s double standard and ignorance of other peoples around the world is appalling and inexcusable.

  2. September 24, 2011 at 19:05

    Everyone knows It was Iran that did the bombing and the U.S. had it coming.

    Joseph Zrnchik on September 24, 2011 at 7:03 pm

    Why Iran Needs a Nuclear Bomb

    Much has been written about why Iran should not be allowed a nuclear energy program much less a nuclear bomb. Israel and the U.S. have come up with a million excuses, all lies, as to why Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear deterrent. It seems there is nothing the U.S. does not want the entire world to know about the Iranian program, but this is because everything the U.S. is saying is a lie. The U.S. is lying as bad as the Israelis. The Israelis have said Iran would “wipe them off the map” if Iran had a bomb, but the leadership in Iran has proven itself much more stable, sane, logical, and peaceful than the Zionist regime Iran would like to see “vanish from the pages of time”.

    I use the two quotes in the previous paragraph because one is a quote Ahmajinadad repeated and the other is the one the pro-Zionist U.S. media lied about and accused him of stating so a to once again claim victimhood as it attempts to lie America into another war to advance genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

    What Ahmadinejad actually said, to quote his exact words in Farsi:

    “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.”

    That passage will mean much to pro-Zionists trying to manufacture a casus belli, but one word might stick out: rezhim-e. It is the word “regime.” pronounced just like the English word with an extra “eh” sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase “rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods” (regime occupying Jerusalem).

    So this raises the question: What exactly did he want “wiped from the map”? The answer is: nothing. That’s because the word “map” was never used. The Persian word for map, “nagsheh” is not contained anywhere in his original Farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase “wipe out” ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran’s president threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” despite never having uttered the words “map.” “wipe out” or even “Israel.”

    Here is the full quote translated directly to English:

    “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

    Word by word translation:

    Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

    Here is the full transcript of the speech in Farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad’s web site. You can copy the text and go to the Google translator that will translate the entire speech from its original Farsi text. You would think a nation would take the time to research this fact before promoting the waging of nuclear war against a non-nuclear power as the U.S. has threatened to do.

    While the “wiped off the map” misquote has been attributed repeatedly without verification, Ahmadinejad’s full speech and its context are ignored. Given the importance placed on specific key words, it would make sense to translate his speech in its full context so as to get his true meaning. What his speech called for was a “world without Zionism.” While Zionist Jews may not like his rhetoric, the suffering and misery Israel has inflicted on millions of Palestinians begs otherwise.

    Furthermore, this quote is not even attributable to Ahmadinejad. He was quoting someone else and even attributed the quote. The misquote was purposely mistranslated and then magnified a million times in the U.S. Zionist-pandering media.

    Here is what a former presidential candidate and Americans statesman, Patrick Buchanan has to say about the Iranian nuclear program and whether the U.S. ought to go to war over it: buchanan.org/blog/fool-me-twice-3179 .

    Iran has kept components of its nuclear program secret, but it was still within the IAEA framework. Iran has built building for its program, but the facilities do not have to be disclosed until a designated time before nuclear enrichment begins and nuclear material is introduced. If nuclear enrichment is not scheduled to be taking place within a specified period, nor any nuclear material introduced within a specified timeframe, then the facility does not have to be disclosed according to IAEA protocols and international law. Moreover, why would a country disclose everything about its program when the U.S. has stated it would bomb Iran for exercising its inalienable rights?

    It is the U.S. that has shown it refuses to abide by the IAEA. The U.S. has decided to violate the Geneva Convention with respect to perpetrating regime change, waging aggressive war, engaging in torture and murder, and conducting extraordinary renditions. For every law the U.S. has broken it feels its rationalizations provide it absolute justification. If Americans went in front of a U.S. court using the logic and arguments the U.S. uses to excuse its murder, they would be given the electric chair in a fortnight. Image if a citizen used the arguments the U.S. uses to preempt police violence Americans regularly suffer at the hands of “law enforcement”.

    So, let’s consider what crimes Iranians had to suffer at the hands of America. All the way back in 1953, Operation TP-Ajax resulted in the CIA supporting the bombing of mosques in order to blame the crimes on the government of Mohammed Mossadegh. This resulted in the overthrow of his government and the execution of his cabinet ministers, not to mention the hundreds of deaths of innocent civilians. Our government felt this murder of foreigners was nothing more than the implementation of foreign policy. We as Americans accepted as rational and reasonable something that would be so horrible and grotesque it would be a crime that should never to be forgotten and would rightfully serve as a rallying point for all patriots for all time.

