Saif al-Islam Gaddafi: We’re winning
David Blackburn 8:54am
Despite the claims of rebels and the International Criminal Court yesterday, Saif al-Islam is not in captivity, not any longer at any rate. He drove to the Rixos hotel, where western journalists and a handful of US Congressmen are incarcerated, in the early hours to give a press conference. “We’re winning,” he said in that insouciant, cultured manner of his — the effect ruined only by his unkempt beard.
NATO spokesmen have been across the airwaves this morning, saying that the military situation in Tripoli is confused but the outcome of this battle is not in doubt. NATO commanders insist that they are not pursuing regime change, a claim that causes an involuntary snort of irony. The Telegraph has a detailed account of the co-operation between RAF assets and the rebels during the battle for Tripoli, as well as producing a list of ‘non-lethal’ hardwire that Britain has gifted the rebels: telecommunications equipment, body armour etc.
Meanwhile, journalists report that Tripoli’s hospitals are ‘overflowing’ and struggling to treat patients during regular power cuts. There also reports that Gaddafi death squads are touring hospitals to shoot wounded rebels, so doctors have retreated to their homes. As Christina Lamb predicted in May, Gaddafi’s mad defiance is coming at a terrible price in blood. The positive point is that violence appears to be between rebels and loyalists: Tripoli has not degenerated into sectarian or ethnic violence, as some feared it might. By all accounts, this remains a spontaneous insurrection against the crumbling Gaddafi regime. But of Gaddafi himself, there is still no sign. NATO commander Colonel Robert Lavoie confirmed that the organisation have no idea where the Libyan leader is.
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In2minds
August 23rd, 2011 9:43am Report this comment"the effect ruined only by his unkempt beard"
I think you will find that's a fashion/lifesytle statement.
Jez
August 23rd, 2011 9:45am Report this commentI think I'm not going to watch SKY anymore. I think you'd of seen more objective & balanced reporting coming out of our media outlets in the Boer War. It's as though the West is going through a 1936 Italy, Ethiopia moment.
The latest very significant info coming out of the BBC now:
More from Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: "We were talking to locals last night who welcomed the rebels and who have joined the rebellion, and they said they are defending their neighbourhoods. I think what they're doing is they're defending their street, their neighbourhoods, they're barricading themselves in, they've got weapons, but they don't really control anything more than the street that they live in."
0930 Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC Middle East Correspondent
who is in Zawiya, but was in Tripoli last night, says: "Exactly what is going on in the city is very hard to say. It is best to describe the city as atomised into different neighbourhoods supporting different sides in the conflict."
Jez
August 23rd, 2011 9:50am Report this commentWhere and who was this source?
" There also reports that Gaddafi death squads are touring hospitals to shoot wounded rebels, so doctors have retreated to their homes."
The media here have said the rebels are in charge of 80% of the city and the doctors that were killed yesterday were killed by Rebels (as reported by SKY)
Hard Heartless Romantic Perry
August 23rd, 2011 9:51am Report this commentNot In Doubt
Pardon my cyni-scepticism, but would this be the Not Kind Of Doubt that Afghan probs would be short lived, that the Brits could manage troubles in Iraq, that the troops were properly equipped, supplied, and transported, that Bliar was … as pure as the driven snow . . that Brwon was a genius . . that the H2B (Bonfirer of QUANGOs) would … well we all know the rest . . .
Jez
August 23rd, 2011 10:02am Report this commentSKY has just reported there is and has been for quite only one hospital functioning in Tripoli- and that is securely in the hands of the Rebels.
oldtimer
August 23rd, 2011 10:04am Report this commentIf they have a few US congressmen holed up in the Rixos hotel, then it seems the Ghaddafis still retain a few bargaining chips.
No side can claim to have won. The difference between today and a few days ago is that the stalemate has coalesced into battles in Tripoli and around Sirte.
It would not surprise me if it ended in a compromise between the warring parties, in short a Libyan solution. The words uttered at least make that an option, disagreeable though that may be to many outsiders.
Viv Evans
August 23rd, 2011 10:22am Report this commentOne or the other side is certainly making out like Comical Ali.
This is another 'item' due to the breathless 24/7 news, and entirely due to the breathless, 'must have a scoop' reporting by those in Libya, which don't even deserve the label 'hacks'.
We don't need reports of unverified rumours by those why try to make themselves look like 'war correspondents', here, on TV or the rest of the MSM.
Mind - this sort of 'news' is very convenient for leaving unreported the happenings in Syria, Egypt, Israel and the involvement of Iran in fostering them.
Vulture
August 23rd, 2011 10:35am Report this commentOh dear...well, we all knew Libya would go tits up, but little thought it would happen after just one day of misplaced triumphalism.
Why did we get involved in this bloody mess?
Answers on a postcard please to Dave at Seaview, Tresoddit, Cornwall.
Derek Pasquill
August 23rd, 2011 10:47am Report this commentLooks like he has just had a Bigmac - I'm loving it!
Ditto Arab Spring.
Bill Fraser
August 23rd, 2011 11:52am Report this commentComical Gaddafi's unexpected public appearance after his reported capture, must have cheered up all those gloomy faces at BBC News dismayed by the gains of the rebels ...
John David Barnett
August 23rd, 2011 2:13pm Report this commentNews that all may not be going as well as had been hopes, and that the Libyan people's suffering may have some time still to continue, has given the Cameron haters new hope.
normanc
August 23rd, 2011 2:41pm Report this commentI knew I should have bought shares in Dragons Blood :(
Muhammad Haque 1
August 24th, 2011 3:47am Report this commentI recall so many things that were being said in the early 1980s on the corridors of the London County Hall that had successfully been linked with several individuals in "political office" who had received gifts from the Libya Colonel. Typically, I was successful in staying way from the gifts and also from the gift-takers. But the observation remains: how did they justify taking the Libyan dosh and how , now, are they able top stay so calm and say nought! It must be down j to those "British vah-loos" that Gordon Brown was so fond of boasting about! The same vah-loos that took Tony Blair to Tripoli where he did receive his equivalents of the Libyan's gifts! I wonder what will be revealed as being the "moral" equivalent that David Cameron and his CONDEM allies have done with Libya! Moral Collapse indeed! What Brown, cameron and Blair, to name only the recent three tokens, must remember is this: ordinary humanity will never forgive the crimes that suit-wearing stooges and agents of Big Business do at the behest of the Military industrial Complex. If Libya Gaddafi was undermining humanity and democracy then he was doing so for decades. He was not attacked then. So the only reason he is attacked now is because he is refusing to proffer enough gifts. This is not responsible politics. This is not legal war. This is not legal occupation. And Cameron will never live down the dire betrayal of the UNO’s founding Conventions that he has taken part in perpetrating. Society cannot but lose from such examples of law-breaking by any sitting Prime Minister. People are watching as Cameron goes from one moral contradiction and hypocrisy to the next. Who will bring Cameron to moral order and discipline? Society needs a movement precisely to bring that overdue moral and ethical and democratic accountability about.
Frank Leader
August 25th, 2011 11:04pm Report this commentBlair and Brown grovelled to Gadaffi. Cameron Bombed him. Legally with U.N. Support.
Frank Leader
August 27th, 2011 11:53pm Report this commentSaif Gaddafi has friends like Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, with friends like that if he isn't careful he will get a bad name.
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