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Putin accuses US of role in Gaddafi death
Posted Thursday, December 15 2011 at 18:21
In Summary
MOSCOW, Thursday
Russia’s Vladimir Putin implicated Washington today in the killing of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and launched a tirade against Senator John McCain in an extraordinary attack on US policies.
The Russian premier used his annual televised phone-in to unleash the type of no-holds-barred attack that characterised his 2000-2008 term as president and threatens to shadow his expected return to the Kremlin in March polls.
Turned stone-faced
Putin turned stone-faced when asked about a tweet from McCain — one of Washington’s fiercest critics of Putin — warning Russia it faced an “Arab spring” revolt over the disputed December 4 parliamentary elections.
“Mr McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore,” Putin said.
“Who did this?” Putin said in reference to Gaddafi. “Drones, including American ones.
“They attacked his column. Then using the radio — through the special forces, who should not have been there — they brought in the so-called opposition and fighters, and killed him without court or investigation.”
The Pentagon immediately dismissed the charge as “ludicrous”.
“The assertion that US special operations forces were involved in the killing of Colonel Gaddafi is ludicrous,” spokesman Captain John Kirby told AFP on the sidelines of US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to Iraq.
“We did not have American boots on the ground in the Libya operation. All our support was done through the air and on the seas.”
Russia had initially allowed Nato’s air campaign in Libya to go ahead by abstaining in a UN Security Council vote. But it then vehemently criticised a campaign that Putin at one stage compared to a Western “crusade”. (AFP)
Is there Gaddafi’s blood on Obama’s hands?
By M K Bhadrakumar – December 16, 2011
I rendered my considered advice last week to all and sundry to ‘fasten seat belts’ as Vladimir Putin hits the campaign trail. Maybe, for the first time in Russian history, there is going to be an election with all the trammels of democracy. Including the trammels that are commonly associated with American elections. I think Putin is going to show that it is not the exclusive prerogative of American politicians to speak out while on the campaign trail, uninhibited by the constraints of public office.
Well, sparks are beginning to fly if Putin’s latest remarks are any indication. (I hope our PM Manmohan Singh doesn’t get burned.) Putin has despatched Senator John McCain back to the Vietnam War era, when as a pilot he used to bomb Vietnamese villages - comparing him with, say, Lady Macbeth who couldn’t wash off the blood stains on her hands with all the waters in the world’s oceans.
But more important is Putin’s resuscitation of the allegation that the Barack Obama administration deliberately murdered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The explosive potential of the charge is such that Pentagon scrambled to react within hours. The White House would have known instantaneously that Putin surely is in possession of hard intelligence backing his allegation, and that it would cast Obama in a somewhat bad light as a sly murderer. Pentagon has given the waffly explanation that US had no troops on the ground. But Putin didn’t say so, either. He spoke of drone attack. Howzaat?
Of course, no one is going to haul Obama to the Hague as a war criminal as if he were Slobodan Milosovich. That isn’t the point. What is emerging without doubt is that Putin is not going to allow the US to stage a replay of the 1996 presidential election, where communist leader Gennady Zyuganov might have defeated Boris Yeltsin but for the blatant rigging with US backing, which ensured the re-eletion of Yeltsin, who was already a very unpopular figure in Russia.
By the way, there is an interesting chapter on this episode in Strobe Talbott’s book, The Russia Hand, where it is described how the Bill Clinton administration literally rescued Yeltsin from the jaws of electoral defeat by helping out on his campaign strategy. Imagine, what would have been the course of world politics if a communist leader had been elected as president in Russia in 1996 in a ‘free and fair’ election.
Like in 1996, the stakes are very high for the US. A Putin presidency is an extremely disconcerting thought for Washington at a juncture when a last-ditch attempt is being made to re-establish the western hegemony over the Middle East and the jury is out as to the shape of things to come in Asia-Pacific. Washington will do all it can to disrupt or at least weaken Putin’s candidacy. Obama will solicit even the blissfully-happy veteran McCain’s services at the barricades.