    This was not the last of the crimes Iranians suffered at the hands of Americans. The U.S. then installed the Shah of Iran whose SAVAK then exterminated all political opposition from 1953 to 1979 when the people finally decided they could no longer suffer the tyrant and overthrew him.

    Instead of America being ashamed of what it had done to a country that had not waged an aggressive war in hundreds of years, the U.S. decided to encourage, support, and provide economic and military assistance to Saddam to wage a war of aggression against Iran that would cost Iran a million lives. The U.S. actually gave Saddam the chemical weapons and production capabilities he used to slaughter Iranians, Iraqi Shiites, and Iraqi Kurds. Not once did the U.S. mention the U.N., international law, or Iraqi WMDs during the 7-year Iraq-Iran War. Then the U.S. decided to atomize the very country for allegedly having the weapons the U.S. gave it, knowing full well the weapons had already been destroyed. If Saddam had WMDs he would be as safe and secure as Kim Jong-il’s North Korea, or Pakistan and India. Also, it would be under no more obligation to follow international law than the U.S. or England.

    Not long after the Shah was deposed, the U.S. decided it wanted to test its new anti-aircraft weapon systems. It proceeded to blast an Iranian airliner out of the sky knowing full well it was a commercial aircraft. Here is the whole history of that episode hidden from the American people:

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/fayazmanesh1.html

    Not only do the U.S. people not want to know the truth, they would refuse to believe no matter what facts are presented. They literally believe the U.S. would never do something as heinous as engaging in terrorism, but wishful thinking does not create reality.

    The fact is that if the U.S. inspects a nation and finds it has no means of resistance, it will then conduct its attack to get its way. It is a nation’s failure to have a nuclear deterrent that creates a destabilizing situation. If Iran had nukes it would stand no chance of attack and would have the power to execute its foreign policy as an equal among equals. Of course this means the U.S. could not treat Iran as its next rape victim. U.S. policy amounts to it being a serial rapist whereby it tells a country to lie still and try to enjoy it.

    There will only be stability when all the Middle East has nuclear weapons and countries have to compromise. Everyone wants peace, it’s just that America wants a peace that means a war whereby a country has no means to resist if the U.S. does not get what it wants. This peace is achieved only through the U.S. ability to force other nations to accept their rape by the U.S. and then call it peace.

    All the things I have mentioned in this article are all on the CIA website, in Wikipedia, and common knowledge for people who seriously research American foreign policy. It is accepted fact throughout the political spectrum from Ron Paul on one side to Noam Chomsky on the other. In reference to the suppositions posited here, there is no argument by those who seriously dissect and study American foreign policy and its impact on the world.

    It is the fact is that Americans are so stupid and gullible that they will believe any pro-Zionist U.S. imperial propaganda amplified in the media. These same people are so intellectually lazy that they can’t take the time to cut and paste a speech into Google Translator to get at the truth of a matter; moreover, they would rather not get at the truth. The success of American propaganda is in it keeping the top 20% of the population misinformed as the other 80% are enamored by sports, celebrity, political divisiveness, and the numerous other distractions that keep people from understanding the plans and actions of the power elite

    In short, I have no faith in the U.S. and its foreign policy. Its foreign policy abuses are being mirrored in its domestic policy, criminal justice system, tax code, and failure to abide by the Constitution. It is a matter of time now before the U.S. destroys itself after it inflicts the misery, it has until now exported, on its own people. I can’t say we don’t deserve it. We are as responsible for what our government does as any other nation is for its government.

    Lastly, if Iran had a nuclear bomb, the power elite would suddenly find war unthinkable as they could end up dying as easily as some stupid private who fell for the lies of our politicians and decide to enlist for their imperial wars.

  3. September 24, 2011 at 19:03

    Why Iran Needs a Nuclear Bomb

    Much has been written about why Iran should not be allowed a nuclear energy program much less a nuclear bomb. Israel and the U.S. have come up with a million excuses, all lies, as to why Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear deterrent. It seems there is nothing the U.S. does not want the entire world to know about the Iranian program, but this is because everything the U.S. is saying is a lie. The U.S. is lying as bad as the Israelis. The Israelis have said Iran would “wipe them off the map” if Iran had a bomb, but the leadership in Iran has proven itself much more stable, sane, logical, and peaceful than the Zionist regime Iran would like to see “vanish from the pages of time”.

    I use the two quotes in the previous paragraph because one is a quote Ahmajinadad repeated and the other is the one the pro-Zionist U.S. media lied about and accused him of stating so a to once again claim victimhood as it attempts to lie America into another war to advance genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

    What Ahmadinejad actually said, to quote his exact words in Farsi:

    “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.”

    That passage will mean much to pro-Zionists trying to manufacture a casus belli, but one word might stick out: rezhim-e. It is the word “regime.” pronounced just like the English word with an extra “eh” sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase “rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods” (regime occupying Jerusalem).

    So this raises the question: What exactly did he want “wiped from the map”? The answer is: nothing. That’s because the word “map” was never used. The Persian word for map, “nagsheh” is not contained anywhere in his original Farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase “wipe out” ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran’s president threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” despite never having uttered the words “map.” “wipe out” or even “Israel.”

    Here is the full quote translated directly to English:

    “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

    Word by word translation:

    Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

    Here is the full transcript of the speech in Farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad’s web site. You can copy the text and go to the Google translator that will translate the entire speech from its original Farsi text. You would think a nation would take the time to research this fact before promoting the waging of nuclear war against a non-nuclear power as the U.S. has threatened to do.

    While the “wiped off the map” misquote has been attributed repeatedly without verification, Ahmadinejad’s full speech and its context are ignored. Given the importance placed on specific key words, it would make sense to translate his speech in its full context so as to get his true meaning. What his speech called for was a “world without Zionism.” While Zionist Jews may not like his rhetoric, the suffering and misery Israel has inflicted on millions of Palestinians begs otherwise.

    Furthermore, this quote is not even attributable to Ahmadinejad. He was quoting someone else and even attributed the quote. The misquote was purposely mistranslated and then magnified a million times in the U.S. Zionist-pandering media.

    Here is what a former presidential candidate and Americans statesman, Patrick Buchanan has to say about the Iranian nuclear program and whether the U.S. ought to go to war over it: buchanan.org/blog/fool-me-twice-3179 .

    Iran has kept components of its nuclear program secret, but it was still within the IAEA framework. Iran has built building for its program, but the facilities do not have to be disclosed until a designated time before nuclear enrichment begins and nuclear material is introduced. If nuclear enrichment is not scheduled to be taking place within a specified period, nor any nuclear material introduced within a specified timeframe, then the facility does not have to be disclosed according to IAEA protocols and international law. Moreover, why would a country disclose everything about its program when the U.S. has stated it would bomb Iran for exercising its inalienable rights?

    It is the U.S. that has shown it refuses to abide by the IAEA. The U.S. has decided to violate the Geneva Convention with respect to perpetrating regime change, waging aggressive war, engaging in torture and murder, and conducting extraordinary renditions. For every law the U.S. has broken it feels its rationalizations provide it absolute justification. If Americans went in front of a U.S. court using the logic and arguments the U.S. uses to excuse its murder, they would be given the electric chair in a fortnight. Image if a citizen used the arguments the U.S. uses to preempt police violence Americans regularly suffer at the hands of “law enforcement”.

    So, let’s consider what crimes Iranians had to suffer at the hands of America. All the way back in 1953, Operation TP-Ajax resulted in the CIA supporting the bombing of mosques in order to blame the crimes on the government of Mohammed Mossadegh. This resulted in the overthrow of his government and the execution of his cabinet ministers, not to mention the hundreds of deaths of innocent civilians. Our government felt this murder of foreigners was nothing more than the implementation of foreign policy. We as Americans accepted as rational and reasonable something that would be so horrible and grotesque it would be a crime that should never to be forgotten and would rightfully serve as a rallying point for all patriots for all time.

    This was not the last of the crimes Iranians suffered at the hands of Americans. The U.S. then installed the Shah of Iran whose SAVAK then exterminated all political opposition from 1953 to 1979 when the people finally decided they could no longer suffer the tyrant and overthrew him.

    Instead of America being ashamed of what it had done to a country that had not waged an aggressive war in hundreds of years, the U.S. decided to encourage, support, and provide economic and military assistance to Saddam to wage a war of aggression against Iran that would cost Iran a million lives. The U.S. actually gave Saddam the chemical weapons and production capabilities he used to slaughter Iranians, Iraqi Shiites, and Iraqi Kurds. Not once did the U.S. mention the U.N., international law, or Iraqi WMDs during the 7-year Iraq-Iran War. Then the U.S. decided to atomize the very country for allegedly having the weapons the U.S. gave it, knowing full well the weapons had already been destroyed. If Saddam had WMDs he would be as safe and secure as Kim Jong-il’s North Korea, or Pakistan and India. Also, it would be under no more obligation to follow international law than the U.S. or England.

    Not long after the Shah was deposed, the U.S. decided it wanted to test its new anti-aircraft weapon systems. It proceeded to blast an Iranian airliner out of the sky knowing full well it was a commercial aircraft. Here is the whole history of that episode hidden from the American people:

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/fayazmanesh1.html

    Not only do the U.S. people not want to know the truth, they would refuse to believe no matter what facts are presented. They literally believe the U.S. would never do something as heinous as engaging in terrorism, but wishful thinking does not create reality.

    The fact is that if the U.S. inspects a nation and finds it has no means of resistance, it will then conduct its attack to get its way. It is a nation’s failure to have a nuclear deterrent that creates a destabilizing situation. If Iran had nukes it would stand no chance of attack and would have the power to execute its foreign policy as an equal among equals. Of course this means the U.S. could not treat Iran as its next rape victim. U.S. policy amounts to it being a serial rapist whereby it tells a country to lie still and try to enjoy it.

    There will only be stability when all the Middle East has nuclear weapons and countries have to compromise. Everyone wants peace, it’s just that America wants a peace that means a war whereby a country has no means to resist if the U.S. does not get what it wants. This peace is achieved only through the U.S. ability to force other nations to accept their rape by the U.S. and then call it peace.

    All the things I have mentioned in this article are all on the CIA website, in Wikipedia, and common knowledge for people who seriously research American foreign policy. It is accepted fact throughout the political spectrum from Ron Paul on one side to Noam Chomsky on the other. In reference to the suppositions posited here, there is no argument by those who seriously dissect and study American foreign policy and its impact on the world.

    It is the fact is that Americans are so stupid and gullible that they will believe any pro-Zionist U.S. imperial propaganda amplified in the media. These same people are so intellectually lazy that they can’t take the time to cut and paste a speech into Google Translator to get at the truth of a matter; moreover, they would rather not get at the truth. The success of American propaganda is in it keeping the top 20% of the population misinformed as the other 80% are enamored by sports, celebrity, political divisiveness, and the numerous other distractions that keep people from understanding the plans and actions of the power elite

    In short, I have no faith in the U.S. and its foreign policy. Its foreign policy abuses are being mirrored in its domestic policy, criminal justice system, tax code, and failure to abide by the Constitution. It is a matter of time now before the U.S. destroys itself after it inflicts the misery, it has until now exported, on its own people. I can’t say we don’t deserve it. We are as responsible for what our government does as any other nation is for its government.

    Lastly, if Iran had a nuclear bomb, the power elite would suddenly find war unthinkable as they could end up dying as easily as some stupid private who fell for the lies of our politicians and decide to enlist for their imperial wars.

  4. Charles Norrie
    September 16, 2011 at 14:31

    Having spent more than 20 years studying Lockerbie I have come to the conclusion that Libya was framed, and when you look at its guilt every bit of the evidence is fraudulent, and was essentially concocted by the CIA. To blame relatively marginal layers like the Zeist judges, the Scottish police or the forensic scientists at RARDE misses the point – why was Pan Am 103 bombed in the first place.

    Step forward HW Bush who needed to get elected as President and had a hatred of Reagan’s cowboy foreign policy. A narrow minded member of the New England plutocracy he was practically unelectable until he could be launched into power in a khaki election.

    When Reagan went gaga Bush seized effective power, and one of his first steps was to recruit the CIA to his lan, quickly turning the man who had been in charge of Reagan’s pet project Iran-Contra into a tool to destroy it. The first job was to kill of the head of the Iran-Contra one Ahmad Beladi Behbehani, by shooting him down in a plane, which happened to be the Iranian Airbus IR655, but the wrong family group f that unusually named family was killed, a story that was never told in the Western media until reported in the collected dispatches of a foreign correspondent named Lara Marlowe in 2010.

    We know the CIA is concerned about this story because the child in the original report was described as Iranian and when printed was said to be from Kuwait. Ms Marlowe slightly muddled the tale and has told me she was an Iranian family from Kuwait, and does not believe the CIA could have deliberatly caused the Airbus to be shot down.

    Be that as it may, the Iranian demanded measured revenge according to the doctrine of qisas which called for the destruction of 254 American and call them American protected lives to match the 254 Iranians killed on IR655. If you take the number of lives killed in Lockerbie subtract the 11 on the ground, for their loss was “accidental” to the plot, and leave out US government employees on the flight, most of them with Iran-contra or CIA and CIA like connections, you get to 254. There were 4 rounds of negotiations before the Iranians accepted the US plot. Meanwhile Bush strode the stage at the UNSC to say he would never apologise for the United States, and such apologies as have been made have b een churlish and ungenerous.

    The Americans demanded that the bombing take place after the US General Election of 1988, (the Iranians adhere to the view that revenge is a dish best eaten cold), and planned the whole thing, supplying a faked up PFLP GC atmospheric timer bomb, and the Iranians deployed it by the nfamous Manley break-in at T3 Heathrow. Abb may have been the terrorist, but Iranian revenge law required an Iranian hand and preferably a family one, and ABB had exactly the same family name as the Behbehani child killed on IR655.

    A PFLP GC group, Sunni, not Shia would simply not fit the bill and we can confidently dismis the argument that Iran might have offloaded the bombing to the PFLP GC, a Syrian protected group.

    All might hav gone well for the plotters in the CIA if Iraq had not attcked Kuwait, and Bush needed Syria in his his war against Iraq (the first Gulf War). So after a hiatus in the Lockerbie investigation, Libya was chosen. The facts of the false accusations against the PFLP GC did not fit (the actual PA103 bomb was an atmospheric timer, but had to be portrayed as a pure timer device) but the faking up never really worked. But the Scots were bamboozled into accepting the fake evidence and Libya was forced to yield Magrahi (sic) and Fhimah. Even the judges could not stomach the jailing of Fhimah and he was set free.

    The conction though was used to fine Libta the astonishing amount of $2.7B, but this was outstripped by the $6B awarded to American UTA relatives, a bombing which Libya dis carry out in 1989.

  5. Louise
    September 16, 2011 at 08:39

    Islamists’ Growing Sway Raises Questions for Libya

    By ROD NORDLAND and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
    Published: September 14, 2011

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/world/africa/in-libya-islamists-growing-sway-raises-questions.html?_r=1&hp

  6. Jill
    September 16, 2011 at 07:50

    Green flags are flying in Tripoli and Benghazi which in indicative that the “fall of Gadaffi” was propaganda too.

  7. Robbie the Pict
    September 16, 2011 at 07:06

    Good grief! A truth breakthrough in America! Well done Robert Parry!
    The Pan Am 103 crash was a criminal accident, likely to have been caused by the Prestwick ATC frequency of 123.95MHz triggering an illegal load of American rockets (Zunis or Lockheed Hydra 70s with flechette warheads – a so-called Rad-Haz incident). Oliver North may be able to explain. Just examine the evidence. There’s no evidence of any bomb.
    Lockerbie Justice Group

    • georgea
      September 16, 2011 at 10:19

      Lockerbie capper has an interesting part that rarely anyone has picked up. 11 CIA agents were accused of Herione dealings,to leave the country,they book in advanceeee to leave scotland in December. 2 days before Xmas,they abruptly canceled their flight back to USA. Their vacant seats were filled by 12 USA student basketbal players –USA kills it’s own to attack defenceless oil rich countries. It failed same plot for Cuba-JFK put a stop and poor Kennedy put the price–Death :^/

  8. Norman
    September 15, 2011 at 15:04

    Consider who originated the Islamists to begin with? The C.I.A. And just who transported the al Qaeda individuals from Pakistan/Afghanistan to Tripoli once Gaddafi left town on the warship[s]? Come come now people, lets call a spade a spade, for by this time, it should be evident who is calling the shots. Considering that the ammo dumps that were supposedly full, now appear to be empty, (looted), one might be tempted to wonder where the next target might be? Will it be another M.E. Country? Interesting chess board, wouldn’t you say?

  9. John Puma
    September 15, 2011 at 14:55

    Make war FIRST, ask questions later, if at all.

  10. J. B. Gregorovich
    September 15, 2011 at 13:09

    Sometimes the truth does come out. Congratulations 1

    • georgea
      September 16, 2011 at 10:09

      J.B. said “Sometimes the truth does come out. Congratulations”
      I would be very careful on the cheers. Media/Government/Rebels Lies –America has used bad guys to go after the good guys and then came after the bad guys by articles like this to eliminate the bad guys after they did the dirty work for Uncle USA Scam.
      Take once allies NAZI Germany WWII,Talibon Afghastan, Commie Russians WWII–afterwards they needed to be put away and the Empire grows bigger. Libyian rebels are stupid fools–now cast aways.Watch and see :^/.

  11. Jym Allyn
    September 15, 2011 at 12:13

    The potential of Islamist leadership being the primary beneficiaries of getting rid of Gadhafi makes my head spin.
    Is it possible that this will end up making the folks at BP look like “the good guys?”

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