New York Times and Washington Post articles have admitted that the opposition forces have been coordinated by Special Forces in Libya belonging to the CIA and MI6. The articles also claim that President Obama signed a finding dispatching CIA operatives to identify targets for bombing by NATO forces.
A UK paper, the Independent, on April 3, reports that: "Military and diplomatic advisors from the US and Western Europe -- usually described as experts, consultants and advisors -- turned up in the rebel capital Benghazi."
Supplying arms and military equipment along with personnel to assist the rebels is a clear violation of the arms embargo and clause that prohibits the deployment of an "occupation force of any kind" in Resolution 1973.
Clearly, NATO forces are targeting civilian objects and arming and supplying assistance to the opposition forces all of which violates international law. In addition, one of the objectives of U.S., Britain and France is to assassinate Gadhafi in order to engender regime change, an action also in violation of international law.
NATO forces violated the mandate of 1973 by applying force that exceeded the bounds of "All measures necessary" and are therefore guilty of a war of aggression in violation of the UN and NATO charters.
Invoking the principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is not legitimate since it is not embedded in an international treaty but is instead an international norm with no legal force. As well, it fails to meet the requirements of customary international humanitarian law. In order for it qualify as customary law it must meet the following two criteria: it must be established as general practise in that states generally adopt the same practise uniformly when confronted with similar situations; and it must be demonstrated that they do so because they consider it an obligation. R2P was adopted in 2005 and lacks the precedents to establish it as international customary law.
Exploring actual motivations and the operation itself reveals that the pursuit of narrow national interests was the real purpose of the Libyan campaign and is resulting in a number of war crimes.
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