Moussa Koussa, asylum seeker

Moussa Koussa, Libyan Minister of Foreign Affairs since March 2009, has sought asylum in Britain. A life-long acolyte of Colonel Daffy, the thesis he submitted for his 1978 sociology degree at the University of Michigan was a fawning biography of the Raïs.

From 1979 to 1980 he was i/c security for Libyan embassies in north Europe, during which time half-a-dozen exiled opponents of the Daffy regime were assassinated.

Appointed ambassador to the Court of St James in 1980, he was expelled later that year for stating that he considered his duties to involve eliminating Libyan dissidents living in the UK. For many years he was denied entry to the USA.

He was later a named suspect in the attempted assassination of Sultan ben Abdelaziz Al Saoud of Saudi Arabia.

All that changed when, as head of Libyan intelligence 1994-2009, he became the key figure in the abandonment of Libya's nuclear weapons development in return for the normalization of relations with the USA and UK. A further quid pro quo was Libyan support for the "war on terror", and payment of compensation for the victims of explosives and weapons supplied to the IRA.

So - does he merit asylum as Dr Jekyl, or to be put on trial as Mr Hyde? I'm willing to bet it depends on how many beans he can spill about the secret deals made during the "normalization". Also about the dirty deal for the release on "humanitarian" grounds of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber.

Tricky one. It will be fun watching the Boy Wonder and the Hagueon squirm.

Blithering Brits

The Libyan farce simply underlines that the British state apparat cannot do anything right. The catalyst for ordering two large aircraft carriers - in the teeth of the RAF's determination that they should control all fixed wing aircraft and all except light helicopters - was the 1991-95 Bosnia/Serbia fuck-up.

Remember that? Remember "The hour of Euope has dawned", the immortal words of the exquisitely well-named Jacques Poos, pride of Luxembourg and President of the Council of Europe?

Anyway, after the Americans finally got tired of Europeans circle-jerking and bombed the crap out of Serbia, a few brave matelots in Whitehall broke with consensus and pointed out that if we'd had a proper flat-top it could have operated a wide range of British air assets from a few miles offshore, saving wear and tear on pilots and machines and generating a far greater sortie rate than land-based operations, without requiring the by-your-leave of any neighbouring countries or the enormous expense of setting up and defending bases on land.

My word, really? Gosh, and you say that 90 percent of the world population and even more of its wealth lies within easy reach of the coast? Who'd ever have thought it! And that if a couple of far away choke points are closed off by regimes hostile to us, the whole country will grind to a halt in a matter of weeks? Oh, don't say that, it's too awful to contemplate!

So after the Tory ditherers were kicked out in 1997 the new bunch came in and said "Let's have a Defence Review!" And they did. And it confirmed that British strategic vulnerabilities require aircraft carriers. Roll on another ten years of British bureaucratic buggering around and finally they were ordered.

So now, two decades since the hour of Europe revealed the need for them, not only does the Royal Navy not have the big carriers but the dynamic duo of Cameron and Fox have disposed of, or disarmed, the mini-carriers that had been holding the line for the last 40 years - because the RAF Tornados can do just as good a job until the Typhoons are equipped to take over.

Except that, once again, they have demonstrated that they can attempt to do so only by using up all available air-to-air refuelling assets and burning up the flying hours of their pilots so that they can't even sustain the pitiful sortie rate with which they began to Libyan intervention.

But depend on it - Cameron won't permit a reversal of the original decision. It takes a man to admit he was wrong, and he is a conceited boy playing at being a grown-up, so far out of his depth it almost makes you feel sorry for him.

But not nearly as sorry as I feel for the people whose present and future welfare he is supposed to be taking care of.

Farage on the Libyan intervention

Soothscribe Nigel Farage on YouTube telling it like it is, as usual.

You have to see it on RT (Russia Today) Moscow, although it might have been Al Jaz. But not a chance you'll ever see those views expressed on any Brit channel: they're too chicken-shit.

Hat-tip: Muffled Vociferation

Itch about oil

As the old clown Anthony Wedgewood Benn would no doubt be intoning from a platform in Trafalgar Square if someone could have summoned up the energy to organize a protest against the Libyan intervention.

