Libya’s interim rulers say they have found a mass grave believed to hold the remains of 1,270 inmates killed by Moammar Gadhafi’s security forces in a notorious 1996 massacre.
Yes, this is a horrible crime. No, it does not retroactively bolster the case for US intervention against the monster Gadhafi. No matter how badly interventionists want to use this as an updated Saddam excuse (“Is it or is it not a good thing that Saddam Hussein is out of power!?”), it can’t be done. There are three very obvious reasons for this. First, the US and Europe had no idea this even happened until after their altruistic intervention. Second, the litmus test for whether our intervention was humanitarian still disqualifies the Libya mission from being humanitarian:
Has the US consistently supported comparable atrocities in many other countries, and do we now engage in foreign policy that predictably leads to the deaths of comparable numbers of civilians? Do we also totally ignore much worse atrocities if they don’t happen to be strategically important? The answer to all of those questions is yes, which excludes the possibility that civilian casualties motivated our intervention.
Third, the US supported Gadhafi after this incident, with the full knowledge that he was a dictator and likely had such horrible things on his record.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/25/world/africa/li… "A CNN team was brought to the site, a muddy field, with other media, and found only what appeared to be animal bones."
We already knew there was a crushed 1996 revolt; we mentioned it in some of the very first coverage of the Libya uprising in February http://news.antiwar.com/2011/02/15/libyan-day-of-… – it doesn't matter for all the reasons above.
Were WE there in 1996?
This new (obviously known) 'revelation' ranks right up there in absurdity with how the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 has any relevance, what so ever, to the current 'Shock and Awe' campaign currently being carried out by 'NATO' in order to "protect civilians'. Keep up the good work Lame Stream media!!!
US didn't lift a finger during the Rwandan massacre to the tune of nearly a million dead but was ole "Sammy on the Spot" for Libya? Now? Well…. clearly hypocrisy is the lexicon of choice within DC and dribbles daily from the lying lips of our corporatist media shills.
There have been prison riots with mass casualties in other places, Brazil most notoriously. Over 100 in one alone and they have had many very bad ones..
So how many mass graves are we going to fill?
In the name of 'Democracy' the US and its allies have slaughter far, far more civilians in Iraq. Besides the nature and events surrounding of this alleged war crime remain largely unknown. The sudden 'discovery' of this mass grave could be a staged event not unlike the 'babies being disconnected from the incubators' hoax in Kuwait that was used to justify the subsequent US military slaughters there.
There is nothing new about this discovery. The prison uprising has been well documented and included the deaths of up to 300 prison officers. Gadaffi's son is on record a few years back as wanting an full enquiry and investigation into it with compensation to families.
Mass grave propaganda – no evidence
28.09.2011
September 25, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff
"Officials with Libya’s transitional government announced Sunday they have located a suspected mass grave thought to hold the remains of 1,270 people, victims of a 1996 massacre at Abu Salim prison.
The Tripoli site was located by revolutionaries on August 20, said Kamal el Sherif, a member of a National Transitional Council committee.
It was unclear, however, whether the site actually was a mass grave, as no excavation has taken place. Members of the media were shown bones at the site, but medics with CNN staffers on the scene said the bones did not appear to be human."