Free Republic

Never-before-seen video has emerged of the moment a battered and bleeding Colonel Gaddafi was captured by Libyan rebels. The shocking footage was captured on the mobile phone of one of the fighters who dragged the dictator alive from a drain in Sirte in 2011. Similar footage was widely circulated at the time of his death, but this video captures his final moments from a new perspective and clearly shows him pleading for his life. It shows frenzied scenes as Gaddafi is surrounded by screaming gunmen on the bonnet of a truck minutes before he was summarily executed.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi issued a 'prophetic' warning to Tony Blair that jihadists would attack Europe if his regime was allowed to collapse, phone conversations reveal. Gaddafi's dire prediction was made in two desperate telephone calls with Mr Blair on February 25, 2011 - as civil war was engulfing Libya. In the first call at 11.15am, Gaddafi said: "They [jihadists] want to control the Mediterranean and then they will attack Europe." snip In the call, lasting half an hour, Gaddafi insisted he was trying to defend Libya from al-Qaeda fighters. The presence of al-Qaedas would later be superceded by the rise...

What if the biggest mystery surrounding Col. Moammar Gadhafi had nothing to do with his long, brutal reign as the world's most eccentric and violent leader turned pariah? And what if a long-lost letter from a Catholic cardinal who knew Gadhafi's true identity was evidence that could have solved the mystery? To many Libyan people, the biggest question mark about Gadhafi does not involve his repressive and dictatorial rule, delusional statements or brazen lies. Behind closed doors, for years, they've wondered if he is Jewish. Last week the issue came out in the open, as NBC's Richard Engel reported from...

Emails reveal Blair's fight to save Gaddafi: Former PM urged Hillary Clinton not to 'humiliate' dictator as he attempted to broker peace after eruption of civil war Extraordinary details of Tony Blair's involvement with Colonel Gaddafi's tottering Libyan regime are revealed in the latest of Hillary Clinton's emails released by the US State Department. Mr Blair repeatedly spoke to the dictator on the phone in an attempt to broker peace after civil war erupted in 2011. Mr Blair, then Middle East peace envoy, said he found the despot's right hand man 'sensible' and urged Mrs Clinton, at that time the...

During Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton ... obscures a largely forgotten moment in U.S. diplomacy: a period less than two years earlier when she and the Obama administration were actively cozying up to the “murderous” Gadhafi. “I am very pleased to welcome Minister Gadhafi here to the State Department,” she said, warmly greeting Mutassim Gadhafi, the Libyan dictator’s son and national security adviser, at the State Department in April, 2009. “We deeply value the relationship between the United States and Libya.” To be sure, the rapprochement with Gadhafi began under President George W. Bush in 2003 when the Libyan...

Qaddafi's latest gambit: Convince the European public that they really want him to stick around, with all the stability that entails. "There are millions of blacks who could come to the Mediterranean to cross to France and Italy, and Libya plays a role in security in the Mediterranean."

ROME – For months, humanitarian aid workers and Europe’s leaders have been wringing their hands about how to stop the human traffickers who are responsible for the deluge of migrants and refugees making the dangerous crossing from Libyan ports to European shores. There has been talk of everything from destroying smugglers ships to infiltrating the traffickers’ networks, but apparently a more basic plan was also in the works. On Saturday morning Salah Al-Maskhout, a former henchman for Muammar Gaddafi thought to be the mastermind behind the main Mediterranean trafficking ring operating in the seas between North Africa and Europe, was...

In 2011 Barack Obama led from behind a NATO coalition bent on removing Moammar Gaddafi from power in Libya. The removal and death of Gaddafi was, Obama put it, a warning to "iron fisted" rulers everywhere. Syria, Iran and North Korea excepted, of course. Over at Foreign Policy this was hailed as a huge success. "Leading from behind" is an important element of this doctrine. It is no insult to lead but let others feel they too are architects of a plan, to lead without making others feel you are bullying, to lead but do so in a way in...

Or maybe Obama, Hillary, McCain,  or Lindsey Graham could do some splainin'...? I'm no huge Bush fan in general, but am pretty damn sick of hearing the historical re-inventions lately re. how going into Iraq was always a failure, etc... like The Surge never happened- how Obama was 'handed a mess', blah blah blah...  Mark Levin recently noted this new 'progressive' push against reality, one likely intended to shield Obama/Dems from the outright disaster they've created in Iraq and 'The Levant'. The truth is, Barack Obama was handed a stable Iraq... then promptly dropped the reigns and walked away. And...

One of the more interesting aspects of this flood of human misery is that it is not entirely spontaneous. Jihadi groups are doing their best to encourage it. ... That would not be surprising. In 2004 Europe agreed to pay Muhammar Gaddafi four billion pounds a year in exchange for a promise to halt people smuggling to Europe. Experts have also drawn links between the massive rise in would-be migrants and a so-called ‘deal in the desert’ struck by Tony Blair in 2004 – which saw the late Muammar Gaddafi agree to crack down on human traffickers as well as...

