Libya: West ready to use force against Col Gaddafi amid chemical weapon fears
The Prime Minister disclosed that he would not rule out “the use of military assets” as Britain “must not tolerate this regime using military forces against its own people”. Britain and America are also thought to be considering arming rebel forces in Libya.
Adding to growing concern about the crumbling regime’s ability to commit last desperate acts of mass murder, British sources have disclosed that Libya still has stocks of mustard gas chemicals.
Mr Cameron told MPs that Britain and its allies were considering using fighter jets to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, patrolling and shooting down Libyan aircraft ordered to attack protesters.
The Pentagon announced that the Americans had begun “repositioning forces” around Libya to provide “flexibility”. The French also announced that they would back a possible military intervention with Nato partners.
The warnings were sounded after Gaddafi was accused of ordering Libyan aircraft to attack a radio station being used by rebels in the city of Benghazi. An arms depot being used by anti-government forces was also blown up in the town of Ajdabiya, 100 miles further south.
Despite a promise in 2003 to give up weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi is thought to have retained as much as 14 tons of the chemicals required to create mustard gas.
The stocks are said to be stored in secret secure facilities in the Libyan desert. The chemicals would need to be mixed and loaded into shells before they could be used as weapons, but are “still a concern,” said a senior British government source. “We want to make sure they’re destroyed.”
The disclosure came after a Gaddafi spokesman was said to have warned that there would be hundreds of thousands of deaths if the country descended into full-blown civil war. Saif Gaddafi, the dictator’s son and heir apparent, was yesterday pictured brandishing an assault rifle, rallying supporters and pledging to “send weapons” to loyalists.
Militias controlled by another of Gaddafi’s sons were also massing on the outskirts of a rebel-held city.
If the no-fly zone is agreed, experts believe that western governments may launch bombing raids on Gaddafi forces if he continues to attack protesters.
Libyan opponents of Gaddafi are calling for Nato air strikes, amid growing fears that they are too weak to overwhelm his still-powerful military on their own or defend liberated cities from attack.
Mustapha Gheriani, a spokesman for an organizing committee of lawyers, judges and professionals in Benghazi, the leading city of the revolution, said: “We can’t protect ourselves at the moment from tanks and aircraft, let alone organize a march on Tripoli to topple Gaddafi.
“If there are just a few air strikes, his loyalists will leave him and his time will be numbered in hours. Otherwise he could survive for a long time and there could be terrible bloodshed.”
On Monday, Mr Cameron announced that the vast majority of Britons had been evacuated from Libya and that the evacuation of foreign nationals would be largely complete by today.
The end of the evacuation effort has coincided with a meeting of senior Western politicians to begin the “next phase” of action against the Gaddafi regime. On Sunday, Britain announced emergency plans to freeze the regime’s assets in London. The European Union will impose wide-ranging sanctions against Gaddafi and the Libyan government this week.
Mr Cameron said: “If Col Gaddafi uses military force against his own people, the world cannot stand by. That is why we should be looking at a no-fly zone.” No-fly zones have previously been imposed over Iraq and Bosnia to prevent rogue regimes using air power against civilians. Gen Sir David Richards, the Chief of the Defense Staff, has been asked to draw up options for British military operations in Libya.
Any British involvement in a no-fly operation could see Tornados and Typhoons flying from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. The Libyan air force is equipped with French-built Mirage fighter-bombers, but British planners are more concerned about the regime’s military helicopters, which include Soviet-made Mil Mi-24 gunships.
Reports from Libya say such helicopters have been deployed against opposition forces, killing dozens of civilians.
Sources said Gen Richards’ military options paper will also look at British ground operations. Those were likely to be contingency plans to deal with the extraction of RAF pilots in the event of planes crashing or being shot down.
Another option would be giving weapons and other support to groups inside Libya. Mr Cameron said Gaddafi’s departure was Britain’s “highest priority”, adding: “If helping the opposition would somehow bring that about, it is certainly something we should be considering.”
Since the Libyan crisis began, the Coalition has faced repeated criticism over the decision last year to decommission HMS Ark Royal and the Royal Navy’s Harrier jets, leaving Britain without a functioning aircraft carrier.
Dr Liam Fox, the Defense Secretary, insisted that such criticism was a “red herring” because the base in Cyprus meant Britain could still operate jets over Libya if required.
He said: “There has been no need for us to have a carrier, there has been no need for us to use fast jets, but we have the ability to use them if required.”
The Pentagon is believed to be considering moving a US aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean to take up a position off Libya. The USS Kearsage, an amphibious assault ship, could also be redeployed. “We’re repositioning forces to provide for flexibility once decisions are made,” said a Pentagon spokesman.
On Monday, reports from Libya suggested that Gaddafi – and forces still loyal to him – were preparing to attack rebels and protesters in the west of the country.
In an interview with ABC News, an American television network, the defiant dictator said: “All my people love me. They would die to protect me.”
Witnesses in Misrata, a city of 500,000 people to the east of Tripoli, and Zawiyah, a strategic refinery town to the west of the capital, said government forces were mounting or preparing attacks.
A resident of Zawiyah, called Ibrahim, said: “We are expecting attacks at any moment by brigades belonging to [Gaddafi’s son] Khamis. They are on the outskirts of the town.”
The US Treasury Department announced last night that it has frozen at least $30 billion in Libyan government assets under US jurisdiction. “This is the largest blocking under any sanctions programme ever,” a spokesman said.
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crisisboom
CRISISBOOM 
Kinetic Lies and deception in Libya.
