Posted on 03/31/2011 3:33:33 PM PDT by Sax
NEAR BREGA, Libya (AFP) – The United States warned Thursday that forces loyal to Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi were not about to break as his troops pursued rebels eastwards a day after a key regime aide defected.
...
Gates said in prepared testimony to a key US House of Representatives committee.
He also said it was highly unlikely Al-Qaeda would manage to "hijack" the uprising in Libya.
"I think that the future government of Libya is going to be worked out among the principal tribes," Gates told the House Armed Services Committee.
"So I think that for some outside group or some element of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to be able to hijack this thing at this point looks very unlikely to me."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The weak counter to the pressing question - is that Al Qaeda is unlikely "to be able to hijack this thing" (Gates' words).
So how do you figure that? Al Qaeda is so inept they can't even influence men taken to arms in the Middle East anymore? The War on Terror has been won, Al Qaeda has been neutered? Seriously, you can't just feed spin to educated Americans as fact.
Be on the look out for more "those poor rebels" and "the CIA on the ground has linked up with the rebels and said 'hey, these guys are alright, no Al Qaeda here.'"
Why hijack something you already control.
Is anyplace more tribal than Afghanistan/Punjab? Al Qaeda have any trouble getting into power there, by allying with the strongest tribe/faction aka the Taliban? How stupid does Gates think we all are?
No matter who the winner is....Libya will still be a Muslim State....and we’ll be the loser.
Gates didn’t seem too terribly convincing today. (conscience problems, perhaps?)
What you really have here is a few fools leading this whole thing, thinking that they can win, walk in and everyone will drop over and kiss there rumps. When the AQ leader will look at them and grin and the next sound will be the heads of the fools hitting the floor.
Oh! Oh my! Well we're not rebels at all, we just want freedom, rights for women, and peace towards all the world. (Mrmblemmmbrrhakkahhhstalikhaaaa) shut up Al Qaeda, you want this to work or what?! Plenty of time for that later....
A breakout of the hometowns of Libyan jihadists who showed up in Iraq:
Note that the 84% of the jihadists came from Darnah and Benghazi, both rebel strongholds that were (as pointed out in the West Point study) previously the scene of Islamist uprisings in the mid-1990's.
Has anyone told Louis Farrakhan about the rebels killed over 100 blacks yet?
NATO today warned the rebels that it would attack them if they went on the offensive near a civilian occupied city. They’ve apparently changed the ROE to refer to anyone putting civilians at risk. About five minutes after we bomb the first group of rebels, we’ll be everybody’s enemy.
I guess it’d be more accurate to say they made the ROE match the resolution. At any rate, it’s difficult to envision anything but a stalemate coming. I wonder if we can start using the “Q word” (quagmire) now?
The cool thing here is that without an NATO boots on the ground, you can pretty much report whatever the hell you want and spin it as fact. There’s no clear reporting of who’s really on the ground and providing what to whom.
That’s weird, I read that they warned the REBELS not to kill civilians.
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