Separately, the militants hope to cement their control of Libya then cross the Mediterranean disguised as refugees, according to letters seen by Quilliam the anti-terror group ISIS threatens sending 500,000 migrants to Europe as a 'psychological weapon' in chilling echo of Gaddafi's prophecy that the Mediterranean 'will become a sea of chaos' Italian press today published claims that ISIS has threatened to release the huge wave of migrants to cause chaos in Europe if they are attacked And letters from jihadists show plans to hide terrorists among refugees In 2011, Muammar Gaddafi ominously predicted war would come to Libya He...

It’s been formally acknowledged that U.S. NATO ‘ally’ Turkey is providing safe haven to leaders of Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) so designated by the U.S. State Department. By its very definition, an FTO should be considered declared enemy of the U.S. Despite this, Turkey doesn’t appear to be paying any price. Another player in all this is the small nation of Qatar. It is desperately trying to play both sides of a political fence as leaders of Hamas – to include the terrorist organization’s political leader Khaled Meshaal – has been forcibly relocated to Turkey. The reason these...

The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit. The Premium Times of Nigeria reports that Iran is stepping forward to offer assistance to the African Union against the savage caliphate spilling out of northern Nigeria into Cameroon and menacing the entire region: ... Abdollohian said the activities of the Boko Haram militants and that of Al-Shabaab in the Somalia were similar to that of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. ... Iran was willing to share its experiences on terrorist activities...

How the West Destroyed LibyaPosted By Raymond Ibrahim On January 13, 2015 @ 12:10 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 1 Comment The full impact of Western intervention in Libya was recently highlighted during a televised interview of Worlds Apart with guest Hanne Nabintu Herland, a Norwegian author and historian who was born and raised in Africa for 20 years.At one point while talking about Libya, Herland firmly asserted that: In a just world, the political leaders in the West, that have done such atrocities towards other nations and other cultures, should have been sent to the Hague [International Criminal Court],...

There has been heavy fighting outside the Libyan interim parliament in the capital Tripoli. MPs fled the building after heavily armed attackers tried to storm it. Some eyewitnesses say the gunmen were from the powerful Zintan Brigade of former rebel fighters. However, a paramilitary force backing retired general Khalifa Haftar claimed it was behind the assault. Authorities are struggling to contain militias that control parts of Libya. A planned new constitution remains unwritten and the country has had three prime ministers since March. On Sunday, the gunmen launched their assault on parliament in armoured vehicles. Black smoke rose above the...

Press Releases Gowdy Named Chair of the Select Committee on Benghazi Washington, May 5 Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) released this statement regarding the announcement that Speaker John Boehner has chosen him to lead the select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks: “I applaud Speaker Boehner for his decision to establish a select committee and am honored to serve as Chairman. Twenty months after the Benghazi attacks, there remain unresolved questions about why the security was inadequate, our response during the siege itself, and our government's interaction with the public after the attack. All of those lines of inquiry are legitimate...

Top barrister: Amal Alamuddin is defending a suspected Libyan war criminal accused of masterminding the Lockerbie bombing Having won the heart of the world’s most eligible bachelor, Amal Alamuddin is getting used to being the centre of attention. But George Clooney’s fiancée has also hit the spotlight for a very different reason – defending a suspected Libyan war criminal accused of masterminding the Lockerbie bombing. It has been just a week since her engagement to the Hollywood heart-throb was revealed but it is already clear that the high-flying barrister is not about to let her career take a back seat....

A blockbuster news event happened earlier this week. One that ought to have caused outrage in all political quarters. One that ought to have made us question not only the Obama administration’s competence, but also their motives. How else should we explain $500 million in arms that the United States facilitated to al-Qaeda linked groups in Libya? How else to explain the sudden shift in a decade and a half-long War on Terror from waging merciless war against the terrorist group that felled the Twin Towers and killed 3,000 Americans to becoming their sugar daddy on the shores of Tripoli?...

Flows of money towards climate adaptation projects are becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it difficult for vulnerable countries to prepare for the hardships caused by global warming. Future fundraising tactics would have to be “extremely aggressive” in order to raise enough money to continue their work, according to board members of the UN-run Adaptation Fund, the primary finance provider for adaptation projects around the world. “We are essentially going with our hands out to everyone,” Philip Weech, the board member from the Bahamas representing the Latin American and Caribbean regions, told RTCC. “We take funds from anyone, any inch, but the...

An anniversary passed this week that went almost completely unremarked — and for good reason. March 17th marked the three-year anniversary of the UN Security Council resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya to stop the Moammar Qaddafi regime from attacking rebel-held Benghazi and Ajdabiya, and the three-year anniversary on the 19th of the NATO war on Libya. French, British, and American planes began bombarding the Qaddafi regime, an air war that would continue for months — while Barack Obama refused to request Congressional approval for it. Later, Obama would claim that Libya represented the smart model of Western intervention....