Hillary Clinton's reckless intervention in Libya and other reasons not to vote for her ever

Democracy Now on Clinton & Libya

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-obamas-war-room-20111013

Contents of the emails:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtkCpyrIoLg

Tommorow if we don't do anything she will ascend to the throne of the American Empire. Dripping in blood, and laughing with impunity.

Then only after Gaddafi's death did the BBC start to release, at least so it seemed the many problems with the Lockerbie case. The payoffs. The tampered evidence. The break in at heathrow airport which destroyed the entire linkage to Libya.

Imagine having made the case to bomb Libya and actually having foretold what would come to pass. And the terrible irony is their were such voices. Voices like mine, like Dennis Kucinich. But it was indeed like crickets.

Timeline:

March 18 2011: Refuses to take call from Saif Gaddafi.

Convinces Obama against opposition of Gates and Biden to intervene militarily,

Orders Libyans to alter congress after vote 80/20 moderates - hard liners, to increase hard liner representation to 50/50

Conspires to funnel weapons into Libya from Qatar.

Benghazi : CIA scuttles out of their holes. What were they doing there?

The US of a private email server is in itself disqualifying

The whole thing stinks of a lack of accountability of an impunity.

What was the initial uprising like? I don't know.

Accusations of aerial attacks against civilians unfounded

Viagra rape unfounded

1000s of rapes unfounded.

The country bombed and destroyed.

But no accountability for these false claims - which are attached to the UN resolution.

Every previous member of the Libyan Government alive issued arrest warrants on trumped up charges by Interpol and the International Criminal Court.

What a sweeping operation.

The progresssive voices silent. Democracy Now silent. Rachel Maddow calling for war. Jon Stewart celebrating.

And we learn recently that boys held in Gaddafi's home town are being sodomized by the Islamic State. An even more virulent group than the Al Qaeda Gaddafi warned would take over Libya, was trying to take over Libya.

Private unaccountable prisons all over the country where weekly people are dragged out dead.

All the atrocities they claimed were happening to intervene were false. But the intervention itself brought on horrors far worse than anyone could imagine.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/france-urges-action-crisis-libya-hub-terrorists-1457748765

How many civilians were 'harmed' by Gadaffi in the run up to your bombardment: 100? 200?

And how many since? 1 million ? 2 million? In fact the whole nation has been irreparably harmed. Its treasures looted, its synagogues and mosques vandalized.

Virtually every president makes decisions that cause loss of life. But to elect a leader who has blood on their hands is another matter.

Refuting Clintons talking points:

"We came. we saw, he died" hahaha

This is someones father, uncle, brother, cousin, grandfather. Can't you take murder and assassination at least somberly?

1. "He had American blood on his hands" "Don't you have a lot of blood on your hands? Libyan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Iraqi and Syrian blood on your hands?

Gadaffi might have been responsible as head of state, largely because of the Chad War, perhaps 100,000 casualties, roughly. Probably closer to 1/4 of that number.

Most of the people in Iraq who died - died during the Clinton years, around 500,000 to 1,000,000, due to the Embargo. The blood on your hands is one to two orders of magnitude.

Hillary Clinton's history of obfuscation, spins, lies and egomania.

1. Refuse to talk to Saif 2/20/2011

2. Claim of ignorance of arms trading with Turkey and Qatar.

3. Claims that Libya would have been worse off without intervention.

4. Claim that Libya would be like Syria. In fact the revolution would have been peaceful or been suppressed.

5. That Gadaffi had American blood on his hands. Does she now have Libyan blood on her hands. Additionally this is a propagandist lie. To this day we do not actually know who shot down PA 103 over Lockerbie. The fact that Gadaffi surrendered his nuclear program to the US in exchange for "improved relations" back in 2003, and then paid compensation for Lockerbie without admitting guilt, in fact denying guilt, makes this allegation weak at best.

6. That in order to negotiate. Libya must first surrended.

7. Ignoring Gadaffi's willingness to surrender!

8. Abuse of UN resolution for peacekeeping. Obama publicly stated this would not be used for regime change. A significant shift in policy occured and every Libyan soldier targetable was murdered.

9. Deliberate murder of Libyan Soldiers that were halted on road to Benghazi awaiting a negotiated solution.

Libya was not in the US vital interest - we probably shouldn't have pushed regime change - but now due to the misreading and mishandling it has become a place tt is in our national interest to intervene in, this according to James Jay Carafano, Ph.D. - Heritage Foundation (Not my words, his). He also said anyone involved in the FP of the US over the last 7 years should hang their heads in shame.

Other problems with her tenure:

Hillary’s Link to Honduran Violence

March 15, 2016

Little mentioned in the Democratic campaign is Hillary Clinton’s role in supporting a 2009 coup in Honduras that contributed to a human rights crisis, including the recent murder of a renowned environmental activist, writes Marjorie Cohn.

By Marjorie Cohn

A critical difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is their position on whether children who fled violence in Central American countries, particularly Honduras, two years ago should be allowed to stay in the United States or be returned.

Sen. Sanders states unequivocally that they should be able to remain in the U.S. Former Secretary of State Clinton disagrees. She would guarantee them “due process,” but nothing more. In 2014, Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “It may be safer [for the children to remain in the U.S.],” but “they should be sent back.”

By supporting the June 28, 2009 coup d’état in Honduras when she was secretary of state, Clinton helped create the dire conditions that caused many of these children to flee. And the assassination of legendary Honduran human rights leader Berta Cáceres earlier this month can be traced indirectly to Clinton’s policies.

During the Feb. 11 Democratic debate in Milwaukee, Clinton said that sending the children back would “send a message.” In answer to a question by debate moderator Judy Woodruff of PBS, she said, “Those children needed to be processed appropriately, but we also had to send a message to families and communities in Central America not to send their children on this dangerous journey in the hands of smugglers.”

