[D66] Gaddafi family members murdered by US and NATO

[Antid Oto]

Gaddafi family members murdered by US and NATO
By James Cogan
2 May 2011

The killing of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s youngest son and three
grandchildren are political murders for which British Prime Minister David
Cameron, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi and US President Barack Obama are directly responsible. They
sanctioned the missile attack on a private residence in Tripoli at which Gaddafi
and members of his family had gathered on Saturday night. Saif al-Arab Gaddafi,
29, was the Libyan leader’s youngest son and a man who was not considered a
member of the Libyan government. Gaddafi family friends have reported that the
slain children were aged between 12 months and four-years-old.

Following the missile strike, the British commander of NATO’s military operation
in Libya, Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, issued a statement that was as
perfunctory as it was deceitful: “We regret all loss of life, especially the
innocent civilians being harmed as a result of the ongoing conflict.”

In an equally mendacious statement, Cameron sought to maintain the political
fiction that the attack on the one-storey residence was permissible under the
terms of UN Resolution 1973. The missile strike, he claimed, was aimed at
“preventing a loss of life by targeting Gaddafi’s war-making machine. That is
obviously tanks and guns and rocket launchers, but also command-and-control as
well.”

Cameron, on the advice of his lawyers, referred to the private residence as a
“command-and-control” centre in order to evade the charge that Muammar Gaddafi
had been targeted by the missile strike. The targeting of a specific individual
is an assassination and, even in war, may be defined as a criminal act. The
attempt to kill Gaddafi, however, is taking place without either a declaration
of war by the US and European powers against Libya, or even the invocation of
the provisions of the War Powers Act by the Obama administration.

It is 35 years since the US Church Report disavowed assassination and revived
the long-held position of the United States government, stretching back to the
American Revolution, that it was not only a criminal and barbaric policy, but a
reckless one that would legitimise every government seeking to assassinate the
political leadership of rival states. After close to two decades of near
continuous war to offset the economic and political decline of US imperialism,
all such restraints and reservations have been repudiated.

Leading American politicians, contemptuous of the legalities of the issue,
brazenly call for the Libyan leader’s killing. Senator Lindsey Graham of South
Carolina, in an interview on Fox News on Sunday morning, again declared:
“Wherever Gaddafi goes, he is a legitimate military target.” With this
statement, the American senator enshrined murder as official state policy.

Barely seven hours before the attack that killed Gaddafi’s son and
grandchildren, NATO aircraft had pounded targets in Tripoli where they thought
the Libyan leader was making a live television address to call for a ceasefire.
On April 24, a compound where NATO intelligence clearly believed Gaddafi was
located was reduced to rubble, killing three civilians.

Gaddafi’s death has become the overriding objective of the US and NATO war on
Libya. The initial strategy of the assault, which began on March 19, has
abjectly failed. Air strikes have slaughtered hundreds of Libyan soldiers and
civilians but they have not, as was confidently expected in imperialist circles,
triggered the collapse of the Gaddafi regime. On the ground, the pro-NATO
Transitional National Council based in the eastern city of Benghazi has proven
incapable of making advances against, let alone defeating, Gaddafi’s military
forces.

The frustration and even desperation of the major powers is embodied in the
inane belief that Gaddafi’s death will end all resistance and enable the
so-called “rebels”―a collection of former Gaddafi ministers, CIA assets and
Islamic fundamentalists―to assume power over the country unchallenged and serve
as a loyal puppet regime.

On the part of the American political and military establishment, the sadistic
desire to kill Gaddafi is in line with its treatment of the leaders of a number
of countries that have become the target of US military aggression. All have
been dealt with in the most vindictive fashion.

Panama’s strongman Manuel Noriega―a former CIA asset―was hauled to the US
following the US invasion in 1989, tried for drug offences, imprisoned until
2007 and then transferred to France for another trial and seven years imprisonment.

Slobodan Milosevic―once a favourite of the major powers―was charged with war
crimes following the 1999 US and NATO war on Yugoslavia and died in prison while
on trial in The Hague.

The Taliban’s elderly leader, Mullah Omar, who the US sought out for talks
during the 1990s over the construction of pipelines, has been in hiding and on a
“kill-on-sight” list since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who Washington actively backed during the Iran-Iraq War
in the 1980s, was hauled before a kangaroo court and hung in a lynch mob manner.
His sons were killed and their mutilated bodies displayed like trophies.

Gaddafi himself has lived a large part of his life under the threat of
assassination by US or allied intelligence agencies. Within weeks of the
military coup that brought him to power in 1969, then National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger advised “covert action” to eliminate him. British intelligence
reportedly attempted to kill him in 1971. The Reagan administration ordered a
massive bombardment of his personal residence in 1986―an action that resulted in
the death of a child and numerous civilians. Britain’s MI6 reportedly tried to
murder the Libyan leader in 1996. There were more than likely other attempts
that have never become public.

The efforts to kill Gaddafi ceased in the 2000s after his regime reached a
rapprochement with Washington and he became viewed as a useful economic and
political collaborator of the US and its allies. Now that he is once again
considered an obstacle to advancing imperialist interests in North Africa and
the Middle East, Washington’s vast intelligence apparatus has been unleashed to
hunt him down and take his life.

A tremendous element of recklessness exists in the actions of the US government.
For all its claims to be waging a “war on terrorism”, the mass killings,
torture, repression and assassinations over which it has presided have created a
legacy of hatred that will not be easily extinguished. It is precisely these
conditions that create the breeding ground for desperate and disorientated acts
of retaliation, with unpredictable and potentially terrible consequences.

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/gadd-m02.shtml