A new
official report produced by the Norwegian government illustrates the
continuing absurdity of NATO expansion and foreign adventurism in
places very far away from the "North Atlantic" explicit in
the name North Atlantic Treaty Organization — places like
Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine or Syria.
Top
Norwegian officials have now admitted they "had very limited
knowledge" of events unfolding in Libya during 2010 and 2011,
prior to NATO's military intervention on behalf of anti-Gaddafi
rebels — a war that resulted in regime change and a failed state
ruled by competing governments and extremist militias to this day.
Norway enthusiastically joined the US, UK, and French led bombing of
the country initiated in March 2011 even knowing full well its
military knew next to nothing of what was unfolding on the ground.
But what
did decision-makers have to go on? Consider this absurd admission
from the official report: “In such situations, decision-makers
often rely on information from media and other countries,” the
report reads.
The
commission that produced the report was chaired by former Foreign
Minister Jan Petersen, and ultimately concluded that politicians in
Oslo dragged the nation into the US-led bombing campaign with no
regard for what could come next.
The
commission report states that there were “no written sources”
that so much as attempted to assess the nature of the conflict Norway
was about to join. The officials failed to “assess the type of
conflict Norway was taking part in” it finds.
NATO's
name for the operation was the US code name ‘Operation Odyssey
Dawn,’ and Norway flew 596 strike missions during the first five
months of the NATO intervention, dropping 588 bombs on Libyan
targets, according to the report. Norway had provided six F-16
fighter jets and its pilots were reported to have conducted 10
percent of all coalition strikes against pro-Gaddafi forces.
Norway's
former Center Party leader Liv Signe Navarsete said of the final
report: “When you look at what happened next, with Libya becoming a
hotspot of terrorism, this is not a decision to be proud of.”
The war
had been sold to the European public on "humanitarian"
grounds and included sensational atrocity stories, many which were
later proven false, painting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as an
irrational homicidal maniac.
One
notable story explicitly promoted by the State Department as well as
US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice was the Viagra-fueled mass rape
story, which claimed that Gaddafi had supposedly supplied his troops
with Viagra in order to unleash sexual terrorism on the civilian
population. Amnesty International and other human rights
investigators later the proved the story completely false.
Some
Norwegian politicians now claim the country was hoodwinked into
another US-led regime change operation similar to the toppling of
Saddam Hussein in 2003. However, considering European leaders had the
glaringly obvious example of Iraq and the lies it was built on so
recent in history, this appears yet more excuse making designed to
evade public responsibility.
Libya
has long been forgotten in Western mainstream media, but has come
back into headlines as a small civil war has lately erupted within
areas under control of the UN-recognized Government of National
Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Since Gaddafi's overthrow the country has
been fought over by three (and at times up to four) competing
governments while the streets are ruled by Islamist militias,
including in some areas ISIS terrorists.
According
to a CNN report last year, open air slave markets have since come
into existence as Libya remains largely lawless and as a once stable
national infrastructure and economy has crumbled.
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