saxitoxin wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:saxitoxin wrote:saxitoxin wrote:It now turns out no less than 5,000 Qatari ground troops (from Qatar's absolute monarchy) were fighting to overthrow the Libyan government.
http://www.voltairenet.org/a1718425,000 Qatari troops
2,000 Muslim Brotherhood fighters from Egypt
1,000 imprisoned Al-Qaeda fighters released in the January jail break from Benghazi Central Prison
2,000 Libyan troops from 3 battalions whose commanders were paid $1.5 million/each by CIA
+ unknown numbers of UK, French and American special forces "advisors" and "trainers"
+ 10,000 NATO air and cruise missile strikes
One can see how a "revolution" can succeed without any involvement of the local population ... just Big Oil (e.g. Exoon) and Big Dupes (e.g. Canada).
The Mirror publishes photos of the British mercenaries who were hired to "make a revolution" in Libya -
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-storie ... -23170485/
What exactly bothers you about this?
Is it the fact that "Western" mercenaries are training local rebels? Or is it the involvement of Western countries which provide the funds to the mercenaries to overthrow Qaddafi and Co.?
What "local rebels"? In light of the current cascade of evidence, it's unclear if there were any rebels at all - just a thrown-together army of Qatari troops, Egyptian radicals, escaped prison inmates and NATO mercs.
When Germany invaded Norway there were a handful of Norwegians who assisted the Wehrmacht. No one calls that the "Norwegian Revolution."
This wasn't a revolution, it was a foreign invasion assisted by a handful of local collaborators who were paid millions of dollars for their loyalty.
I'm not so sure, saxi. I'm not privy to certain information, so the best I can rely upon are media reports like Al-Jazeera's correspondents meeting Libyans and talking about their recruitment process. I saw a couple hundred local rebels from a 30-minute video, but how does that apply to the entire country? I don't know.
We'll have to wait until the fog clears.
I don't see how an estimated 7,000 foreign troops, 1,000 "political prisoners," 2000 bribed Libyan soldiers, and some unknown--but likely to be small*--amount of mercenaries (plus the air strikes) could bring down Qaddafi AND could quell internal uprisings in the cities and towns. It seems that the local militias had to play a large enough role to maintain order, and this is a rough reflection of the general consent of the locals.
If there were hardly any rebels, then the foreign troops would have to fight Qaddafi's soldiers as well as every Libyan local--since non-involvement would most likely lead to local dissent against foreign invaders.
*Many of the mercenaries are also demanded in Afghanistan and Iraq, so it's not like that number is massive.