[Elissetecausa]

Prior to the recent African continent rebellions, we didn't have a problem with Gadhafi.

Then when Libyan rebels jumped on the bandwagon and Gadhafi took steps to defend his government, we took notice.

And when the rebels were initially appearing to win, we did nothing.

But when the uprising began to be quelled with Libyan government military force, we charged right in, with a U.N. excuse and in violation of the African Union.

At first, we just tried to make the fight fair and prevent a slaughter, keep matters to a standoff.

Then we became more .. invasive .. in our strikes.

So Muammar wrote a letter to his "brother" Obama and implored him to cease the invasive strikes and let the African Union appropriately arbitrate the dispute.

But in response, we're now calling for Gadhafi's "head" .. at least Hillary is: Clinton Dismisses Gadhafi Letter, Reafirms He Must Yield Power "I think that Mr. Gadhafi knows what he must do. There needs to be a cease-fire. His forces need to withdraw from the cities that they have forcibly taken at great violence and human cost. There needs to be a decision made about his departure from power, and as the foreign minister said, his departure from Libya," she said. Wow. A couple of months ago we had no problem with MG. Then his government was attacked by its own people. Now HC calls for his head.

Though dictator isn't my favorite form of government, to my knowledge the U.N. hasn't outlawed the form.

So what's with all this American apparent opportunism here?

Well .. America only gets a half of a percent of its oil from Libya. What do you want to bet that rebel leaders have promised us more oil if we help them win.

I wonder what The President has to say on the matter? Has he commented about our potential oil gain? Does he agree emphatically with Hillary about regime change in Libya, a sudden turn around from a couple of months ago.

You know, I can't help but wonder if this entire African uprising trend .. was CIA sparked. (Sorry, please pardon my conspiracy theory flare up -- I thought I had that under control.)

Regardless, I find it interesting that a few months ago, we were all happily quiet on the African front .. and now, you can't shut us up.

It's easy, though, to talk about regime change being okay if it happens to others. If a bunch of American rebels started efforts to overthrow Obama's government would he be as amenable to such changes as he is to the same happening to poor Gadhafi?

Probably not.

After all, it's all about whose ox is getting gored .. and whose might get oiled.

[MaugleeRobins]

I don't think the wave of regime change was on anyone's radar, and I don't think it was instigated by foreign powers.
I think it's that these assholes have been there for a while, things are getting a little dicey economically and people are pissed, and all it took was a little push to topple the first couple, and that started the fire.
I think Qaddafi will fall, he's got an army with vehicles, he depends on a conventional military type operation, and his supply lines are pretty much cut off, his money is frozen, he's lost his air force for what that's worth, and there's been more than a few insiders jumping ship.
France and Italy need Libyan oil, and they won't sit around and let a long civil war shut that down, they will find a way to get this over with.

[Diwokfkq]

Prior to the recent African continent rebellions, we didn't have a problem with Gadhafi.

Then when Libyan rebels jumped on the bandwagon and Gadhafi took steps to defend his government, we took notice.

And when the rebels were initially appearing to win, we did nothing.

But when the uprising began to be quelled with Libyan government military force, we charged right in, with a U.N. excuse and in violation of the African Union.

At first, we just tried to make the fight fair and prevent a slaughter, keep matters to a standoff.

Then we became more .. invasive .. in our strikes.

So Muammar wrote a letter to his "brother" Obama and implored him to cease the invasive strikes and let the African Union appropriately arbitrate the dispute.

But in response, we're now calling for Gadhafi's "head" .. at least Hillary is: Clinton Dismisses Gadhafi Letter, Reafirms He Must Yield Power

Wow. A couple of months ago we had no problem with MG. Then his government was attacked by its own people. Now HC calls for his head.

Though dictator isn't my favorite form of government, to my knowledge the U.N. hasn't outlawed the form.

So what's with all this American apparent opportunism here?

Well .. America only gets a half of a percent of its oil from Libya. What do you want to bet that rebel leaders have promised us more oil if we help them win.

I wonder what The President has to say on the matter? Has he commented about our potential oil gain? Does he agree emphatically with Hillary about regime change in Libya, a sudden turn around from a couple of months ago.

You know, I can't help but wonder if this entire African uprising trend .. was CIA sparked. (Sorry, please pardon my conspiracy theory flare up -- I thought I had that under control.)

Regardless, I find it interesting that a few months ago, we were all happily quiet on the African front .. and now, you can't shut us up.

It's easy, though, to talk about regime change being okay if it happens to others. If a bunch of American rebels started efforts to overthrow Obama's government would he be as amenable to such changes as he is to the same happening to poor Gadhafi?

Probably not.

After all, it's all about whose ox is getting gored .. and whose might get oiled.

The US never had a good relationship with Gaddafi and always have had serious problems with him. In fact, IMO, he should have been removed long ago simply as a matter of self-defence alone, but better late than never is better. Only recently was diplomatic relations established, and it still wasn't good. From 1969, he made Libya a dedicated US hater and a state sponsor of terrorism where he repeatedly attacked US military and civilians and those of our allies.

