Friday, October 21, 2011

Still No "Official" Story

Gerard Longuet, French defence minister, later confirmed that the attack - which destroyed all 15 trucks and killed 50 of Gaddafi’s men - was executed by the French air force.

alJazeera

Fine, but you’ll never make us believe you’re anything other than surrender monkeys. Cheese eating surrender monkeys.

However, Gaddafi himself and a handful of his men escaped death and appear to have run through a strand of trees towards the main road and hid in two drainage pipes.

As luck would have it, all odds against it, the big man escaped. Just long enough for the Libyans on the ground to get the credit for his demise. It was NOT a foreign coup that took him out. Got that?

"We went in and brought Gaddafi out. He was saying 'What's wrong? What's wrong? What's going on?'. Then we took him and put him in the car," Bakeer said.

At the time of capture, Gaddafi was already wounded with gunshots to his leg and to his back, Bakeer said.

Other government fighters who said that they took part in Gaddafi's capture, separately confirmed Bakeer's version of events, though one said the man who ruled Libya for 42 years was shot and wounded at the last minute by one of his own men.

"One of Muammar Gaddafi's guards shot him in the chest," Omran Jouma Shawan said.

Amateur footage uploaded on YouTube seemed to corroborate claims that Gaddafi was captured alive.

And his chest was indeed bleeding. I’d be wanting to be shot by my own men, too, at that junction.

After his capture, Gaddafi was placed in an ambulance bound for the city of Misrata. Witnesses say that he succumbed to his wounds while on the road.

However, Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference on Thursday that Gaddafi was not fatally wounded when placed in the ambulance, but killed when crossfire broke out in mid transport.

Like always, we will never know.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so. --Mark Twain

“They captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him,” one senior source in the NTC told Reuters. “He might have been resisting.”

Raw Story

Yeah, he might. Uh-huh. Did this “senior source” even look at the video evidence?

In what appeared to contradict the events depicted in the video, Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council said Gaddafi was killed when a gunfight broke out after his capture between his supporters and government fighters. He died from a bullet wound to the head, the prime minister said.

[...]

Mansour Daou, leader of Gaddafi’s personal bodyguards, was with the former strongman shortly before his end. He told al Arabiya television that after the air strike the survivors had “split into groups and each group went its own way.”

“I was with Gaddafi and Abu Bakr Younis Jabr and about four volunteer soldiers.” Daou said he had not witnessed his leader’s death because he had fallen unconscious after being wounded in the back by a shell explosion.

[...]

There were also other versions of events. NTC official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters Gaddafi had been finally cornered in a compound in Sirte after hours of fighting, and wounded in a gun battle with NTC forces.

[…]

“He was bleeding from his stomach. It took a long time to transport him. He bled to death (in the ambulance),” he said.

Another NTC official, speaking to Reuters anonymously, gave a violent account of Gaddafi’s death: “They (NTC fighters) beat him very harshly and then they killed him. This is a war.”

[...]

Fallen electricity cables partially covered the entrance to the pipes and the bodies of three men, apparently Gaddafi bodyguards lay at the entrance to one end.

[...]

Four more bodies lay at the other end of the pipes. All black men, one had his brains blown out, another man had been decapitated, his dreadlocked head lying beside his torso.

Army chief Jabr was also captured alive, Bakeer said. NTC officials later announced he was dead.

Oh well. It’s war.

Gaddafi's body is being kept in a cold storage site in Misrata, where it was taken after NTC fighters captured and killed him in his hometown Sirte on Thursday. It bears a bullet hole in the head, the Reuters news agency reported.

[...]

An international commission of inquiry launched by the UN Human Rights Council is already investigating killings, torture and other crimes in Libya, and Colville, the UN human rights office spokesman, said he expected that panel would look into Gaddafi's death.

"It is a fundamental principle of international law that people accused of serious crimes should if possible be tried," he said.

"Summary executions are strictly illegal."

alJazeera

Well, of course, whatever of the many conflicting stories turns out to be determined to be the official one, we know THAT didn’t happen.

Mahmoud Jibril, the NTC's de facto prime minister, initially said Gaddafi had been killed in a "crossfire" and that it "doesn't make any difference" what happens to his body "as long as he disappears". Jibril pledged to resign after the fall of Sirte, which the NTC set as the final criterion for declaring the "liberation" of Libya.

Oh, I’m sure he will. I’m sure he will.

Let’s see, Libya is going to need a president.

A decision to gradually wind down the mission was expected to be taken at a meeting of ambassadors of the 28 NATO nations in Brussels starting at 1430 GMT, based on recommendations from NATO military commanders.

[…]

"Clearly the operation is coming to its end," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday.

William Hague, the British foreign minister, said on Thursday that Gaddafi's death brought the end of the operation "much closer", but added: "I think we will want to be sure there are not other pockets of pro-Gaddafi forces still able to threaten the civilian population."

Right. A “pocket” of soldiers somewhere that can hold the entire country hostage. Surely that’s possible.

Get over yourself Sarkozy. You are not in charge here. Nobody from the important part of the group expects you French to return to good graces after your refusal to join the attack on Saddam.

A US defence official told AFP news agency that a US drone along with a French fighter jet had attacked a convoy of vehicles in Libya that the French believed was carrying Gaddafi.

Yeah, see. The French can try to take credit, but we won’t let them get away with it.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

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