The Arab Awakening, Hijacked?

Haftar, the CIA's man in Benghazi

The long hand of Washington reaches into Libya

A GOOD PIECE
by Justin Raimondo, April 04, 2011

"News of a rift in the Libyan rebel ranks, as reported in the Washington Post, underscores much about what is wrong with US/NATO intervention in Libya......

Watched by whom, and for what? Falls Church isn’t far from the CIA’s Langley headquarters, but then again it seems Col. Haftar’s relationship with the CIA is hardly one of captive to jailer, although perhaps that’s how it started out. Haftar, it turns out, is not exactly a defector from the regime. According to this United Nations report on the rebel movement he led from Chad in the 1990s, Haftar joined the Libyan National Salvation Front, a group set up by the Central Intelligence Agency, “in March 1987, after he was captured in the Chadian war. His goal was to create an army to fight against the Libyan authorities.” His rebel force “disappeared,” according to the report, ‘with the help of the CIA” after the US-friendly regime in Chad was overthrown, and the next thing anybody knew the Colonel showed up in Falls Church, not a stone’s throw away from his new bosses. The Benghazi authorities, after initially embracing Haftar, are now distancing themselves from him, saying that he is free to join up with the structure they have already put in place, but the confusion on the ground is clear enough. This is a potential disaster in the making for the rebels, who are already out-gunned and up against a professional force that shows no sign of cracking. The rift dramatizes, in cameo, the role of the United States government as the underminer of revolutionary movements throughout the region. In Egypt they sought, at first, to deny what was happening and affirm support for Hosni Mubarak (Biden). The switch to support for Mubarak’s designated successor, head of the secret police, wasn’t much more successful. The pattern repeated itself in Yemen and Bahrain, but in Libya the Americans are prepared: they already have the resources in place to hijack the Benghazi rebellion, and that no doubt motivated in part the decision to intervene. After all, here is Col. Haftar, their Manchurian candidate, an apparent victim of Stockholm Syndrome, all ready to go: the infrastructure was in place. Why not use it?..... "