In our number three most viewed C&L video of 2011, Karoli reminds us of why we can all be thankful that Sarah Palin is not a contender in the current field of GOP presidential candidates, although I'm sure the comedians out there are sorry she's not providing them with more material as she did here.

I'm not sure how to describe this. I've seen it described on Twitter as Herman Cain out-Rick Perrying Rick Perry, but it goes so much deeper than that.

In this interview, Herman Cain is asked a relatively simple question -- at least, to the extent that Republicans have a set of talking points on this -- about Libya and the President's handling of it. We've all heard the Luntz talking points about "leading from behind", letting Al Qaeda take over the rebellion, and so on. I could recite them in answer to a question like this without thinking too much about it. This is why Republicans win media battles. They adopt a single set of talking points and don't deviate from them.

Well, except for Herman Cain, who seems to even have trouble pulling up the right set of data points when asked the question. He hesitates, hesitates again, repeats what he thinks are the complaints about how the President handled Libya, and ultimately just tries to craft a non-answer to a simple question.

After his initial hem-haw session, he is pressed to articulate specific differences between the President's decisions on Libya and what he would do, if elected. In high-school BS essay 101 technique speak, he launches into the classic non-answer about gathering opinions and then making a decision. Oh, yes. Consensus building. That's what they call it.

Gosh, I know another candidate who said similar things, except he knew what he was talking about. I will also note that Americans -- and Republicans in particular -- are rejecting consensus politics out of hand, forcing the consensus builder of 2008 to become the class warrior of 2012. That's not entirely bad for anyone but a Republican candidate named Herman Cain who just said he would be a consensus builder, when he managed to say anything at all.

I guess if you're a Republican infrastructure is great, as long as it's in Iraq or Libya.

Talking Points Memo:

So it came as a bit of a surprise to hear a GOP senator who's up for re-election this cycle say on Fox News, "We can go over there and help them build their infrastructure up."

That's Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He wasn't talking about a forlorn corner of the United States, though. He was talking about Libya. And the 'infrastructure' he was talking about didn't really include schools and bridges.

"One of the problems I have from leading from behind is when a day like this comes we don't have the infrastructure in place that we could have," Graham explained. Here he's talking about the metaphorical infrastructure of U.S. forces and appointees on the ground who can help direct events. However, he soon moved on to talking about another type of infrastructure -- the kind that helps with extracting oil.

Republicans make me sick. I don't really even have anything more than that to add.

In the grand scheme of history, the fall of Muammar al-Gaddafi is a very big deal—and not just because one of the world's most awful tyrants has fallen, as glorious as that may be. It's a big deal because once upon a time, Libya was a big deal—the epicenter of a new vision about how the entire postwar world might work differently, with a newly ascendent, resource rich "Third World" calling the tune. The rise and fall of that idea is one of the major forces shaping the world we live in now.

The idea began in a place called Bandung, in Indonesia, in 1955 when a bloc of mostly African and Asian nations, often former colonies freed in the tumult that followed World War II met and announced to the world that they would be a force to be reckoned with. As late as 1969, that was a laughable notion. The five fingers of the world economy, Richard Nixon liked to say, were "a strong Europe, a strong U.S., Russia, China, and for the future, Japan....The rest do not matter."

And they didn't, more unless, until Colonel Gaddafi's coup that September. That spring, Gaddafi cut the allowable production of the largest oil company operating in the country, Occidental Petroleum, from 800,000 to 500,000 barrels a day. This wasn't supposed to be imaginable. It seemed like McDonald's one day deciding unilaterally to sell 40 percent fewer hamburgers—a deliberate act of self-immiseration.

What it was, though, was a strike—an assertion of power against the forces of capital. "People who have lived without oil for 5,000 years can live without it again for a few years in order to attain their legitimate rights." It was one of the twentieth century's great revolutionary acts.

Nixon had never taken seriously the idea that Arab states could or would use their oil supplies as a weapon. In fact, Nixon had never much taken the oil problem seriously at all, nor Henry Kissinger: "Don't talk to me about barrels of oil," he told economic advisers. "They might as well have been bottles of Coca-Cola. I don't understand!" He said that on the eve of the Arab oil embargo of 1973, when OPEC nations led by Saudi Arabia united to write Colonel Gaddafi's strategy large. On October 16 of that year they unilaterally raised the price of crude oil from $3.00 to $5.11. On Christmas Eve they just about doubled that price.

