Emails reveal Hillary’s agenda in Libya: ‘Global banking, money and oil’

Special to WorldTribune.com

Hillary Clinton’s reasons for pushing for U.S. intervention in Libya was more about money and oil than humanitarian assistance to a populace brutalized by longtime dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi, emails in an FBI investigation reveal.

Newly-released emails from the then-secretary of state’s private server reveal a completely different agenda behind the intervention in Libya that Clinton convinced President Barack Obama to approve.

Hillary Clinton takes her "victory lap" in Libya. /AP/Kevin Lamarque
Hillary Clinton takes her “victory lap” in Libya. /AP/Kevin Lamarque

One email from longtime Clinton confidante Sydney Blumenthal, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:

Gadhafi’s government “holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver . . . . This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).”

In a “source comment,” the original declassified email adds:
“According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:
1  A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
2 Increase French influence in North Africa,
3 Improve his internal political situation in France,
4 Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
5 Address the concern of his advisors over Gadhafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.”

What is missing from the email is any mention of humanitarian concerns.

In fact, many human right organizations found a lack of evidence of the atrocities that U.S. and European officials claimed spurred the overthrow of Gadhafi.

There have been documented atrocities, however, in the chaos that has engulfed Libya after Clinton’s so-called “victory lap” in 2011 when she exclaimed in a CBS interview: “We came, we saw, he (Gadhafi) died!”

Scott Shane and Jo Becker, writing in The New York Times, said Clinton’s “victory lap” was premature. Libya “dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain.”

The current situation in Libya, as Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, “is a disaster, as ‘thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,’ and ‘kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant.’ ”

Ellen Brown, author and founder of the Public Banking Institute, said that, prior to Gadhafi’s overthrow, Libya “had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Gadhafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy.

“But that was before U.S.-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country,” Brown added. “Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with “the full spectrum of military operations required.”

Brown concluded that the release of Clinton’s emails “add substantial weight” to the suspicions that “violent intervention was not chiefly about the security of the (Libyan) people. It was about the security of global banking, money and oil.”

You must be logged in to post a comment Login