With 'normalisation' finally supposedly occurring under Bush, he required the US to compensate him first for the Tripoli strike in 1986 in retaliation for him bombing US personnel and civilians in Germany before compensating the Pam Am 103 victims. He sent his daughter Ayesha as a proxy to defend Saddam Hussein at his war crimes trials in Iraq (she's a lawyer) and to support and hype the insurgents whilst US troops were in the field whilst he pretended to cooperate with Bush on renouncing his ways, he dragged his feet on destroying his chemical weapons stockpiles with his 'deal' for relations with Bush where he still possesses them, etc. In short, he was doing nothing but jerking the US around to get advantages for himself, but the leopard never changed his spots.

As soon as the Libyan uprising occurred, even the Senate passed a resolution calling for the UN No-Fly Zone and calling for regime change, the POTUS quickly sought that result, got it, and now the strategy has been to enforce the resolution whilst seeking to get him out of power.

Good for HRC for saying what she did. It's about time since 1969. It's also what House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) said when he gave an excellent, reasoned and informative interview the other day as to the reasons and the general plan for accomplishing it, including Gaddafi's horrible record and threat potential.

video:

Hulu - NBC Meet the Press: One-on-one With Rep. Mike Rogers

transcript:

Republican National Convention Blog: Mike Rogers Meet the Press 04/03/11 TEXT VIDEO

[igs00r]

We as individuals are at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the why and reason of these international events.

We process our perspective through a filter that is about our self, and as an individual human being.

We thus do not see and think with an unbiased mechanism when it comes to experiencing what it must be like to be a government entity, and, we most certainly don't see as a government entity sees.

A government entity is a collective "brain" trust of people who experience their body and being to be that of the country for which they think.

The government entity they thereby create does not perceive and think like an individual.

The government entity has a compeletely different frame of reference, a different goal and purpose. The government entity's struggle for survival utilizes different means to acomplish a substantively different end.

I have yet to meet the individual who can think and see as others think and see when these others are countries, nations, unions of nations.

Instead, I hear individuals speak through their personal filters, transfer and displace onto the subject, project their own individual ego, or dissociate.

National entity beings need to eat .. and, they need to drink.

Let us not forget the truth of it.

But let us not think for a moment that they are "just like us" individuals.

A national entity being is just as different from us individuals as one of us individuals is from one of our body's cells.

Though we all need to eat and drink, none of the three, a national entity, a human being, or one of a human being's cells, can truly know the thought process and perceptions of any of the other two.

When I see or hear individual human beings pretend to know what and how a national entity thinks, by providing a description of the process that is so obviously and individually human ..

.. All I can do is laugh ..

.. And cry.

It is indeed a great challenge for us to understand entities that are so different from ourselves.

We most certainly cannot conclude about a national entity from trying to understand one of its "brain cells".

That would be the height of arrogance.

We must always look at the whole of the being to begin an understanding of it.

Perhaps we might start this process by asking .. what do national entities drink.

[Stasher11]

Well .. America only gets a half of a percent of its oil from Libya. What do you want to bet that rebel leaders have promised us more oil if we help them win.

You know, I can't help but wonder if this entire African uprising trend .. was CIA sparked.
.

It looks like it was CIA sparked. But not for oil as such. It is about $$$$$$!!!!!

$ is already losing its positions and with oil producers ditching it in favour of other currencies supported by gold or something else tangible, $ will pull the whole of US economy into collapse.

[SoftrermaBioniaSat]

Hi' Alma.

I think there has been a misunderstanding, if Phoenix really wishes it, I'll talk about it here.

We as individuals are at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the why and reason of these international events.
[...]
Perhaps we might start this process by asking .. what do national entities drink.

I'll let the content aside, my main interest is about the form this message use to convey his message. Plus, I have actually no intent to invest in a thread that I don't see as really relevant (this being my sole opinion). Anyway...
In the past I had lessons about "manipulative discourse" and this post held so many similarities with the strategies I learned that I had the need to check if my observations had some ground, and if those strategies were used, if it was intended. This has no public interest and is quite out of subject, sorry for that.

- I noted the "we" and thought first that it was unspecified, thus creating a fictional community. But now I'm more inclined to think it refers to USPol members. Still, I was surprised to be given a behavior I didn't recognize as mine.
- The message relies on a metaphor, that countries are like human beings. It's mostly justified, I won't discuss that, but it authorizes for comparisons I find risky. For example, saying a country "needs to eat" is somewhat true, as it's citizens have a given consumption, but it forgets it's own capacity of production, and it hides all the other needs a country can have, that I won't try to specify - I don't try to say what a country is.
- At a given moment you especially use emotions : when you see and hear individuals, you don't say what you see and it's up to the reader to imply it. It asks for a cognitive treatment, and the lead you give is laugh and cry, emotions that, if I trust what I learned, jams that treatment. Basically the inference made is the result of emotions and not a more objective deduction.

Again, I do not question the content, I'm only interested in those observations as strategies I would like to check, for personal interest. Could you please, Phoenix, confirm or reject my observations ? Sorry for others to annoy you with that.

[bahrain41]

Well at least someone in the administration has the balls to come out and say it.