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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 6/7/11

Libya: Connect the dots--you get a giant dollar sign

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Qaddafi plus Goldman plus oil equals war

In an earlier article, we posed the question, "Why are we in Libya?" We offered some thoughts.

Now, more pieces are falling into place. Those pieces have names of your favorite players: oil companies, banks like Goldman Sachs, and they paint a picture of endless corporate intrigue. The sort that never seems to come out in the corporate media.

Let's go for a ride.

***

This February, several days after Hosni Mubarak resigned in Egypt, civil protest began in neighboring Libya. Quickly, Muammar Qaddafi's Justice Minister turned against him and became a rebel leader. And, he made the dramatic claim that his ex-boss was the culprit behind the bombing of Pan Am 103:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi ordered the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, a former Libyan cabinet minister was quoted as saying by a Swedish newspaper on Wednesday.

Former Justice Minister Mustafa Mohamed Abud Al Jeleil, reported to have resigned this week over the violence used by the government against protesters, told the tabloid Expressen he had evidence Gaddafi ordered the bombing that killed 270 people.

"I have proof that Gaddafi gave the order for (the) Lockerbie (bombing)," Expressen quoted Al Jeleil as saying in an interview at an undisclosed large town in Libya.

The newspaper did not say what the evidence of Gaddafi's involvement in the bombing was.

A Libyan, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, was tried and jailed in Scotland for the bombing, and Gaddafi, in power since 1969, was branded an international pariah for years.

In 2009, the Scottish government freed al-Megrahi on humanitarian grounds after doctors said he had terminal prostate cancer, a decision strongly criticized by the United States. He returned to Libya and is still alive.

"In order to conceal it (his role in ordering the bombing), he did everything in his power to get Megrahi back from Scotland," al Jeleil was quoted as saying.

"He (Gaddafi) ordered Megrahi to do it."

This story made it into major news media throughout the world, without anyone stopping to raise questions about the propaganda benefit of the statement, or of the timing. For example, the UK paper, The Telegraph, interviewed Jeleil/Jalil:

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the provisional rebel government in Benghazi and Libya's former justice minister, said he had evidence of Gaddafi's involvement in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

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Author, investigative journalist, editor-in-chief at WhoWhatWhy.com

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