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PETER'S NEW YORK, Tuesday, October 18, 2011--U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Tripoli today, according to press reports, where she was greeted by more than the rag-group of NATO proxies that have been conveniently anointed as the "legitimate" government of Libya. Also awaiting Clinton, in the role, one expects, of a protective force, were 10,000 UN and/or NATO troops, according to a source.
In a report as of 6:00 p.m. Greenwich Time last night, Morris Herman, who is delivering updates on the Libyan situation for the international news service Mathaba, indicated the presence of an outside occupying army in the Libyan capital.
"Over ten-thousand NATO soldiers wearing U.N. badges are fighting to secure positions for a possible Hillary Clinton visit," Herman said in his nightly newscast. "The streets are filled with NATO soldiers that are fighting with local residents, and explosions and a thick plume of smoke was seen across the city."
NATO is distinct from the United Nations, although both organizations are capable of mounting armed occupations. There was no explanation in Herman's broadcast of how or why NATO forces might be sporting UN badges. Yet the validity of the information must be viewed as supplemental to the vacuum left by the mainstream media, which have overwhelmingly taken the "rebel" side in their reportage, and have conveniently buried information that could be construed as detrimental to the rebel cause.
Clinton had made a stopover in Malta before continuing on to Tripoli today, and a commenter on the Marantha website underscored what he or she believed was the origin of intense activity on the island nation.
"There is hectic activity at Malta International Airport which is being used as control and command post and staging post for NATO attacks against Libya with Galaxy troop and heavy weapons transport planes landing and taking off, obviously transporting NATO ground troops and weapons to the front in Libya," said the commenter, who was identified only as "Deocassar."
It is unlikely Clinton would have made a visit to Tripoli without a heavy security detail, along with assurances that her life would not be placed in jeopardy. This could only be effected by a strong friendly military presence. The National Transitional Council forces, as the rebel faction is called, have not been able to subjugate the city, according to recently published press reports.
UN Resolution 1973, which in March established a no-fly zone over Libya which was then used as a pretext for the NATO bombardment that followed, specifically proscribed any intervention by ground troops. No new UN resolution has been passed mandating or permitting the presence of an outside occupation or invasion force since then. While the UN General Assembly voted recently to seat the NTC as Libya's representative body, not all nations recognize the NTC's legitimacy, and several national heads, such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, have been outspoken NTC critics.
In other parts of Libya, resistance to the NTC is continuing, according to Herman, who says Bani-Walid is totally under the control of Libyan government forces allied with Col. Muammar Qaddafi. Sirte is likewise far from being an NTC vassal city, according to Herman's report, a conclusion corroborated by mainstream media reports.
"At the eastern end of Sirte's seafront, a Reuters reporter saw the spot where, an hour earlier, mortars had landed in a cluster of NTC fighters," said a Reuters news item. "Thirteen of them were killed in the incident, witnesses said."
In the meantime, in an article for The National almost a week ago, foreign policy heavyweight Micah Zenko, who heads the Council on Foreign Relations Center for Preventive Action, accused some unnamed nations, as well as NATO itself, of "blatant violations" of the UN Resolution 1973.
"The endorsement of the Security Council proved essential to the legitimisation of the Nato-led intervention in Libya's civil war. However, several countries openly violated the resolutions, adopting a much more active role and presence in the conflict by arming the rebels, providing military training and placing forward air controllers on the ground to call in air support," said Zenko.
"Furthermore, although Nato repeatedly claimed to be an impartial actor in the conflict, its actions - allowing the rebel forces to smuggle weapons into the country and fly aircraft in the no-fly zone and coordinating its air strikes with their military operations, for instance - proved otherwise.
"As a result of these blatant violations, the UN has been unwilling to endorse intervention in Syria...", said Zenko.
Zenko's remarks caused a controversy in some corners of the foreign policy establishment, triggering a Twitter debate, according to Foreign Policy magazine blogster Colum Lynch.
Zenko is not the only figure at the Council who has been a harsh critic of NATO excesses in Libya. CFR President Richard Haass has also denounced the NATO military intervention, calling into question its well-advertised humanitarian goals. "The 'humanitarian' intervention introduced to save lives believed to be threatened was in fact a political intervention introduced to bring about regime change," Hass said in an opinion piece written earlier this year.
Other CFR fellows, including Neocon favorites Max Boot and Elliott Abrams, have generally supported the Libyan intervention.
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