The Civil War in Libya

If true, then I give my respect to China. They were duped into abstaining in the UN vote. Regime change, stationing foreign specialists and troops on Libyan soil and embargos on Libyan imports were not part of deal. Interesting the aarticle says arming rebels was ok. Double standards.

China is gonna lose out all libyan contracts are gonna be revoked and the promises they got from Gulf Arabs are not gonna be fufilled. If the elightened west desires those Arab govs will shut down oil exports to China. Seperately China has been reducing investments in Iran because of US pressure. China should make a stand.

The Globe and Mail story doesn't look credible. Without needing to ask "Why?", we can ask "How could it have been done?".
Btw how did the West contribute to Democracy in Nigeria after the Biafra war, forty years ago?

Ah yes, this doesn't smell at all like a set up.

How extremely convenient that someone decided to keep such meticulous records of supposedly highly secret meetings, decided to type it up nicely on official letter headed paper to be filed for no apparent reason other than to be eventually found by the rebels and then just dumped in some trash instead of being incinerated like any teenager would know to do.

I'd imagine that regular trash collection services would have been suspended long before whoever dumped those documents decided to just drop them off at the side of the road, so it really beg the question of why they even bothered to collect the documents in a bag at all. How much time and effort would it have taken to torch those bags after dumping them?

The description of what the documents describe is also highly suspicious as much for what they do contain as for what is omitted.

There is absolutely no reason for Quaddaffi loyalists to keep any sort of written record of such secret dealings even if they took place, but what they would have wanted to note down was practical things like shipment numbers, delivery schedules and pricing etc. Yet funnily enough, none of these actually useful details were reported, and since there are no shipment numbers or the like to cross check, there is no way to conclusively kill this story as the conspiracy theorists will have already decided China did supply arms and come up with ever more elaborate theories to explain away the lack of hard evidence, and indeed may use that very lack of evidence as evidence of a Chinese cover up.

If the rebel leaders are falling for such an obvious fake, I really worry for the future of Libya.

plawolf said:

Ah yes, this doesn't smell at all like a set up.

How extremely convenient that someone decided to keep such meticulous records of supposedly highly secret meetings, decided to type it up nicely on official letter headed paper to be filed for no apparent reason other than to be eventually found by the rebels and then just dumped in some trash instead of being incinerated like any teenager would know to do.

I'd imagine that regular trash collection services would have been suspended long before whoever dumped those documents decided to just drop them off at the side of the road, so it really beg the question of why they even bothered to collect the documents in a bag at all. How much time and effort would it have taken to torch those bags after dumping them?

The description of what the documents describe is also highly suspicious as much for what they do contain as for what is omitted.

There is absolutely no reason for Quaddaffi loyalists to keep any sort of written record of such secret dealings even if they took place, but what they would have wanted to note down was practical things like shipment numbers, delivery schedules and pricing etc. Yet funnily enough, none of these actually useful details were reported, and since there are no shipment numbers or the like to cross check, there is no way to conclusively kill this story as the conspiracy theorists will have already decided China did supply arms and come up with ever more elaborate theories to explain away the lack of hard evidence, and indeed may use that very lack of evidence as evidence of a Chinese cover up.

If the rebel leaders are falling for such an obvious fake, I really worry for the future of Libya.

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It is extremely common for government officials to keep detailed notes and memos regarding meetings as it allows the officials a way of keeping track of decisions made, and to inform other officials about actions taken.

Obviously, with the speed Tripoli was taken by the rebels, it was unlikely that anyone had the chance to destroy every incriminating document as they were too busy packing up and leaving for their lives.

Or they just made it up. Yeah there's probably an empty folder somewhere labeled China's plan to arm Quaddafi labeled Top Secret and locked up in a MI-6 vault along with Chinese plans to take away democracy from Hong Kong right after 1997. Like special interests wouldn't put that out there in order to prevent China from having a part in all that top grade oil Libya possesses. Just like the news article that came out in the beginning of this said... If Europe doesn't have access to this oil, they will be held hostage and dependent on Russia for their energy needs. We're going to be hearing a lot of the story in the future of how this came down and it's gonna look pretty hypocritical and definitely criminal if someone else were doing it. Charging China with some criminal act here is to off-set what the world will learn soon enough. Like right now no one can see the Western two-faced double-dealing before and after the start of this. And let's not forget how they are going to need Chinese help in rebuilding just as with Iraq and Afghanistan. Or else Europe will have an Iraq or Aghanistan across the puddle called the Mediterranean.