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakuma...-obamas-hands/
Posted Thursday, December 15 2011 at 18:21
In Summary
- Pentagon dismisses claim as ludicrous, says its troops were not on the ground
MOSCOW, Thursday
Russia’s Vladimir Putin implicated Washington today in the killing of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and launched a tirade against Senator John McCain in an extraordinary attack on US policies.
The Russian premier used his annual televised phone-in to unleash the type of no-holds-barred attack that characterised his 2000-2008 term as president and threatens to shadow his expected return to the Kremlin in March polls.
Turned stone-faced
Putin turned stone-faced when asked about a tweet from McCain — one of Washington’s fiercest critics of Putin — warning Russia it faced an “Arab spring” revolt over the disputed December 4 parliamentary elections.
“Mr McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore,” Putin said.
“Who did this?” Putin said in reference to Gaddafi. “Drones, including American ones.
“They attacked his column. Then using the radio — through the special forces, who should not have been there — they brought in the so-called opposition and fighters, and killed him without court or investigation.”
The Pentagon immediately dismissed the charge as “ludicrous”.
“The assertion that US special operations forces were involved in the killing of Colonel Gaddafi is ludicrous,” spokesman Captain John Kirby told AFP on the sidelines of US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to Iraq.
“We did not have American boots on the ground in the Libya operation. All our support was done through the air and on the seas.”
Russia had initially allowed Nato’s air campaign in Libya to go ahead by abstaining in a UN Security Council vote. But it then vehemently criticised a campaign that Putin at one stage compared to a Western “crusade”. (AFP)
Is there Gaddafi’s blood on Obama’s hands?
By M K Bhadrakumar – December 16, 2011
I rendered my considered advice last week to all and sundry to ‘fasten seat belts’ as Vladimir Putin hits the campaign trail. Maybe, for the first time in Russian history, there is going to be an election with all the trammels of democracy. Including the trammels that are commonly associated with American elections. I think Putin is going to show that it is not the exclusive prerogative of American politicians to speak out while on the campaign trail, uninhibited by the constraints of public office.
Well, sparks are beginning to fly if Putin’s latest remarks are any indication. (I hope our PM Manmohan Singh doesn’t get burned.) Putin has despatched Senator John McCain back to the Vietnam War era, when as a pilot he used to bomb Vietnamese villages - comparing him with, say, Lady Macbeth who couldn’t wash off the blood stains on her hands with all the waters in the world’s oceans.
But more important is Putin’s resuscitation of the allegation that the Barack Obama administration deliberately murdered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The explosive potential of the charge is such that Pentagon scrambled to react within hours. The White House would have known instantaneously that Putin surely is in possession of hard intelligence backing his allegation, and that it would cast Obama in a somewhat bad light as a sly murderer. Pentagon has given the waffly explanation that US had no troops on the ground. But Putin didn’t say so, either. He spoke of drone attack. Howzaat?
Of course, no one is going to haul Obama to the Hague as a war criminal as if he were Slobodan Milosovich. That isn’t the point. What is emerging without doubt is that Putin is not going to allow the US to stage a replay of the 1996 presidential election, where communist leader Gennady Zyuganov might have defeated Boris Yeltsin but for the blatant rigging with US backing, which ensured the re-eletion of Yeltsin, who was already a very unpopular figure in Russia.
By the way, there is an interesting chapter on this episode in Strobe Talbott’s book, The Russia Hand, where it is described how the Bill Clinton administration literally rescued Yeltsin from the jaws of electoral defeat by helping out on his campaign strategy. Imagine, what would have been the course of world politics if a communist leader had been elected as president in Russia in 1996 in a ‘free and fair’ election.
Like in 1996, the stakes are very high for the US. A Putin presidency is an extremely disconcerting thought for Washington at a juncture when a last-ditch attempt is being made to re-establish the western hegemony over the Middle East and the jury is out as to the shape of things to come in Asia-Pacific. Washington will do all it can to disrupt or at least weaken Putin’s candidacy. Obama will solicit even the blissfully-happy veteran McCain’s services at the barricades.
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakuma...-obamas-hands/
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