Posted on 03/29/2011 4:24:18 PM PDT by MissesBush
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Intelligence on the rebels battling Libya's Muammar Gaddafi has shown "flickers" of al Qaeda or Hezbollah presence, NATO's operations commander said, but U.S. officials said there were no indications militant groups are playing a significant role in Libya.
"We are examining very closely the content, composition, the personalities, who are the leaders of these opposition forces," Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe and commander of U.S. European Command, said in testimony to a U.S. Senate hearing on Tuesday.
But several national security officials quickly and firmly denied that al Qaeda or Hezbollah were significantly involved.
"If anyone thinks there are vast numbers of al-Qaeda terrorists running the rebel movement in Libya, then Churchill never smoked a cigar in his life," one of the officials said.
"No one's saying there isn't a relative smattering of bad guys in Libya. After all, there always have been goons in the country," the official told Reuters.
"But let's get real here. This is, at its core, an anti-Gaddafi uprising rooted in major opposition to a repressive regime that has brutalized its own people for decades."
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice agreed that any al Qaeda involvement with the rebels was limited.
Asked whether she had seen any evidence to support Stavridis' assessment, Rice told Fox News: "I would like to think I'm reading much of the same stuff and no."
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
"I would find it unlikely at this stage that we have hard and fast evidence" that these groups are involved in a significant way in Libya, Zarate told Reuters.
Honk if you're surprised.
Our first black president, bombed Africa, how ironic....
Where is the outrage, paging Kanye West.......
The sumani in Japan just showed a flicker of water.
nobama and his minions are spending just a flicker of money leaving us with a flicker of debt.
nobama’s WTF foreign policy is just showing a flicker of incompetence and duplicity.
BamBam vs. Hillary vs. "NATO". Oh, this is gonna be fun.
Did the President explain how Libya is different from Rwanda, the Congo, the Sudan, Sri Lanka, and probably a dozen other places where the government and people slaughter each other wantonly. The difference is Total Petroleum and France. Europe doesn’t want to let go of it’s investment in Libyan oil. It doesn’t want Russia to gain more leverage over it.
Why do our Presidents carry on this blatant charade and just fess up that we are protecting the vital national interests of western nations and be done with it?
So...isn't that similar to the phrase: "..kinda pregnant.." ??
So, how many armed martyrs are in a “flicker”?
Kinetic Flickers. Sounds like something that gets picked from the nose.
More than in a Smattering of Shiites - but less than in a Murder of Marxists.
“flickers”
LOL... minimizing to the extreme.
I hear Obama's Pastor, Rev Wright, used to show a flicker of black liberation theology. Whew, good thing it wasn't more or the Press would have run with it.
Only the Alinskyite president and Hillary would believe Libya and Egypt would have anything to do with democracy.
The train wreck rolls on.
Bidness was picking up until the big recession hit. Take this chart and multiply by a bajillion (on a percentage basis considering population and land difference between US and France) to see the relationship between Total Libya and France. Unless you want to see Western European leaders like Sarkozy holding hands with Medvedev you have to accept this action as in our best interests.
Considering what we already know about the Libyan “rebels” and their ties to al-Qaeda and Iran, maybe the UAVs or SOC spotters on the ground could paint the targets for airstrikes and missiles on their bases / strongholds.
It would not be even a case of “friendly fire” anyway, these “rebels” are not civilians, they don’t care about civilians any more than Gaddafi forces, and they are not our friends (not even according to the official “mission statement” by the UN / NATO / Obama).
Oh no! Flickering kinetics in the Odyssey Dawn?! Unprecedented!
Like having a “Flicker” of cancer...dont be worried, it is only a little cancer.....
We have become the terrorist airforce.....
Or a flicker of pregnancy.
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