And, this time and for once, he'd be right. The insurgents are now (one hopes) well disposed towards the Franco-Brits who The One is permitting to grab the limelight while the Americans fly most of the sorties.

And gosh, what a surprise; thanks to the generous interpretation of "no-fly" to include destroying decidedly earth-bound armoured vehicles, the insurgents are recovering all the oil refinery and exporting facilities along the eastern coast.

So, itch indeed about oil. But itch also, if only incidentally, about knocking over a crazy as a shithouse rat Arab dictator who is long overdue in hell - so who gives a damn?

Tornado and Brimstone: ethical tank-busting

As promised, videos of civilian-friendly warfare from the RAF.

Gotta admit the fly boys also produce the moodiest movies.

Can't be helped - the Army and the Navy will never be able to compete on the PR front.

The Libyan intervention: a hypothesis

So, you may be asking yourselves, WTF? Indeed, in the light of past experiences in Iraq and the current migraine of Afghanistan, WTFF? I propose the following, which - a first for Ockham's Razor - may err on the side of attributing long-term intelligent cunning to officials. The only reason I am persuaded it may be the case is because the French are involved and the Enarques are good at this sort of thing:

• Since the Franco-British Saint-Malo Agreement in December 1998, the only two European powers with the capability, the experience and the will to mount military interventions overseas have been looking for ways to harmonize their armed forces with an eye to joint operations.
• Although the EADS (Airbus) A400M debacle is one of the fruits of the new Entente Cordiale (which predates Saint-Malo), the more recent manifestation was the British decision to go ahead with building the French-designed CVF aircraft carriers without making provision for the aircraft that will fly off them and with the proviso that only one of them will be used by the Royal Navy.
• The deal seems to be that the aircraft carriers will be equipped with the French Rafale M, and that the French will operate the other carrier, something they need to do because the Charles De Gaulle is an embarrassing lemon. The Rafale for CVF trade-off may even be an outright quid pro quo.
• What the Entente Cordialers have needed is a conflict where French and British interests are sufficiently aligned to demonstrate that the whole is stronger than the parts. Libya fits the bill in spades.
• Both governments have shamelessly fellated Colonel Daffy in order to win privileged contracts for their respective oil companies. Those contracts (and commercial and diplomatic relations generally) are in the balance. Both Paris and London came off the fence early and have been very, very anxious to establish good relations with whoever takes over from Daffy.  
• Bombing the crap out of Daffy's Praetorian Guard is likely to win largish brownie points with the successor regime, meanwhile Special Forces are on the ground to try to make sure the winners are not the Islamofascists.

Then there is a sub-hypothesis that it is very much in the US interest that the Franco-Brits should at least assume the role of world policeman in their own back yard, which would explain why The One took a back seat in the negotiations leading up to the UN Resolution while preparing to take out Daffy's air defences so that the Yurrupeans could then go in and do the dirty work.

As I said at the beginning, I feel almost apologetic for suggesting that there has been joined-up thinking in this matter, but contrary to my natural inclination I think there may have been.

Is liberal imperialism OK if the French do it?

EU Observer reports that yesterday French Pres Nicolas Sarkozy told the press in Brussels that UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorising air strikes on Libya has created a new international "responsibility to protect."

Wow. Asked about the situation in Syria, he replied: 

Every ruler should understand, and especially every Arab ruler should understand that the reaction of the international community and of Europe will from this moment on each time be the same: we will be on the side of peaceful protesters who must not be repressed with violence.

In any democracy there can be demonstrations which can turn violent. But no democracy can accept that the army shoots live ammunition at protesters. This is the position of France and it does not change no matter what the country concerned.

Wow again. He rounded it off by saying that Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbago was next on the list of rulers whose armed forces need to be punished.

Leaving aside the pros and cons of the issue, can you even begin to imagine what the Bitchy Boys and the like would be ejaculating about this if either The One or the Boy Wonder had expressed these sentiments?

P.S. In Syria, Basher-al-Assad's Praetorian Guard has massacred protestors. That's A LOT of machine-gunfire. Now - about that "responsibility to protect" . . .

