The Times reported that "Belhaj has become so much an insider lately that he is seeking to unseat Mahmoud Jibril, the American-trained economist who is the nominal prime minister of the interim government, after Mr. Jibril obliquely criticized the Islamists."
The Times article by correspondents Rod Nordland and David D. Kirkpatrick also cited other recent developments of growing Islamist influence inside the Libyan rebel movement:
"Islamist militias in Libya receive weapons and financing directly from foreign benefactors like Qatar; a Muslim Brotherhood figure, Abel al-Rajazk Abu Hajar, leads the Tripoli Municipal Governing Council, where Islamists are reportedly in the majority; in eastern Libya, there has been no resolution of the assassination in July of the leader of the rebel military, Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, suspected by some to be the work of Islamists."
It may be commendable that the Post and Times are finally giving serious attention to this unintended consequence of the NATO-backed "regime change" in Libya, but the fact that these premier American newspapers ignored the Islamist issue as well as doubts about Libya's Lockerbie guilt -- while the U.S. government was whipping up public support for another war in the Muslim world -- raises questions about whether any lessons were learned from Iraq.
Do these prestige news outlets continue to see their role in such cases as simply getting the American people to line up behind the latest war against a Mideast "bad guy" -- or will they ever take seriously their journalistic duty to arm the public with as much information as possible?
Cross-posted from Consortium News(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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