Lets look at the propaganda smear campaign being waged against Libya and it’s leaders and ask if the media is telling even half the truth and if our leaders have become predictable liars and are taking us all for fools.
So OK it’s not a war when you drop bombs and deliberately try to assassinate a world leader or supply weapons to ex Al-CIAda rebels on the ground so that they can march into major cities with these guns the French have given our friendly rebels who will kill anyone who shows support to a leader that has turned a dead end country into one that has the best hospitals and universities on the African continent.
This war that started out as a no fly zone that is still not a war because Obama pulled the word ‘Kinetic’ from his a$$ and has a blank cheque from the UN’s resolution 1973 that says ‘All necessary means to defend civilians’ must be the biggest scam going.
I would like such words in a contract that allowed me to investigate and prosecute international bankers around the world for the fraud they have committed that includes the term ‘All necessary means to prosecute bankers/fraudster and acts of treason’ but I don’t think I will get one.
This is not an NATO action because only three of it’s members are taking part in the daily attacks on a sovereign state and some are calling for an immediate cease fire but clearly our leaders are playing with words and for this reason Congress did not approve Obama’s new war on terror (yes we hear it every day, Muslims under my bed) but Congress still approved funding for the war, Sorry ‘Kinetic Military Action’ which not only goes to show how useless they are but also shows little respect for the American public when 80% are apposed to the war.
Looking at the Arab spring uprising we can see that all the protests started in the major cities and yet in Libya we are to believe farm peasants out in the middle of no where eventually found the courage to rise up in the desert to attack Libyan forces and the ninety nine percent of people in Tripoli who hated Gaddffi’s guts stayed at home.
Quite to the contrary Colonel Gaddffi has a lot of support from the people of Libya and not just from his own tribal clan and apart from pro Gaddffi demonstrations around the world, (not reported in the news) we also have growing support from the people of Libya who are tired of these bombs of love that NATO keeps dropping and sure we have defectors that joined the rebels but what you won’t learn from the news is that some rebels have defected back over to government side.
The real reason we had peasants rising up from the outskirts of the country was because CIA/MOSSAD agents could operate in these areas by handing out free money , guns, propaganda and then flee back across the borders of neighbouring countries when challenged by Libyan forces but still they managed to present to us on main stream news channels a groups of rebels playing chicken with troops in the middle of desert night after night, same pickup trucks, same guns, same faces just like you would expect from a low budget film made in China.
Gaddafi did not play the United Nations part in this play script where he was supposed to surrender to the first group of rag tag rebels and offer them his country that he had spent a life time building to become the most open and affluent place in Africa complete with hospitals to shame many in Europe and Universities where students didn’t need to pay a fortune to gain an education.
Libya has several tribal factions and it would to stupid to suggest all were treated equally by the government but Gaddffi did manage to hold the tribes together and that often involved brutal suppression of opposing forces but if you look towards the UK then most people from Scotland will tell you that people in London always received a bigger slice of the cake and look how many people the British have killed in Ireland who only wanted their own land back.
Russia and China both abstained from voting on resolution 1973 and now say they have been mislead by the UN and would had used veto powers had they known how far the resolution was going to be extended, twisted, exaggerated and this is why they used veto powers when next asked about dealing with Syria so you can see these two have not been fooled and nor has the African Union who have repeatedly tried to broker a peace deal only to be turned down by Mrs Clinton and here chums who want the gas and oil and needed to stop Gaddffi creating a gold backed currency and therefore allowing people to opt out of the western corrupt banking system that pays 0.5% less tax for looking after peoples savings despite most of these banks being on the verge of bankruptcy.
The puppets in the USA want a return of boom and bust so the elite can milk the public dry and world war two ended the great depression in the 1930’s and these puppets think they can make it a double hat trick without realising the world has changed and Britannia no longer rules the waves.
The UK says it is only targeting military installations, the UK claims to have carried out thousands of sorties bombing Libya from 50,000 feet only killing the odd civilian on the ground and all at a cost of a mere £260 million pounds, the UK lies when a single stealth bomber cost as much as $2 billion each.
Most of what has been written above can be verified but lets move on to the fog of war or what I would call outright lies and propaganda and lets look at these allegations of Viagra, Rape, Murder, Genocide and skip over claims that Gaddffi eats children for breakfast or kills any woman that won’t sleep with him.
The English would know all about drugs and war or did you think the opium war with China was about keeping drugs out of the UK and going back to Vietnam we can see the Americans were using large quantities of drugs but more recently we have the ten year Afghanistan war on drugs and yet the drugs now being exported out from Afghanistan has increased by a factor of four since the Taliban was kicked out and apart from that we now have solders becoming drug barons.
Nope if you want to know about drugs and war then may I suggest that the best person to ask is Oliver North.
I’m quite sure Rape is being committed by both sides in this CIA induced war but that does not mean the orders have come from the top and yet all we get on the TV is stories of one side committing rape but ask yourself would rebels not be more incline to commit rape when they are foreign mercenaries or would disciplined army troops do this to their own people.
Murder is not something that happens when two groups of people are taking pot shots at each other or an paid agent is captured and it’s a fair bet to say that scores are being settled on both sides to some extent but dropping bombs on civilians from 50,000 feet is Murder especially when you consider that according to Obama this is not a war.
Genocide well that’s a good one when you look at what happened to American Indians and the US Support for Israel in stealing more and more land and then shooting anyone who wants their land back or supporting a country that bans humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip but looking back at Libya the only acts of Genocide being committed and again not reported by the main stream press is the deliberate act by the rebels to execute and remove all the blacks in Libya.