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What caused Barack Obama to turn against the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gadhafi?
What is clear is that the moment Gadhafi became inconvenient to the Muslim Brotherhood, Gadhafi became inconvenient to Obama.
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In April 2011, during the height of the Arab Spring, Christopher Stevens arrived in Benghazi, Libya, aboard a Greek cargo ship carrying a dozen American diplomats with enough guards, vehicles and equipment “to set up a diplomatic beachhead in the middle of an armed rebellion,” as the New York Times reported.
Stevens’ goal in landing in Benghazi in 2011 was to represent the Obama administration in support of the rebels who were trying at that time to oust Gadhafi from power.
Yet, only a year before, in April 2010, Gadhafi gave a speech calling Obama a “friend” who was a blessing to the Muslim world.
“Now ruling America is a black man from our continent, an African from Arab descent, from Muslim descent, and this is something we never imagined – that from Reagan we would get to Barack Obama,” Gadhafi said.
“He is someone I consider a friend. He knows he is a son of Africa. Regardless of his African belonging, he is of Arab Sudanese descent, or of Muslim descent. He is a man whose policy should be supported, and he should be assisted in implementing it in any way possible, since he is now leaning toward peace.”
In reviewing the history, Gadhafi had close and long-standing economic ties to Obama and those close to Obama, including his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright; Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan; and Raila Odinga, the current prime minister of Kenya.
Still, it’s unlikely Stevens and the State Department would never have landed in Benghazi in 2011 if Obama did not want Gadhafi toppled.
Did the Obama administration abandon Gadhafi because he stood in the way of the Muslim Brotherhood plan to ride the Arab Spring to power, replacing established dictatorships with Islamist states?
WND has reported the penetration of Muslim Brotherhood influence in the inner circles of the White House and the State Department.
WND has also reported that the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya harbored al-Qaida and that an al-Qaida operative released by the United States from Guantanamo Bay turns out to have led the attack that killed Stevens, the diplomat who went to such personal lengths to help the Libyan rebels depose Gadhafi.
What the establishment media is ignoring is how deep and long-standing the ties between Obama and Gadhafi truly were and the national security danger Obama may well have invited by allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to enter the inner circles of power under his watch as president.
Wright and Farrakhan visit Libya
In 1984, Wright accompanied Farrakhan to Libya, where they met with Gadhafi.
Referring to the relationship between Libya and the Nation of Islam, theology professor Mattias Gardell, in his book “In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam,” commented on pages 205-206 that Gadhafi has “for many years been the Nation’s most prominent supporter in the Islamic heart-land and regularly has assisted the Nation of Islam whenever the need has arisen.”
Farrakhan found great affinity with the revolutionary Islamic socialism professed by Gadhafi.
Gardell noted: “The mutual sympathy and appreciation between the Nation of Islam and the Libyan leadership began as a continuation of the friendly relationship that, to the annoyance of the CIA, was established between Elijah Muhammad and [Gadhafi's] first mentor, Gamal abd al-Nassar.”
In 1972, in a second tour of the Muslim world, Elijah Muhammad and a personal delegation that included boxer Muhammad Ali visited Libya as honored guests of state and met with Gadhafi.
The same year, Libya provided an interest-free, never-repaid loan of $3 million to the Nation of Islam, permitting it to buy and renovate a Greek Orthodox Church on Chicago’s South Side that became its national headquarters.
WND has reported gave an additional $5 million to Farrakhan in 1985 for the Nation of Islam’s “economic development” programs.
On the occasion of Gadhafi’s first visit to the United States in 2009, to address the United Nations,Farrakhan was still thanking Gadhafi for his 1972 largess as well as the additional $5 million.
Gadhafi also provided the funding for Farrakhan’s dozen of international trips before and immediately after the Million Man March in 1991, a Nation of Islam event attended by both Wright and Obama.
In a 1995 interview with the Chicago Reader, Obama acknowledged that he took time off from his first political campaign, for the Illinois state Senate, to participate in the Million Man March.
When the Chicago Reader article surfaced, Obama supporters tried to distance Obama from the march, arguing he had attended the event as an observer, not as a participant.
Still, Obama’s reaction at the time was enthusiastic.
“What I saw was a powerful demonstration of an impulse and need for African-American men to come together to recognize each other and affirm our rightful place in the society,” he told the Chicago Reader. “There was a profound sense that African-American men were ready to make a commitment to bring about change in our communities and lives.”
