NATO’s Afrika Korps Escalates War Of Attrition Against Libya
By Rick Rozoff
Stop NATO
June 11, 2011
The relentless and intensifying Western air war against Libya will soon enter its fourth month. For the first thirteen days starting on March 19 under the control of U.S. Africa Command and Operation Odyssey Dawn and thereafter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led Operation Unified Protector, the air assaults represent the second longest armed aggression in NATO’s history, already surpassing by a week the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Only the now nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan exceeds the current campaign in length.
The U.S.-dominated military bloc not only acknowledges but fairly boasts of conducting almost 11,000 air missions and over 4,000 combat sorties since March 31. Preceding that, hundreds of air strikes and over 160 cruise missile attacks were launched by the U.S., Britain, France and other NATO powers.
Altogether, following in the North African footsteps of Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, imperial Britain, Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Western nations are engaged in the longest war against an African country in modern times and the most intensive armed aggression against one ever.
At the end of last month a Libyan government spokesman announced that NATO air attacks had killed 718 civilians and wounded 4,067 more between March 19 and May 26. In the interim the North Atlantic military alliance has intensified bombing of the nation’s capital and other parts of the country to an unprecedented level and introduced British and French helicopter gunship and U.S. Hellfire missile-wielding Predator unmanned aerial vehicles operations. …
