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“Washington must stop subcontracting Syria policy to the Turks, Saudis and Qataris. They are clearly part of the anti-Assad effort, but the United States cannot tolerate Syria becoming a proxy state for yet another regional power,” wrote Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (Washington Post, July 20).

Pletka was the biggest supporter of Ahmad Chalabi, the once exiled Iraqi, who she once described as “a trusted associate of the Central Intelligence Agency (and) the key player in a unsuccessful coup to overthrow Saddam Hussein” in the 1990s (LA Times, June 4, 2004).

Although the destruction of an Arab country is not a moral issue as far as the neocons are concerned, the chaos and subsequent violence that followed the US war in 2003 made it impossible for warring ‘intellectuals’ to promote their ideas with the same language of old. Some reinvention was now necessary. Discredited organizations were shut down and new ones were hastily founded. One such platform was the Foreign Policy Initiative, which was founded by neoconservatives who cleverly reworded old slogans.

Although the Obama administration response to Cote d’Ivoire has been relatively muted, the US president has openly supported Ouattara as the rightful winner of the elections. However, blogger Bombastic Element reports that some US Republicans are openly supporting Gbagbo in what appears to be motivated by Islamophobia. ‘First it was Pat Robertson, now Republican senator James Inhofe took the senate floor yesterday, pleading Gbagbo's case and presenting his version of Cote d'Ivoire's rigged election math to CSPAN cameras. ‘We are no fans of Quattara, but in pitching their buddy Gbagbo and his line about rigged election results, Robertson and Inhofe, blinded by Christian camaraderie and the fact that Quattara is a Muslim, are selling snake oil to a Libya fatigued American public, who is just now tuning in to watch.’

Apart from the attempts at censorship, this is such a ludicrous action by the government to prevent people from organizing, as it assumes that without social media uprising cannot or will not take place. It goes hand in hand with the ‘technoholics’ who continue to attribute revolutionary actions with social media – Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

The Angry Arab has given up on the Libyan rebels altogether: ‘It is no more a Libyan uprising I was as excited as anyone to see the Libyan people revolt against the lousy dictator, Qadhdhafi: a tyrant who one should hate with an extra measure of eccentricity because--like Saddam--he is particularly obnoxious and repugnant as far as tyrants are concerned. But I can't say now that I support the Libyan uprising: it is no more a Libyan uprising. The uprising has been hijacked by Qadhdhafi henchmen, Qatar foreign policy agenda, and the agenda of Western government. Count me out.’

The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Qaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq.