….The ouster of Qaddafi left Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven.
By Jo Backer and Scott Shane, New York Times.
This is an excellent video which summarized the long article below, prepared by New York Times investigators, Jo Backer and Scott Shane:
Here are my Key notes of the long investigation report (below it) which show that Hillary Clinton was a KEY PERSON in the decision and in the planning of the war to remove Gaddafi.
As a reference: A top Israeli expert (Ari Shavit-he is not a right wing person at all) said on TV news panel: ” Gadhafi was the best success the west had in the Arab world in his last 15 years, with a very good collaboration with the west”
“… in March 2011. Mrs. Clinton pushed President Obama to join allies in airstrikes in Libya, and eventually pressed for a secret program to provide arms to rebel militias…
….in the view of many who have watched her [Hillary] up close, her record on Libya illustrates how she was inclined to act — in marked contrast to Mr. Obama’s more reticent approach….
…On March 2011 at lunch with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, she [Hillary] “was tough, she was bullish” on the idea of intervention in Libya — the “perfect ally,” recalled Mr. Sarkozy’s senior diplomatic adviser, Jean-David Levitte….
…Mr. Sarkozy met with Mrs. Clinton and David Cameron, the British prime minister, at the Élysée Palace in Paris to discuss the next move . Sarkozy played his trump card. French fighter jets were already in the air, he said. But, he added, “this is a collective decision, and I will recall them if you want me to,” Mr. Levitte said. Mr. Sarkozy’s maneuver had abruptly pushed forward the timing of the operation, but for all of Mrs. Clinton’s irritation, she was not prepared to object….
..“I’m not going to be the one to recall the planes and create the massacre in Benghazi,” she [Hillary] grumbled to an aide. And the bombing began….
…“Her view is, we can’t fail in this,” Mr. Ross said. “Once we have made a decision, we can’t fail.”..
American intelligence officials were worried about what would become of the country if Colonel Qaddafi lost control of it….”
Mrs. Clinton with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in Paris on March 19, 2011, two days after a United Nations Security Council resolution authorized “all necessary means” to protect Libyan civilians.
Libya’s descent into chaos began with a rushed decision to go to war, made in what one top official called a “shadow of uncertainty” ….Mrs. Clinton foresaw some of the hazards of toppling another Middle Eastern strongman. She pressed for a secret American program that supplied arms to rebel militias, an effort never before confirmed.
President Obama ultimately took her side, according to the administration officials who described the debate. After he signed a secret document called a presidential finding, approving a covert operation, a list of approved weaponry was drawn up. The shipments arranged by the United States and other Western countries generally arrived through the port of Benghazi and airports in eastern Libya, a Libyan rebel commander said.
“Humvees, counterbattery radar, TOW missiles was the highest end we talked about,” one State Department official recalled. “We were definitely giving them lethal assistance. We’d crossed that line.”
Photo: Hillary visit Libya two days before Gaddafi was killed
“….Anne-Marie Slaughter, her director of policy planning at the State Department, notes that in conversation and in her memoir, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly speaks of wanting to be “caught trying.” In other words, she would rather be criticized for what she has done than for having done nothing at all….
“She’s very careful and reflective,” Ms. Slaughter said. “But when the choice is between action and inaction, and you’ve got risks in either direction, which you often do, she’d rather be caught trying.”
The New York Times’s examination of the intervention …. interviewed more than 50 American, Libyan and European officials, including many of the principal actors. Virtually all agreed to comment on the record. They expressed regret, frustration and in some cases bewilderment about what went wrong and what might have been done differently.
….Mrs. Clinton has also called for a more interventionist approach in Syria…. [my note: to support more terror organization rebels there]
Now Libya, with a population smaller than that of Tennessee, poses an outsize security threat to the region and beyond, calling into question whether the intervention prevented a humanitarian catastrophe or merely helped create one of a different kind.
The looting of Colonel Qaddafi’s vast weapons arsenals during the intervention has fed the Syrian civil war, empowered terrorist and criminal groups from Nigeria to Sinai, and destabilized Mali….
…a quarter-million refugees were sent north across the Mediterranean [to Italy & Europe]. …. A civil war in Libya has left the country with two rival governments, cities in ruins and more than 4,000 dead.
Amid that fighting, the Islamic State has built its most important outpost on the Libyan shore, a redoubt to fall back upon as it is bombed in Syria and Iraq. With the Pentagon saying the Islamic State’s fast-growing force now numbers between 5,000 and 6,500 fighters, some of Mr. Obama’s top national security aides are pressing for a second American military intervention in Libya. On Feb. 19, American warplanes hunting a Tunisian militant bombed an Islamic State training camp in western Libya, killing at least 41 people.
“We had a dream,” said Mr. Jibril, who served as Libya’s first interim prime minister. “And to be honest with you, we had a golden opportunity to bring this country back to life. Unfortunately, that dream was shattered.”
far more formidable lineup was outspoken against an American commitment, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Tom Donilon, the national security adviser; and Mr. Gates, the defense secretary, who did not want to divert American air power or attention away from Afghanistan and Iraq. If the Europeans were so worried about Libya, they argued, let them take responsibility for its future.
Some senior intelligence officials had deep misgivings about what would happen if Colonel Qaddafi lost control. In recent years, the Libyan dictator had begun aiding the United States in its fight against Al Qaeda in North Africa.
“He was a thug in a dangerous neighborhood,” said Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time. “But he was keeping order.”
Mrs. Clinton diverged from the other senior members of the administration.
The comparison with Mr. Biden was revealing. For the vice president, according to Antony J. Blinken, then his national security adviser and now deputy secretary of state, the lesson of Iraq was crucial — “what Biden called not the day after, but the decade after.”
“What’s the plan?” Mr. Antony J. Blinken, then national security adviser :
“There is going to be some kind of vacuum, and how’s it going to be filled, and what are we doing to fill it?”
Hillary sparred constantly with her Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, who, Mrs. Clinton wrote in her memoir “Hard Choices,” was initially “dead set against a no-fly zone.”
About the time the air campaign began, Charles R. Kubic, a retired rear admiral, received a message from a senior Libyan military officer proposing military-to-military negotiations for a 72-hour cease-fire, potentially leading to an arranged exit for Colonel Qaddafi and his family.
But after he approached the American military command for Africa, Admiral Kubic said, he was directed to end the talks [note: USA is pushing Israeli to talk with Palestinian under any conditions even so Israeli agree, but Palestinian don’t want to talk]
A reader Comment: The mistake wasn’t in deposing Quaddafi but in not having a follow up plan. American troops should have been stationed in Libya to help…[my note: same as in Afghanistan, after Russian troops left and USA did not do anything to control Taliban and Al Qaida from getting stronger.
Summarized by Udi. Please forward.
A body was carried from the rubble of a house in Tripoli, Libya, after a reported NATO airstrike in June 2011
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The whole article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/
Published on New York Times By Jo Backer and Scott Shane, Feb 27, 2016
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