Reports coming out of Libya today suggest that the sparsely populated but strategically valuable seaport town of Marsa Brega (also called al-Burayqah) has fallen to the Gadhafi regime’s forces, suggesting that the rebel capital of Benghazi also could soon be at risk.
Regime forces on Friday captured Ra’s Lanuf and over the course of Saturday continued to advance eastward along the coast, pushing back the rebel forces, which just weeks ago appeared to be on the brink of taking the entire country.
The rebels were reported to have fled Brega, which is also the site of valuable oil facilities, in the face of heavy shelling. The loss of Brega has the rebels falling back to Ajdabiyah, which they expect to be besieged in the next hour or so.
Ajdabiyah is something of a last line of defense, largely analogous to Zawiya in the west. The city is the last major one between Brega and Benghazi, the rebel capital, and also has a road leading to the key rebel city of Tobruk. If it falls, and the momentum seems to be strongly on the regime’s side at the moment, the rebels will be facing a desperate fight in the last of their territory.
Who would have thought that a handful of Serbian mercs were such good desert fighters.
Qaddafi used to be anti-Israeli, so Washington was against him, but early in the new century he had an idea. He bought some nuclear scrap on the black market and handed it over to the West, declaring that he was "abandoning Libya's nuclear-weapons program," so Bush and the neocons could score a propaganda victory. Sure enough, the sanctions were lifted.
Since then he has raved against al-Qaeda, and as it has been revealed, he has cooperated with the CIA against al-Qaeda and other Islamists who oppose the Palestinian genocide. So that's why there is a lot of talk but no action when it comes to helping the rebels. Washington knows that those rebels would care about their people and not hand over fellow countrymen to the CIA if they help in the struggle for the Palestinians.
So "The Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" will still enjoy the covert support of the CIA. Just like the ruling parties in Egypt and Tunisia did, both members of the Socialist International, helping Israel control the Middle East. And just like the "People's Democratic Republic of Algeria," where Washington supports the de-facto dictatorship installed by a military coup ending the country's democracy when Islamic nationalists won the election.
Maybe some day we'll all live in a "People's Democratic Republic of Earth," a New World Order overriding every national constitution, where dangerous nationalist and religious traditions are the number one "terrorist" enemy and all are centrally controlled – except Israel, of course.