Sanders retorted, “Who are you sending a message to? These are children who are leaving countries and neighborhoods where their lives are at stake. That was the fact. I don’t think we use them to send a message. I think we welcome them into this country and do the best we can to help them get their lives together.”

In the March 9 debate in Miami between the two Democratic candidates, Sanders accurately told moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision, “Honduras and that region of the world may be the most violent region in our hemisphere. Gang lords, vicious people torturing people, doing horrible things to families.”

He added, “Children fled that part of the world to try, try, try, try, maybe, to meet up with their family members in this country, taking a route that was horrific, trying to start a new life.”

The violence in Honduras can be traced to a history of U.S. economic and political meddling, including Clinton’s support of the coup, according to American University professor Adrienne Pine, author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras.

Pine, who has worked for many years in Honduras, told Dennis Bernstein of KPFA radio in 2014 that the military forces that carried out the coup were trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly called the U.S. Army School of the Americas) in Fort Benning, Georgia. Although the coup was supported by the United States, it was opposed by the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS). The U.N. and the OAS labeled President Manuel Zelaya’s ouster a military coup.

“Hillary Clinton was probably the most important actor in supporting the coup [against the democratically elected Zelaya] in Honduras,” Pine noted. It took the United States two months to even admit that Honduras had suffered a coup, and it never did admit it was a military coup. That is, most likely, because the Foreign Assistance Act prohibits the U.S. from aiding a country “whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”

Although the U.S. government eventually cut nonhumanitarian aid to Honduras, the State Department under Clinton took pains to clarify that this was not an admission that a military coup had occurred.

“Hillary Clinton played a huge role in propping up the coup administration,” Pine said. “The State Department ensured the coup administration would remain in place through negotiations that they imposed, against the OAS’ wish, and through continuing to provide aid and continuing to recognize the coup administration.”

“And so if it weren’t for Hillary Clinton,” Pine added, “basically there wouldn’t be this refugee crisis from Honduras at the level that it is today. And Hondurans would be living a very different reality from the tragic one they are living right now.”

In her book Hard Choices, Clinton admitted she helped ensure that Zelaya would not be returned to the presidency. She wrote, “In the subsequent days [following the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”

When he was deposed, Zelaya was attempting to get a nonbinding resolution on the ballot asking voters whether they wished to reform the constitution. He supported a 60 percent hike in the minimum wage, “and this infuriated two U.S. companies, Chiquita Brands International (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Company,” said John Perkins, author ofThe New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in an interview with the website Truthout. The big corporations feared that a rise in Honduras’ minimum wage could spread to other countries in Latin America.

Zelaya put in place several liberal policies, including free education and meals for children, subsidies to small farmers, lower interest rates and free electricity.

“These policies paid off,” Perkins said. “Honduras enjoyed a nearly 10 percent decline in the poverty level. But these same policies were seen as a dire threat to the hegemony and bottom lines of global corporations and as a precedent that would alter policies throughout Latin America and much of the rest of the world. Corporate leaders demanded that the CIA take out this democratically elected president. It did.”

Less than a month after the coup, Hugo Llorens, former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, sent a cable to Clinton and other top U.S. officials. The subject line read: “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup.” The cable said, “There is no doubt” that the coup was “illegal and unconstitutional.” Nevertheless, as noted above, Clinton’s objective was to “render the question of Zelaya moot.”

After the coup, there was a fraudulent election financed by the National Endowment for Democracy — notorious for meddling in Latin America — and the State Department. The election ushered in a repressive, militarized regime. Conditions deteriorated, leading to the exodus of thousands of Honduran children.

Since the coup, the Honduran government has carried out systematic repression against most sectors of society, including teachers, farmers, union leaders, gays, peasant organizers, journalists and anyone who opposed the coup. Many were assassinated. Honduras’ homicide rate was already the highest in the world at the time of coup, and it soared between then and 2011. There is rampant corruption and drug-related gang violence.

Amid all this, the United States has added two military bases in Honduras — bringing the total to 14 — and increased its financing of the Honduran police and military.

Before the coup, Cáceres, a prize-winning activist, worked with indigenous groups on human rights and education issues with Zelaya’s support. In a 2014 interview, she cited Clinton’s role in the coup, saying, “The same Hillary Clinton, in her book ‘Hard Choices,’ practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the bad legacy of North American influence in our country.”

Cáceres added, “The return of Mel Zelaya to the presidency (that is, to his constitutionally elected position) was turned into a secondary concern. There were going to be elections. … We warned that this would be very dangerous. … The elections took place under intense militarism, and enormous fraud.”

Cáceres criticized the coup government for passing terrorist and intelligence laws that criminalized protest, labeling the actions “counterinsurgency” conducted in the interests of “international capital.”

Cáceres was killed March 3 by armed men who broke into her home. Her friend and compatriot, journalist Gustavo Castro Soto, wounded in the assault, is being held incommunicado by the government.

On Thursday, more than 200 human rights, faith-based, indigenous rights, environmental, labor and nongovernmental groups sent an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, expressing “shock and deep sorrow regarding the murder of Honduran human rights and environmental defender Berta Cáceres … winner of the prestigious 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize.”

The groups urged Kerry to support an independent international investigation into her murder led by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. They also urged the State Department “to suspend all assistance and training to Honduran security forces, with the exception of investigatory and forensic assistance to the police, so long as the murders of Berta Cáceres and scores of other Honduran activists remain in impunity.”

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Visit her website athttp://marjoriecohn.com/ and follow her on Twitter at @marjoriecohn. [This article originally appeared athttp://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hillary_clintons_link_to_a_nasty_piece_of_work_in_honduras_20160315]

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.