Protesters Seize Several East Libyan Cities
Reports Say Libyan Govt Relying on Mercenaries from Chad in Fight
Libya’s national congress has announced that it will suspend itself indefinitely as unrest looks to be overwhelming the Libyan government and President-for-life Moammar Gadhafi’s ability to cope.
Protesters say that they’ve actually taken control of a number of cities in eastern Libya, and that they have in some cases been joined by local security forces. Protesters have also seized jails and released detainees.
Faced with the growing inability to crush the protesters with their own troops, the military is said to have withdrawn from al-Bayda, and the opposition reports that the government has been bringing in mercenaries from neighboring Chad to fight the protests.
With some 40 years in office, President Gadhafi had made a lot of enemies, and like many of the dictators in the region appears to be rapidly losing control of the situation. The death toll is said to be spiraling as well in the east, and the confirmed “24 dead” from earlier today will likely be replaced shortly with scores reported slain in Benghazi and elsewhere.
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persnipoles
February 18th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
It's a good feeling hearing about these; wavers between worry about the people in revolt, and cheering inside. In '02 I heard a 19yr old's rationale for the Iraq occupation (nearly word for word): "We've heard it's the Iraqi people that will suffer. But they refuse to get rid of Saddam –" SadDAM is a fun word to say, so she really pounced on the absurd finale: "so they lost their right to freedom." I later caught the same free-er-than-thou nonsense on the radio (Mark Levine, I believe), confirming that it was some kind of 'zeitgeist.' 'refuse to get rid of' your consumer hate object, eh? Lost their 'rights' for that indolence, eh? Well, now 'they' are doing things it would be hard to fault them for. How will 'we' be selling their repression, now? If it's not free-er-than-thou anymore, what's the new war rationale? How long before the new gov'ts are coopted? I Don't know! Just asking!
Hacklheber
February 18th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
That's certainly some development.
jack
February 18th, 2011 at 5:51 pm
some may have no choice except to step it ,up with mercs involved,"hell,they may have to take it downtown,what would Hercules du`
eric siverson
February 18th, 2011 at 8:02 pm
There really is no reason we should want to keep Libyia Iraq or Iran or any of the Islamic countries as whole in tack countries . Why not let the countries fragment into small fiefdoms where the tribes and families can jocky amoungst each other for supremecy . With no one having a big enough tax base or population to really threaten very much damage to anyone . NATO was only too happy to bustup Yugoslavia and bring freedom and democracy to several minorities leaving the Serbian majority with less than half of thier once powerfull country . Now the Balkans are back to where they used to be with no federal Yugoslavia to prevent the continues war that always has been in the Balkans . The only thing stopping the war right now is the E.U.and NATO troops permately stationed there . Dealing with one goverenment was a advantage in the colonial days when we only had to pay or bribe one family to get all the raw materials from the whole country . Now that we a supposed to be buying the natural resources for a fair price we could just as well buy from the tribal areas . In Iraq the Kurds could just as well be a seperate county from the Shiits or Sunnis .