Henry Kissinger had once bellowed at North Vietnam's intransigence in the face of America's B-52s, "I can't believe that a fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn't have a breaking point." This was the revenge of the Fourth-Rate Powers. It was to continue, and grow. "Between 1973 and 1977," writes Judith Stein in Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the 1970s the earnings of oil-exporting nations grew 600 percent, to $140 billion."

Continue reading »

I don't think the rule of law applies in this country anymore -- unless you're powerless and poor. Seems like no one's ever going to be punished for this:

TRIPOLI, Libya — Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture.

Although it has been known that Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after it abandoned its program to build unconventional weapons in 2004, the files left behind as Tripoli fell to rebels show that the cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and its British equivalent, MI-6.

Some documents indicate that the British agency was even willing to trace phone numbers for the Libyans, and another appears to be a proposed speech written by the Americans for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi about renouncing unconventional weapons.

The documents were discovered Friday by journalists and Human Rights Watch. There were at least three binders of English-language documents, one marked C.I.A. and the other two marked MI-6, among a larger stash of documents in Arabic.

It was impossible to verify their authenticity, and none of them were written on letterhead. But the binders included some documents that made specific reference to the C.I.A., and their details seem consistent with what is known about the transfer of terrorism suspects abroad for interrogation and with other agency practices.

By the time you read this, the fall of Tripoli will be history -- along with the capture of Gadhafi, hopefully:

BENGHAZI, Libya — The long, brutal reign of Col. Moammar Gadhafi appeared to collapse Sunday as rebels swept into Tripoli, captured three of his sons and set off wild street celebrations in a capital that he’d ruled by fear for more than four decades, Libyan and NATO officials said.

With NATO bombings paving the way, rebel forces entered Tripoli with surprising ease and by early Monday controlled large swaths of the city. Gadhafi’s personal guard surrendered to rebel forces, and live television footage showed crowds of opposition supporters in Tripoli’s Green Square — the regime’s symbolic heart — unfurling the tricolor flag of pre-Gadhafi Libya and smashing the ruler’s portraits in scenes that were unthinkable just days ago.

“This is historic,” Amal Abdelrazk, a 42-year-old resident of downtown Tripoli’s Andalus Street, said by phone. “After 41 years, eight months and 27 days, we witness this moment….

“The whole thing is like a dream.”

As rebels partied in the streets, hailed “as the victors of war,” Abdelrazk said, rebel military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani told McClatchy that his forces were hunting Gadhafi in and around Tripoli. Gadhafi’s whereabouts were unknown, but a U.S. official said, “We have no reason to believe (he) has left the country.”

Late Sunday Gadhafi made a brief audio statement on Libyan TV, sounding desperate as he called on individual tribes and cities to “take weapons” and defend “beautiful Tripoli."

"All the tribes, you must all march to Tripoli in order to defend and purify it,” he said, calling the rebels agents of Western powers. “Otherwise you will have no dignity; You will become slaves and servants in the hands of the imperialists.”

Of course, Gadhafi himself is still promising a fight:

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, a son of Libya's ruler Moammar Gadhafi and a top official in the regime, has been captured by opposition forces, a rebel official said Sunday night.

Ali Said, general secretary of the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council, said that the arrest had taken place in Tripoli. The head of the same rebel group also confirmed the capture in an Al Jazeera interview. There was no immediate reaction from Libyan government officials to the report.

A day earlier, Saif al-Islam -- who had emerged as a leading spokesman for the regime since the unrest began in February -- had laughed off reports of rebels taking Tripoli and claimed that they were losing every battle.

But this account ran counter to reports from CNN reporters, witnesses and rebel officials on the ground. A NATO spokesman, in fact, said earlier Sunday that Moammar Gadhafi's "regime is crumbling."

But in an audio address broadcast Sunday on Libyan state television, the longtime Libyan ruler remained defiant in urging his countrymen to join him to stop "colonizers" and predicting an imminent "victory.

UPDATE: Per unconfirmed reports from the BBC, Gadhafi has escaped to Algeria.

More as it develops...

The horrors of war:

I wrote last week about the terrifying possibility that Colonel Gadhafi's soldiers could be using rape as a weapon of war - and even exacerbating their efforts with Viagra. Now, Pascale Harter of the BBC is reporting on what happens to the victims of rape in Libya, especially the women who become pregnant as a result of the sexual attack. According to aid workers, many of these women are murdered by their families in honor killings.