Gadhafi funds Odinga
In 2007, after he lost the Kenyan presidential election to Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga claimed election fraud. The charge led to a wave of tribal violence in which the Luo tribe of which Obama and Odinga are members killed some 1,500 Kikuyu, the majority tribe in Kenya to which Kibaki belongs. The violence displaced another estimated 350,000 to 500,000 who fled their homes.
In a horrifying incident following the election, at least 50 people, including women and children, were killed when an angry Luo mob forced Kikuyu Christians into an Assemblies of God church in Eldoret, a small village about 185 miles northwest of Nairobi, setting fire to the church and hacking to death with machetes any of the Christians who tried to escape the flames.
Intervention by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama calmed the tribal violence by negotiating an extra-constitutional arrangement in which Kibaki as president of Kenya would be co-head of state, with Odinga elevated to the newly created position of Kenyan prime minister.
Odinga ends up having deep ties to both Gadhafi and Obama.
Odinga’s wealth traces back to oil revenue set up by the Al-Bakri Group in Saudi Arabia and by Gadhafi in Libya.
In 2006, during his senatorial trip to Kenya, Obama campaigned so extensively for Odinga, then running for president of Kenya, that government spokesman Alfred Mutua went on television to accuse Obama of meddling inappropriately in Kenyan presidential politics.
In the final weeks of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, an internal funding memo smuggled out of the campaign accounting section of the Odinga campaign was obtained by WND in Kenya.
The funding memo listed 72 top individuals and organizations contributing to Odinga’s presidential campaign, including $1 million donated by “Friends of Senator BO,” widely interpreted as friends of Senator Barack Obama. A second contribution of approximately $1 million was donated by Seif-Al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Muammar al-Gadhafi.
Little noticed in the deal Obama arranged to merge Chrysler with Italian automaker Fiat – which cost taxpayers $7 billion and Fiat virtually no cash – is how Gadhafi benefited.
Libya at the time of the transaction owned a 2- to 3-percent equity stake in Fiat, thus making Gadhafi, who then controlled the wealth of Libya, a direct beneficiary of the transaction designed to favor Fiat, as pointed out by columnist Scott Wheeler in Townhall.com.
Obama funds Gadhafi
A public address delivered by Gadhafi on June 11, 2008, scheduled to mark the anniversary of the 1986 U.S. air raid President Reagan directed on Gadhafi’s bunker in Tripoli, suggested the Libyan dictator may have found a way to contribute financially to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
As translated by the Middle East Research Institute, or MEMRI, here is what Gadhafi said:
There are elections in American now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate campaign contributions to enable him to win the American presidency.
Gadhafi did not elaborate on how he may have contributed to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, but the implication is certainly that he did.
In 2010, Obama earmarked $400,000 of taxpayer funds for two Libyan charities, Gadhafi International Charity and Development Foundation, run by Gadhafi’s son, and Wa Attassimou, run by Gadhafi’s daughter Aicha, as reported by author Camie Davis in the American Thinker.
What did Gadhafi do with the funds?
Gadhafi’s International Charity and Development Foundation bankrolled the Amalthea, the Moldovan-flagged Greek-registered cargo ship carrying 15 pro-Palestinian activists and 2,000 tons of food and medicine that tried to run the Israeli blockade in July 2010 by heading toward port in Gaza, only to sail for the Egyptian port of El-Arish after the Israelis threatened to intercept the ship to prevent it from reaching the Gaza coastline.
None other than Chicago-based former Weather Underground bomber Bill Ayers and his radical wife, Bernardine Dohrn, masterminded the Gaza flotilla campaign through the Free Gaza Movement, a coalition of leftist groups that included radical activist and Democratic Party fundraiser Jodie Evans, the co-founder of Code Pink.
Friend turned tyrant?
On Oct. 20, 2011, after video of Gadhafi being killed was shown worldwide, Obama appeared in the Rose Garden to announce, “The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted.”
Remarkably, few in the establishment media bothered to examine what happened to change a seemingly close relationship between Obama and Gadhafi that included Obama reaching out at a Group of Eight summit in 2009 to be the first U.S. president to shake hands with Gadhafi.
Clearly, Gadhafi must have been surprised to see Obama turn on him.
As late as March 19, 2011, Gadhafi sent a message to Obama, calling Obama “our son,” asking the U.S. president to defend Gadhafi’s decision to send the military to attack the rebels seeking to overthrow him.
The ascendency of the Muslim Brotherhood caused the demise of Gadhafi, but will the same be true of Obama?
The Romney campaign may be well advised to reframe President Reagan’s famous question for foreign policy as well: “Are we safer today than we were as a nation four years ago?”
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