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Gaddafi is No Anti-Imperialist
John Spritzler
March 7, 2011
Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez defend Gaddafi as an “anti-imperialist” and accuse the anti-Gaddafi rebels of being agents of imperialism. But the evidence points in the opposite direction—that Gaddafi is the tool of imperialism and the rebels are the anti-imperialist force. As these two reports below reveal, Gaddafi welcomed British imperialism to Libya, while the rebels threw the British imperialists in the brig. (For your convenience, I have enlarged the font size of the most relevant sections of the articles below.)
Gaddafi welcomes British imperialism
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8353501/Libya-Tony-Blair-agreed-to-train-Gaddafis-special-forces-in-deal-in-the-desert.html
Libya: Tony Blair agreed to train Gaddafi’s special forces in 'deal in the desert’
Tony Blair used his final foreign trip as prime minister to sign a confidential deal with Muammar Gaddafi to train Libyan special forces and supply him with Nato secrets.
Tony Blair with Col Muammar Gaddafi during a visit to Libya in 2007 Photo: GETTY IMAGES
By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent 10:00PM GMT 28 Feb 2011
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A copy of the accord obtained by The Daily Telegraph shows that the two leaders agreed to co-operate on defence matters in a range of areas, including exchanging information about defence structures and technology.
It was signed during the former Labour prime minister’s “Blair-well” tour of Africa in May 2007, in Gaddafi’s tent in the Libyan desert.
Included in the document was an agreement on “co-operation in the training of specialised military units, special forces and border security units”. They also signed up to “exchanges of information on Nato and EU military and civil security organisations”. The document was personally signed by Mr Blair and Gaddafi.
A passing reference to it was contained in a joint communiqué between the
two countries, which was issued at the time and posted on the Foreign Office website before being removed a few weeks ago.
Libyan rebels throw British imperialists in the brig and insist they are not welcome
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/03/05/libyan-rebels-capture-british-sas-unit/
British FM: Libyan Rebels Release Captured SAS Troops
British Troops Sent to 'Offer Help' After Repeated Warnings Against Foreign Meddling
by Jason Ditz, March 05, 2011
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Update 3/6 12:57 PM: Foreign Secretary William Hague is reporting that the SAS troops as well as the diplomat “have now left Libya.” He insisted that the British government would send more diplomatic teams to East Libya “in due course.”
Sometimes no really means no.
That’s what the British military learned today when, after a solid week of Libyan rebel leaders insisting that they didn’t want any foreign intervention in the ongoing efforts to oust long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi, they decided a great idea would be to dispatch a unit of their special forces, the SAS, to Benghazi to “offer help.”
British PM David Cameron
The troops arrived in plain clothes and accompanied a “junior diplomat” who had ostensibly been dispatched to “establish relations” with the opposition’s leadership council. The rebels have been in control of virtually the entire eastern half of the nation plus a number of cities in the west for over a week.
But the rebels’ troops spotted the plain clothes troops and hauled them away, worrying that public support would be damaged if they were seen as a Western-backed coup against Gadhafi, one of the chief reasons they have repeatedly spurned US and British offers of military help.
Though the diplomat’s arrival doesn’t appear to have been a major problem, the protest movement has sought international recognition as the “legitimate government of Libya” over the Gadhafi regime, the fact that he showed up uninvited with a unit of soldiers appears to have angered the rebel leadership council, which immediately ordered the lot of them thrown into a military brig.
Publicly the British Defense Ministry has declined comment on the arrests, saying that they never comment on any activities of the SAS, but officials have said off the record that they don’t expect the matter to escalate and that the rebels are “just making a point.” Indeed, reports from the following morning suggested that the troops and the diplomat were expelled from the country, though Foreign Secretary William Hague suggested they would likely send another “team.”
The point, which appears to have been lost on Western officials the first hundred times they said it, is that Libya’s protest movement does not want a NATO-led occupation, or any other occupation, and that they feel perfectly capable of taking the rest of the nation on their own, using a combination of the military defectors (which amount to most of Libya’s military) and the massive popular support for Gadhafi’s ouster.
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