Day: April 27, 2011

To Kill A Dictator

On the website of a loyal reader, Spinny Liberal (go to blogroll and click on her opinionated site…excellent reads) she had a post about the senators calling for the assassination of Qadhafi and it got me to remembering the days when there were hearings on the US and its numerous attempts to assassinate other leaders in various countries…….

Libya is still raging…in case you have missed it with all the hype and boring details of some royal wedding……..it is still a yo-yo fight, back and forth, back and forth……..and just recently Qadhafi’s compound was attacked (yet again) and the speculation is that the Norwegian (I believe) planes were after Qadhafi himself…….basically an assassination attempt.

On Easter Sunday and over the whole weekend Repub congress people we going on the airwaves and calling for the assassination of Qadhafi…..

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told CNN: “Right now there’s just not enough momentum by the rebels… So my recommendation to NATO and the administration is to cut the head of the snake off. Go to Tripoli, start bombing Gaddafi’s inner circle, their compounds, their military headquarters.”In response to Graham’s call for assassination, McCain expressed general agreement with targeting the Libyan leader, but declared US strategy had to be based on “winning the battle on the ground” not on “a chance of taking him out with a lucky air strike.”

Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman—the one-time vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party—joined the campaign for escalation and echoed Graham’s call to assassinate Gaddafi. NATO, he declared, “has got to start thinking about whether they want to more directly target Gaddafi and his family.” Lieberman cynically declared that the UN resolution justified a policy of assassination on the grounds it would “protect the civilian population.”

Political assassination?

In 1974 the Congress established a committee to investigate possible U.S. involvement in plots to assassinate foreign leaders deemed hostile to U.S. interests.

The committee reported its findings in 1975 to a dismayed Congress. Public outcry was loud and immediate. At the urging of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, President Gerald R. Ford signed an Executive Order banning all federal employees from committing assassination as a tool of U.S foreign policy or for any other reason. Exec. Order No. 11905. The order was extended by President Ronald Reagan 15 years later to also preclude hired assassins.

It is basically illegal for anyone in the government to expressly go out and kill…..but since 9/11 that sort of illegality has been lessened in a rush to kill those who killed Americans…..the question now is….will the US use a proxy to do the deed?  The French seem to be in a rabid war footing, maybe they will do it for us……….

What Is The UK Doing?

Inkwell Institute

Middles East Desk

NO!  This is NOT a post about some royal wedding!

Once again, if I am mistaken I hope that my friend and reader Quin of Quintessential Havoc (my blogroll will take you to his site….visit often!) will help me and others understand the complexity of this situation…..

Has the world learned nothing from the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The battle for Libya is forming stupid responses around the world….and the UK and France are about to make one of their own…..I know….what am I going on about?

This from a report by Patrick O’Connor:

The British Conservative-Liberal government of Prime Minister David Cameron and the French administration of President Nicolas Sarkozy are moving closer to deploying ground forces in Libya, escalating the neocolonial war being waged against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

In a televised interview,  Cameron repeatedly refused to rule out launching operations involving ground troops. “What we’ve said is there is no question of an invasion or an occupation, this is not about Britain putting boots on the ground, this is not what we are about here,” he declared.

The European Union has prepared a force of 1,000 troops and drawn up a “concept of operations” for deployment to Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, located 200 kilometres from the capital Tripoli. The mission, named EUFOR Libya, has its operation headquarters in Italy, Libya’s former colonial ruler, and is under the command of an Italian rear admiral.

The EU’s 27 member-states decided to prepare the EUFOR Libya force at the beginning of the month—before the fighting in Misrata intensified—and they are now awaiting approval for deployment from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Guardian has reported: “With the situation in Libya, particularly Misrata, getting more critical, diplomats in Brussels say the pressure is mounting on the UN to authorise the EU force.”

Fierce rivalries between the powers are emerging ever more openly. The French government has reportedly exerted “strong pressure” on the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, to secure UN approval for EUFOR Libya. However, the EU force is largely comprised of German troops. The German government of Angela Merkel abstained on Security Council resolution 1973, but has since shifted its position—keen to secure its share of Libya’s lucrative oil reserves in the event Gaddafi is ousted—and has backed the possible deployment of ground forces. The Sarkozy government’s concern at being outmanoeuvred by Berlin no doubt prompted Poniatowski’s demand for more French special forces to be sent into Libya.

What are they doing?  Are they going to take out a dictator that is dangerous to his people?  Does that sound familiar?  What is the EU doing?

Hey guys!  Take a good close look at what has happened to the US in its rush to remove Saddam…look at the consequences….you are about to bite off more than you can digest!

Cracks Forming In The European Union?

Inkwell Institute

Europe Desk

First of all, let me say, that if I am mistaken I hope that Quin of Quintessential Havoc (go to my blogroll and visit a great site) will set us straight……

One of the good items in the EU is the open borders concept and that has been crapped on by France when it stopped an Italian train (I believe) with Tunisian refugees from entering the country…..and that is just one crack….oh there are more and they seem to be escalating….

There has been lots of rumblings within the members of the EU about the bailouts of the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain)……none of them are that stable at this time and all have some form of massive austerity programs to implement…all of which has cause a severe backlash in the said countries….protests, violence and an assortment of marches and protests…..

Not every member is happy with the outcomes of the decisions of the EU parliament….some of the more stable countries do not feel that they should have to help prop up the more unstable ones….Finland come to mind…..from an article in the UPI….

A nationalist party strongly opposed to helping debt-laden EU members made big gains in Finland’s parliamentary elections, a development that sowed fresh insecurity across Europe’s financial markets.Led by populist leader Timo Soini, the True Finns have in the past rallied against too much immigration, abortion and same-sex marriage. Their biggest opponent, however, seems to be Brussels.

Soini doesn’t want to hand Finnish money to debt-laden member states such as Portugal, Ireland and Greece. He’s also opposed to the European Stability Mechanism, a wide-ranging eurozone bailout fund, agreed to by EU leaders at a recent summit in Brussels.

This comes as Finland is enjoying relatively stable economic growth and sound finances. The Finnish budget deficit will shrink to 1.6 percent of gross domestic product this year, the European Commission has predicted — a comfortable debt rate compared to the body’s average of 5.1 percent.

Finland’s previous government backed the stability package but postponed its ratification until after Sunday’s election. As the EU decision requires unanimity, the True Finns could try to win support for blocking the package when Finland’s Parliament votes on it.

If the True Finns get there way….will this crack in the EU structure expand to other countries?  And if does, will this lead to a larger problem for the EU?  With this success in Finland, will it lead to successes by other populist parties in the other member nations?