With names (click here) like the Cafe Venizia, Mundo, and Hot Hot Hot Coffee, the espresso bars on seemingly every block of Benghazi are a pleasant legacy of Italy's otherwise largely brutal occupation of Libya in the 1930's. Another is the string of neo-baroque municipal buildings, art-deco cinemas and shopping arcades that the Italian city planners linked up to the old Ottoman-era town with a series of avenues and squares. Independence in 1951 and the oil boom in the 1970's left their own marks on Benghazi, in the form of surprisingly stylish renditions of the architectural fads of the day, Brutalist banks and International Style hotels. And though most of this huge country is desert, Benghazi is surrounded by green hills, white beaches, and blue waters. Under the influence of a few too many cappuccini — alcohol is banned in Libya — it's easy to imagine some glossy travel magazine of the era branding this stretch of North Africa as the Libyan Riviera.
But the sober reality is that Benghazi, now a symbol of resistance to the rule of Colonel Mummar Gaddafi, is also a symbol of that dictator's abuse, megalomania, and incompetence. The once beautiful downtown is a skeleton of its former self, with monuments surrounded by scaffolding that never comes down, empty office buildings, and decrepit apartment blocks. Outside of downtown, the pavement stops just off the highway, and dirt streets fill with rotting garbage. The city of one million has one sewage treatment plant, built more than 40 years ago. Waste is just flushed into the ground or the sea, and when the water table rises in winter, the streets become open cesspools. Benghazi, the second largest city in a country with vast oil wealth and a tiny population, is rotting in its own fifth. "Why do we have to live like this?" says, Rafiq Marrakis, a professor of architecture and urban planning at Benghazi's Garyounis University, Libya's oldest, who took TIME on a tour of Benghazi's sad decline. "There's no planning, no infrastructure, no society. Gaddafi has billions and billions in banks all over the world. But he's left us here with nothing."...
Gaddafi was attempting genocide in Beghanzi when the USA military intervened to end it. The UN was acting and Gaddafi knew it. He wasn't about to do less than destroy the city and it's people.
Gaddafi learned his lessons well. He took example of an American administration that warned UN Inspectors to get out of Iraq.
The attack on Benghazi was underway when the USA and French jets arrived. The French acted before the USA. The French probably saved lives.
March 17, 2011
By David D. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim
Tripoli, Libya — Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi (click here) warned Benghazi residents on Thursday that an attack was imminent, as the United Nations Security Council seemed headed for a vote Thursday on a resolution authorizing not just a no-flight zone but additional steps to halt the movement of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.
“We are coming tonight,” Colonel Qaddafi said. “You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets.”
Speaking on a call-in radio show, he promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away” but “no mercy or compassion” for those who fight.
Rebel leaders doubted that the loyalist forces could mount an assault tonight, in that they were still fighting for control of Ajdabiya, 100 miles to the south of Benghazi, Thursday morning. But witnesses said there were skirmishes on the road to Benghazi in the afternoon, about 30 miles from Ajdabiya.
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations,Susan E. Rice, said she has been working furiously on language for the resolution and hoped to bring the measure to a vote by Thursday afternoon....
Was Gaddafi a religious extremist? Absolutely. He was a Bedouin. He would not conduct diplomatic meetings, except, in his tent. That tent would do everywhere with him along with his many women. He lead terrorists to down a jet over Scotland. It cost over two people their lives. He was definitely a religious extremist. His extremism, no more than Daesh today, was baseless and did not adhere to proper teachings. He made up his own rules.
Gaddafi was attempting genocide in Beghanzi when the USA military intervened to end it. The UN was acting and Gaddafi knew it. He wasn't about to do less than destroy the city and it's people.
Gaddafi learned his lessons well. He took example of an American administration that warned UN Inspectors to get out of Iraq.
The attack on Benghazi was underway when the USA and French jets arrived. The French acted before the USA. The French probably saved lives.
March 17, 2011
By David D. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim
Tripoli, Libya — Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi (click here) warned Benghazi residents on Thursday that an attack was imminent, as the United Nations Security Council seemed headed for a vote Thursday on a resolution authorizing not just a no-flight zone but additional steps to halt the movement of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.
“We are coming tonight,” Colonel Qaddafi said. “You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets.”
Speaking on a call-in radio show, he promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away” but “no mercy or compassion” for those who fight.
Rebel leaders doubted that the loyalist forces could mount an assault tonight, in that they were still fighting for control of Ajdabiya, 100 miles to the south of Benghazi, Thursday morning. But witnesses said there were skirmishes on the road to Benghazi in the afternoon, about 30 miles from Ajdabiya.
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations,Susan E. Rice, said she has been working furiously on language for the resolution and hoped to bring the measure to a vote by Thursday afternoon....
Was Gaddafi a religious extremist? Absolutely. He was a Bedouin. He would not conduct diplomatic meetings, except, in his tent. That tent would do everywhere with him along with his many women. He lead terrorists to down a jet over Scotland. It cost over two people their lives. He was definitely a religious extremist. His extremism, no more than Daesh today, was baseless and did not adhere to proper teachings. He made up his own rules.