AssassinsMace said:

Or they just made it up. Yeah there's probably an empty folder somewhere labeled China's plan to arm Quaddafi labeled Top Secret and locked up in a MI-6 vault along with Chinese plans to take away democracy from Hong Kong right after 1997. Like special interests wouldn't put that out there in order to prevent China from having a part in all that top grade oil Libya possesses. Just like the news article that came out in the beginning of this said... If Europe doesn't have access to this oil, they will be held hostage and dependent on Russia for their energy needs. We're going to be hearing a lot of the story in the future of how this came down and it's gonna look pretty hypocritical and definitely criminal if someone else were doing it. Charging China with some criminal act here is to off-set what the world will learn soon enough. Like right now no one can see the Western two-faced double-dealing before and after the start of this. And let's not forget how they are going to need Chinese help in rebuilding just as with Iraq and Afghanistan. Or else Europe will have an Iraq or Aghanistan across the puddle called the Mediterranean.

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The thing was that Europe already had access to Libya's oil and gas well before the civil war erupted. If anything, this civil war would disrupt that supply for a couple of years, with no guarantee that a new regime would honour the existing contracts or be friendly to the West.

Baibar of Jalat said:

If true, then I give my respect to China. They were duped into abstaining in the UN vote. Regime change, stationing foreign specialists and troops on Libyan soil and embargos on Libyan imports were not part of deal. Interesting the aarticle says arming rebels was ok. Double standards.

China is gonna lose out all libyan contracts are gonna be revoked and the promises they got from Gulf Arabs are not gonna be fufilled. If the elightened west desires those Arab govs will shut down oil exports to China. Seperately China has been reducing investments in Iran because of US pressure. China should make a stand.

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This is where Shi Lang CV and 071 LPD become handy... Precisely, to ensure foreign countries honour their agreement as the money has already paid.

Either way we the consumers are going to pay for it at the pump.

Pointblank said:

It is extremely common for government officials to keep detailed notes and memos regarding meetings as it allows the officials a way of keeping track of decisions made, and to inform other officials about actions taken.

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Except these are highly sensitive and incriminating meetings if true, and it makes no sense to type these up as the people involved will want as little evidence as possible and as few people to know as necessary. Writing the meetings up and printing them on official letter headed paper makes no sense. Or do you think the CIA keeps a nice incriminating volt full of letter headed paper detailed all the black ops they have ever conducted?

If a record would have been kept, it would have been electronic, and highly encrypted precisely to make sure if the device was lost, nothing could be learnt from it by unauthorized personnel.

Hell, as you pointed out yourself, the rebels were at the gates at that point, and NATO are bombing Qaddaffi government offices, you think anyone is going to care about proper record keeping at that point?

Obviously, with the speed Tripoli was taken by the rebels, it was unlikely that anyone had the chance to destroy every incriminating document as they were too busy packing up and leaving for their lives.

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If these documents had been found locked away in some government safe, the story might have been a little more believable, but they were just dumped on the side of the road. If someone had the time to gather such material up and put them in a bag, they would have had the extra 30 seconds or some it would take to pour some petrol on it and drop a match on it.

The fact that these documents had no useable info like shipment dates, bank accounts, contacts or any sort of information that could be used to verify the story is not only unusual for what you would expect of 'detailed government notes and memos', but also make these documents absolutely worthless to any pro-Gaddaffi person. So these would have been the very first documents to be destroyed if these were real.

What more, the story these documents paints is pure nonsense. In mid July, it was blatantly obvious that Qaddaffi's days are well and truly numbered. Even if he isn't dead soon, he wouldn't be in a position to call any shots and would be hiding in a cave like OBL. Why would China want help him out at the risk of pi$$ing of Libya's new rulers? All for what, a few millions in cash? China makes that in a few hours from interest off of America. Such chump change is not going to interest Beijing, and any offers of oil concessions from Qaddaffi would not have been worth the paper it was written on by that stage.

What more, China's interest lies in Libya's oil, the sooner the war is over and oil flows again the better it is for China, thus there is even less reason for China to help Qaddaffi and thus pro-long the war.

Pointblank said:

The thing was that Europe already had access to Libya's oil and gas well before the civil war erupted. If anything, this civil war would disrupt that supply for a couple of years, with no guarantee that a new regime would honour the existing contracts or be friendly to the West.

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Their establishment were convinced the Libyan government will fall with days of airstrikes. So the disruption was not expected. Gaddafi had more support then expected.

Only the people who support the invasion of Libyan airspace and supporting NATO merceneires on the ground peddle the same line.