If Qaddafi can send large convoys across 900 kilometers of Libyan highway to Niger undisturbed, he is demonstrably in control of most parts of the country. As long as he alive and at large, NATO and the rebels cannot hope to extend their control beyond Tripoli and Benghazi, especially ...

Members of the Al Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – LIFG, are in control of the former strongholds of Muammar Qaddafi captured by Libyan rebels last Sunday, Aug. 21, debkafile reports from Libyan sources. Their chief Abd Al-Hakim Belhadj, an al Qaeda veteran from Afghanistan, now calls himself "Commander of the Tripoli Military Council." A US source confirms that NATO's British and French special forces opened Tripoli's door to the rebels. Now, the LIFG is unlikely to relinquish power to the NTC.

Although he spent four decades preparing for an enemy to oust him, Qaddafi missed a key trick: Wholesale CIA bribes for his Tripoli commanders to abandon the defenses of the city and his Bab al-Aziziya stronghold as the Western-led rebels advanced. By this trick, US troops also captured Baghdad.

In an extraordinary turnabout in the Tripoli standoff between West-backed Libyan rebels and Muammar Qaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam turned up with cheering crowds at the Rixos hotel early Tuesday, Aug. 23, and told foreign reporters he was never captured as widely reported. "We are winning,"he said.
His detention was not only reported by the rebels but "confirmed" embarrassingly by the International Criminal Court's prosecutors. "The rebels fell into a trap," said Saif.

Russia cited NATO's "inclusive bombing of Tripoli" as grounds for objecting to the new UK-French-Portuguese  motion condemning the Assad regime for its violent crackdown on protest, and any other UN Security Council action against Syria. After a more than $4 billion outlay, debkafile reports NATO's campaign against Muammar Qaddafi is running short of funds and suffering war "fatigue." The US, Britain and France consider dipping into the estimated $45 million of frozen Qaddafi funds in their banks. Qaddafi' commands about $1 trillion in cash.

In a long, fiery speech broadcast by Libyan state TV Tuesday, Feb. 22, Libya's ruler Col. Muammar Qaddafi declared war on his enemies at home and abroad. He accused the Cyrenaicans of the East of conspiring to establish an Al Qaeda emirate that would bring the Americans over and create the same situation in Libya as in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Straight after his speech, Tripoli announced that Libyan oil and gas exports were blocked to Europe, causing pandemonium and Libyan missile ships began pounding Benghazi from the sea.