"In Libya when rape occurs, it seems to be a whole village or town which is seen to be dishonoured," Arafat Jamal, an employee of the United Nations' refugee agency, explained.

The most distressing aspect of these horrible killings is the fact that the families think they are helping the women they murder - by protecting them from dishonor.

In some ways, they probably *are* helping them, as sick and twisted as that sounds. Their lives are a living hell, the knowledge of that violent attack will mark them for as long as they live. In a culture where women dare not leave the house without being covered head to toe, that's ostensibly a living death sentence to them anyway.

Grampy "Bomb, bomb, bomb..." McSame is at it again:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday criticized President Obama for taking a "backseat role" in Libya, and said it was time for the United States to get "back in the fight."

In an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," McCain argued that Mr. Obama had "withdrawn" from NATO in its actions against Libya, and that NATO forces were subsequently weakened and inadequately supplied.

"I would like to remind you that NATO is an organization of 28 countries," McCain told CBS' Bob Schieffer. "With Italy there's now seven of them actually in the fight. They don't have the assets that the United States of America does. ...the United States is NATO. So the British and the French - God bless them and others - they don't have the assets. They are running out of some of their munitions.

"We need to get back into the fight," McCain urged. "We should be leading. We should not be following."

McCain warned against allowing the conflict to end in a stalemate, an outcome he characterized as "very bad," and which he said would "open the door to al Qaeda."

"It's events on the ground that will drive Qaddafi's desire to leave or not to leave," McCain said. "Right now in many respects he's not doing too badly for a third-rate military power."And while the senator emphasized his opposition to employing ground troops in the Libyan conflict, McCain said the U.S. had to "get its assets back into the air fight" and elsewhere.

*Sigh* Notwithstanding my deep, deep disgust that Mr. Perpetual Guest is given another chance to parade his sour grapes undermining of the president on the Sunday show circuit, the question that begs to be posed is if there is any conflict that he wouldn't break out the pom poms for? Sweet flying spaghetti monster, when deficit spending is on the tongue of every member of the GOP and their enabling buddies in the media, what we need to now is add yet another front in the Middle East to prove our unapologetic imperialism? Of course, the cynic in me thinks that had Obama chose the path McCain advocates (even though it's a violation of international law, something McCain is frightfully ignorant of--a trait you don't want to see in the almost POTUS), that he would find himself doing a 180 flip flop to complain about Obama's imperialism.

What is interesting to me is the inconsistency McCain applies to dealing with Syria. He raises the great fear-mongering bogeyman of al Qaeda in Lebanon to justify increased military air presence (despite that pesky Shia/Sunni/Hezbollah conflict making it doubtful), but ignores that Syria has become, by all intelligence reports, a true haven for al Qaeda. Of course, host Bob Schieffer sees no point in asking such questions on consistency and lawfulness.

(h/t Heather at VideoCafe)

UPDATE: Al Jazeera reports that there's a lot of scepticism about this report.

So this is what "protecting civilians" looks like. Not so pretty, is it? Can you say "mission creep"?

BENGHAZI, Libya — The government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi said he survived an airstrike in Tripoli late Saturday night that killed one of his sons and three grandchildren, in the sharpest intensification yet of the NATO air campaign intended to pressure the Libyan leader from power.

The son, Seif al-Arab Muammar el-Qaddafi, 29, and the grandchildren, all said to be younger than 12, were possibly the first confirmed casualties in the airstrikes on the Libyan capital. And while the deaths could not be independently verified, the campaign against Libya’s most densely populated areas raised new questions about how broadly NATO is interpreting its United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

It is the second airstrike in seven days to hit a location intimately close to the Libyan leader, following a midnight attack last week that destroyed an office building in his compound where he and his aides sometimes work.

In a news conference early Sunday morning in Tripoli, a Qaddafi government spokesman called the strike an illegal attack. “This was a direct operation to assassinate the leader of this country,” said the spokesman, Musa Ibrahim. “This is not permitted by international law. It is not permitted by any moral code or principle.” He said that the colonel and his wife, who were staying at the house along with “friends and family,” were not hurt.

American and NATO officials have said they are not seeking to kill Colonel Qaddafi, and some have suggested it might not be very easy. But frustrated by the evasion and resilience of Colonel Qaddafi’s military, NATO has pledged to step up its strikes on the broader instruments of his power, including state television facilities and command centers in the capital.