SDSR redux: Tomahawk vs. Storm Shadow

The Save the RAF at any Cost Review (SRCR) overseen by the Boy Wonder and his hapless Defence Secretary Lame Fox has encountered reality, and - guess what? - reality has won.

The (imbecile on its face) decision to proceed with aircraftless carriers while destroying the capability to operate from them by axing existing carriers and all Harriers, was based on false RAF allegations that the Tornado could provide air cover for the fleet world-wide and that it must be kept in service to provide ground support in Afghanistan.

In fact the ONLY thing Tornado can do that Harrier cannot is to carry and launch the Storm Shadow cruise missile - which is the reason the missile was developed in the first place. Operations against Colonel Daffy in Libya have starkly contrasted the prompt and accurate response of Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from warships and the delayed and inaccurate performance of Storm Shadow.

Storm Shadow costs about £1.1 million a pop, to which one must add the per hour operating cost of £33,000 per Tornado carrying two of them plus the operating cost of air-to-air refueling tankers, and we're looking at about £1.5 million per missile fired.

Tomahawks cost £305,000 per, and the nuclear subs that launch it add no additional costs since operating expenses are the same whether they are on patrol or not. The Tomahawk also has a longer range, which leaves Tornado quivering on the very thin ice of close air support for ground troops, a task that even the RAF cannot argue would not be better performed by Harriers.

There is a certain grim satisfaction in recalling the fate of the 1981 Nott defence review based on much the same false RAF claims and abandoned after the Falklands War demonstrated the indispensable capability afforded by Harrier-equipped aircraft carriers. 

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

No-Flies on us

The KCOC-S brigade has been surpassing all previous levels of sycophancy over the Boy Wonder's role in bringing about UN permission to stop Colonel Daffy murdering any more of his rebellious no-longer-subjects. No link - just step outside and you'll be ankle deep in the horse shit.

While I'm always in favour of knocking over brutal dictators, and I want Daffy dead anyway for the terrorism he financed and perpetrated in the UK, I'm tolerably sure this one is going to go badly wrong. I just don't think the Frogs or we have the necessary kit and experience to avoid the "collateral damage" beloved of journopukes.

But at a more parochial level, it's a golden opportunity for the RAF to shine, which its vast PR department will milk for all it's worth. Stand by for much chat about "surgical strikes" and those enthralling nose-cone videos. And that is a long-term disaster for British defence capability.

Combined ops by the French and British, possibly operating out of Italy - what could possibly go wrong? 

P.S. 20 March. Silly of me - OF COURSE the fix was in and the Americans have done the necessary to make it possible for its "valued allies" to operate in Libyan air space. Clever of the Frogs to get in a quick "prestige" attack before the Anglo-Saxon Tomahawks came raining down on Daffy's air defence system.  

Sean Collins - arsehole for today

Don't know anything about this turkey, but his Spiked report from New York "Libya: how the West just made things worse" is as fine a piece of convoluted old-lefty argument ("reasoning" would give it too much merit) as one is likely to find.

Last night, the United Nations Security Council here in New York voted to authorise military action against the Libya regime led by Colonel Gaddafi. Far from rescuing the Libyan uprising, the resolution is a setback for the cause of democracy and self-determination. The authorisation, thanks to last-minute American pressure . . .

So; let me see if I've got this straight. Democracy and self-determination will be better served by sitting back and letting a mad dictator slaughter the people who have risen up in arms because they have no other means of expressing their will?

And - thanks to what? The article goes on to say (in a rare burst of accuracy) that the Obama administration has been extremely reluctant to get involved in yet another Arab imbroglio. That doesn't fool our Sean, though:

. . . the US approach has been cowardly. Obama has hidden behind the skirts of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Cameron, the Arab League and now the UN. It is one thing to put a stake in the ground and then call for others to join in. It is another to stay silent, let the others go out in front, and then decide to just go along for the ride. Whatever happened to the ‘unipolar world’ of undisputed American leadership?

What indeed? How can anyone except an old-school "Amerika is the source of all eevul"  leftist even try to combine the above two paragraphs in one argument? As I keep saying, leftist are too stupid to take seriously. I'm cross with Spiked for publishing this crap.

