JD: Things heating up in Libya Ken where the forces loyal to the Russian back Harouf they have gone forth killing many even children there in Libya, what’s happening?
KT: This is such an avoidable situation it’s really something. First of all Harouf is US trained formally he was a US ally. He turns to whoever is going to give him help and it just happens to be the Russians. So you have Russia working closely with a Libyan military leader and we had won Gaddafi over I’ve said on these airwaves. I was in Libya in 2004 when Gaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons and he was all set to become a US ally and we just pushed him aside. Libya has become a center of chaos and of terrorism. So Hartouf is now trying to impose some kind of order on the eastern part of Libya but he’s doing it at a great expense among civilian lives.
JD: What about Libya is it ever going to be stable again?
KT: It’s only going to happen with a strong man perhaps like Harouf. The Libyans have shown themselves incapable of cooperating democratically with each other and very very strong Islamist base in the country around Benghazi but in other parts too and not to mention the tribes. Libya has been a tribal country forever. Gaddafi obtained the tribes. So I don’t see Libya calming down in the near future and again it is such a tragic thing to see happen. We had beaten it, we had beaten back Gaddafi, we had gotten rid of his weapons of mass destruction, he was a US ally, he was helping us to fight Al-Qaeda. And by the way the beginning of the Libyan-Syrian war that’s what he was telling anyone who would listen. He said I’m fighting Al-Qaeda and you know what? He was telling the truth.
JD: Ken Timmerman on top of the story coming out of Libya where Russia and a powerful tribal leader in Libya have ratcheted up the chaos in this key prophetic nation.
