British newspaper asks: "Just Who is the West Helping in Libya?"

Thanks to the New Zeal for the lead.


The British newspaper, The Telegraph, in London ran a headline story on March 25th that reads:

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links 

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. 

By Praveen Swami, Nick Squires and Duncan Gardham 5:00PM GMT 25 Mar 2011

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr. al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".

His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".

Mr. al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.

Meanwhile, back home in America, one of the headline stories in today's newspaper says that the one-time Muslim occupant in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama, is considering a plan to send military weapons to the rebels in Libya. As the New Zeal commented, "Yep, that's what we all want. Western blood and treasure making the world safer for al-Qaeda."

Democrats just love to keep the pot boiling on the stove and the standard Hollywood story line says you never kill the bad guy so you can make a profit from the sequel seems to carry over in the halls of Congress. Does anyone remember the billions of dollars in military weapons Democrat Charlie Wilson arranged to be sent to Afghanistan to help the Afghan rebels fight the Russians a few decades ago? Many of those thousands of American-made RPG's (Rocket Propelled Grenades) that the Democrats had sent to Afghanistan were used in Iraq to kill American troops after we invaded that country in 2003. Hell, the Charlie Wilson story was so popular that Hollywood even made a movie about it in 2007 starring liberal leftist Tom Hanks called "Charlie Wilson's War".