British pseudo-universities plumb new depths

Five British techs universities have announced that they are "pulling out" of programmes financed by the Libyan government, in a classic example of the British penchant for making a dishonest virtue of necessity. 

Manchester Metropolitan, Teesside, Liverpool John Moore, Glamorgan and Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh announced they had ditched the deal with Libya to train 300 health workers each year in the wake of bloody clashes in the North African nation. Liverpool John Moore University also said that it had severed a deal to advise Libya's National Economic Development Board on improving business education in the country, apart from pulling out of a proposed pact to train health workers.

They weren't going to be getting the money anyway, and the courses they are "pulling out of" served useful humanitarian and developmental purposes. Even though they are only following in the slimy footsteps of the Boy Wonder and The Hagueon, it still sets a new benchmark for opportunistic cowardice disguised as moral principle.

Cringe-making

I see that French President Sarkozy, the frog-kissed-by-a-beautiful-princess-who-remained-a-frog, has taken over the lead from Britain's Boy Wonder in agitating for military action to protect Franco-British interests freedom-loving people in Libya.

Since neither France nor Britain have the military capacity to impose a no-fly zone or even to maintain combat air patrols over the main rebel centres, this amounts to an insolent attempt to require the USA to do it for them. US Defence Secretary Gates has jeered at their "loose talk".

Meanwhile EU President Herman van Rompuy and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Catherine Ashton continue to make me proud to belong to such a vibrant and inspiring multinational force for good in the world.

The massed might of international bureaucrats is to be mobilized! Led by Yurrup! After all, it was so effective in Bosnia, where EUFOR stepped in only after every last ember of nasty war-fighting had been doused - so why not do it again?

Here's the vibrant and inspiring declaration made by the European Council in full (pdf). The most vibrant and inspiring section reads as follows:

The European Council expresses its deep concern about attacks against civilians, including from the air [clever, that: the rebels are civilians]. In order to protect the civilian population, Member States will examine all necessary options [oooh!], provided that there is a demonstrable need, a clear legal basis and support from the region [and from the three bears]. Those responsible will be held accountable and face grave consequences [thereby ensuring that they will stay and fight to the death]. We will work with the United Nations, the Arab League, the African Union and our international partners [coded reference to shhh - you know who-ess-ay] to respond to the crisis. We call for the rapid holding of a summit between the Arab League, the African Union and the European Union.

Yeah, that'll do it.

Kaddafi: pics you won't be seeing in the MSM

Leftist incoherence on Libya

As the Guardian and similar leftist orifices greet the brave new dawn in Libya, a timely reminder from NRO that while Blair, Berlusconi and others may have prostituted themselves for a piece of the oil action, the ones Kaddafi has always swapped spit with have been the darlings of the left in Latin America.

When Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez flew to Tripoli in 2004 to receive the Moammar Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, he joined a select club. Other recipients of the prize include Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. This should not be surprising. It is no coincidence that the prize has been awarded to some of the most tyrannical and anti-American yet clownish despots in the Third World. They share those qualities, and a hatred of individual liberty, with Qaddafi. The relationship between Qaddafi and those “laureates” has been long and involved, going back in the case of Castro and Ortega to cooperation in terrorist wars in the 1970s and ’80s.

Although Chávez was a latecomer, he lost no time in consummating the friendship and joining the club. In 2009, during an official state visit by Qaddafi to Venezuela, Chávez bestowed upon him the Order of Simón Bolívar, Venezuela’s highest honor, and famously said, “What Simón Bolívar is to Venezuela, Qaddafi is to Libya.” In reality, Bolívar was an admirer of George Washington and the architect of the independence of six existing nations of South America. Bolívar today would be called a democrat in the classical sense, certainly not a candidate for the Qaddafi Prize.

Spookery: you have to take chances

Much gloating about the brief capture of a couple of SIS officers and their SAS escort in eastern Libya by those too far gone in hatred of the current UK administration to give it any credit at all.

Absent any reliable sources of information about what is going on, a covert mission was certainly worth a try. The West in general and Britain in particular has a great deal to lose if Khaddafi is replaced by a headless monster, as in neighbouring Tunisia, and it is simply common sense to try to get alongside the leading insurgents as soon as possible.

