U.S. Considers Arming Libyan Rebels Months After Approving Major Arms Deal Sought by Qaddafi

-
As we’ve noted, the United States last month imposed unilateral sanctions on Libya, including a suspension of “all existing licenses and other approvals for the export of defense articles and services to Libya [1].” The State Department had described the U.S. defense trade with Libya as “very limited [2].”
Still, The Associated Press reported yesterday that in the months before Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi began a brutal crackdown [3] on anti-government protesters, the State Department had approved a $77 million deal to provide armored troop carriers that were highly sought after by the Qaddafi regime [4]:
The Gadhafi regime's desire to upgrade its troop carriers was so intense that a Libyan official told U.S. diplomats in Tripoli in 2009 that the dictator's sons, Khamis and Saif, both were demanding swift action. Khamis, a commander whose army brigade reportedly attacked the opposition-held town of Zawiya with armored units and pickup trucks, expressed a "personal interest" in modernizing the armored transports, according to a December 2009 diplomatic message disclosed by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website.
The administration's own interest in the deal amounted to a first cautious step toward allowing a major arms purchase by Gadhafi's regime even as U.S. officials waved off other Libyan approaches for weapons systems and military aid.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Money & Company

-
Image
Stock markets around the world are tumbling on fears that the global economy is falling precipitously and that U.S. and European lawmakers are unable to stop the bleeding. The market is at risk of the biggest weekly drop since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2008. As of 10:40 a.m. PST, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 425.22 points, or 3.8%, to 10,699.62. That followed a 2.5% drop on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is off 39.09 points, or 3.4%, to 1,127.67. The U.S. declines followed sharp drops overnight in European and Asian markets, most of which fell about 5%. The worldwide sell-off followed the Federal Reserve's announcement Wednesday that it is rejiggering its holdings of Treasury bonds in its latest bid to spur the economy by lowering interest rates on everything from home mortgages to car loans. Many analysts doubt the Fed action will have any measurable effect, and investors were spooked by the Fed's bluntly worded a
Read more

Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme | Ari Berman | Politics News | Rolling Stone

-
Image
Imagine this: a Republican governor in a crucial battleground state instructs his secretary of state to purge the voting rolls of hundreds of thousands of allegedly ineligible voters. The move disenfranchises thousands of legally registered voters, who happen to be overwhelmingly black and Hispanic Democrats. The number of voters prevented from casting a ballot exceeds the margin of victory in the razor-thin election, which ends up determining the next President of the United States. If this scenario sounds familiar, that’s because it happened in Florida in 2000. And twelve years later, just months before another presidential election, history is repeating itself. Back in 2000, 12,000 eligible voters – a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush’s 537 vote triumph over Al Gore – were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by
Read more

Latino Growth Not Fully Felt at Voting Booth - NYTimes.com

-
Image
DENVER — The nation’s rapidly growing Latino population is one of the most powerful forces working in President Obama ’s favor in many of the states that will determine his contest with Mitt Romney . But Latinos are not registering or voting in numbers that fully reflect their potential strength, leaving Hispanic leaders frustrated and Democrats worried as they increase efforts to rally Latino support. Multimedia Voter Voices: Hector Galindo Morales Voter Voices: Hector Galindo Morales Close Video See More Videos » Graphic The Hispanic Electorate The Election 2012 App A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video. Download for iPhone Download for Android Samantha Sais for The New York Times Barbara Gudenkauf of Nogales, Ariz., said many of her fellow Latinos felt that “their issues aren’t being addressed.” Interviews with Latino voters across the country s
Read more