If the British government could back the eventual winner early, the damage to national interests would be greatly reduced. Indeed, British influence might even be enhanced. It helps that the French and Italians were also heavily committed to the Khaddafi regime, and are better targets for residual anti-colonial feeling.

Straight diplomats are seldom any use in a crisis precisely because it is their job to be risk-averse. They are best at drafting bouts de papier, a skill of little relevance once the guns begin to shoot. The main function of an intelligence service is to keep their own government informed about what is bubbling beneath the surface.

When, as in North Africa, apparently monolithic regimes crumble, it is the spooks who have to scramble to find out who is likely to come out on top. It is in the nature of intelligence work that operations, especially when mounted quickly in a fast-changing environment, will sometimes go tits-up. But it is surely better to try and fail than not to try at all.

Timothy Garton Arse

"Libya's escalating drama reopens the case for liberal intervention" headlines his Guardian column. "Iraq gave it a bad name. Blair nearly killed it. But there are responsible versions of a much abused doctrine" chirps the sub-head. If you can be bothered, read the convoluted reasoning that follows. Some highlights

The other massive distortion in the debate about liberal interventionism is that the military actions now most closely associated with the term (Afghanistan, Iraq) were not really liberal at all – or, at least, they were not primarily liberal. Some of the justifications of them used liberal arguments, and some liberals supported these actions, but the core of the case was not liberal in the way that the west's military interventions in Bosnia (far too late), Sierra Leone and Kosovo genuinely were.

OK - so it's liberal interventionism when those intervened against are too small to fight back, but nasty neo-imperialism when they can. The following is a classic example of limp leftyism.

The main reason western forces invaded Afghanistan was because al-Qaida, then based in Afghanistan, had attacked the US. [1] The mission there soon crept to, or became mixed with, that of building a society in which, for example, women would not be treated as hooded slaves and chattels – a good liberal purpose from which the west is now quietly and shamefacedly retreating. But it is a safe bet that George Bush had not spared many thoughts for the oppressed women of Afghanistan before 9/11.[2] Iraq is a more complicated story. Here, motives such as frustration at the failure to catch Osama bin Laden, the desire to use US military superiority to overwhelming effect ("shock and awe"), and interest in Iraqi oil [3] – were mixed from the outset with a neocon agenda of spreading democracy, as an example to the whole region.[4]

1. Yes - and? The liberal interventionist argument is that it is in the interest of the developed world to eradicate third world shit-holes precisely because of the spill-over effect.
2. So what? If the effect was to bring about "a good liberal purpose", who gives a shit?
3. Sigh - "Itsh about oil". Give it a resht. Was Saddam a murderous dictator and a threat to the stability of the region or not? If so, how can someone claiming to be a liberal interventionist argue against his necessarily military overthrow?
4. And this was a bad idea why? Ooooh! I see! If it's neo-con, then the outcome doesn't matter. It must be bad, because that means the results cannot be "liberal". 

He ends by admitting that to impose a no-fly zone over Libya would necessarily involve bombing Libyan AD assets (which will certainly be positioned near schools, hospitals and mosques). So, he says, maybe not unless Kaddafi starts gassing his people. Well, what then? How is it worse to gas people than to rip them apart with high explosives?

Should they receive the permission of TG-A, the Americans are the only ones capable of doing anything military in Libya, so that would be Iraq all over again in the limp lefty world-view. Dear God, they make just anyone a professor these days.

In Memoriam: WPC Yvonne Fletcher

Gaddafi - please let it be true!

Gaddafi refuses to leave power, vows to die a 'martyr' in Libya 

Tribal and religious leaders condemned Gaddafi for the attacks against civilians; some urged all Muslims to rise against him. Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi told al-Jazeera that he urged any Libyan soldier who has the opportunity to kill Gaddafi - and issued a religious decree to that effect. "I am issuing a fatwa now to kill Gaddafi, to any army soldier, to any man who can pull the trigger and kill this man to do so.

Thus the Washington Post. Oh, I do so pray the sick bastard will stick it out. Wouldn't like to see him shot though. No, I want to see him dragged from his palace, stomped to death and hung by his feet in some very public place.