HyperNormalisation Page #6

the Capitulation Department.

Get off of your stick, Mr. President.

The American people are sick and

tired of being kicked around.

You talk tough,

let's see you use some of

these billions and billions

and billions of dollars' worth of weapons

that you've asked us to approve.

Your words are cheap talk.

President Reagan immediately announced

that Colonel Gaddafi was

definitely behind the attacks.

These murderers could not carry out their crimes

without the sanctuary and support

provided by regimes such as

Colonel Gaddafi's in Libya.

The Rome and Vienna murders are only the latest

in a series of brutal terrorist acts

committed with Gaddafi's backing.

But the European security services

who investigated the attacks

were convinced that Libya was not involved at all

and that the mastermind behind the

attacks was, in fact, Syria -

that the terrorists had been directed

by the Syrian intelligence agencies.

But the Americans say that

the attack at Rome Airport

was organised by Gaddafi, not by Damascus.

What do you say?

- No, we don't have any evidence...

- You have no evidence?

...supporting such an... affirmation.

The only evidence we have

shows a Syrian connection.

You say that it was Libya and the President

said the evidence of Libya's

culpability was irrefutable.

Yeah.

But the Italian authorities to

whom I've spoken say emphatically

on the record that their investigations have shown

that it was entirely masterminded by Syria.

I don't agree with that at all.

Well, they interrogated the surviving terrorists.

I must just say I don't agree with that.

But you've no evidence that Libya

was in on the planning either.

Our evidence on Libya is

circumstantial, but very strong.

But why does the President

then say it's "irrefutable",

if you call it "circumstantial"?

Well, people can be convicted

and sentenced in our courts

on circumstantial evidence.

But what made it even more confusing

was that although there seemed to be no evidence

that Gaddafi had been behind the attacks,

he made no attempt to deny the allegations.

Instead, he went the other way

and turned the crisis into a global drama...

It is not a time of saying.

It is a time of war,

a time of confrontation.

...threatening suicide attacks against America.

TRANSLATION:

Gaddafi now started to play a role

that was going to become very familiar.

He grabbed the publicity

that had been given to him

by the Americans and used it dramatically.

He promoted himself as an

international revolutionary

who would help to liberate oppressed

peoples around the world,

even the blacks in America.

Gaddafi arranged for a live satellite link

to a mass meeting of the

Nation Of Islam in Chicago.

Brothers and sisters,

it is with great honour and

privilege that I present to you

the leader of the al-Fateh Revolution from Libya,

our brother Muammar al-Gaddafi.

APPLAUSE:

Gaddafi told them that Libya was now their ally

in their struggle against white America.

...to express my full support

and support of my country

to your struggle for freedom, for emancipation.

Gaddafi promised that he would supply weapons

to create a black army in America of 400,000 men.

"If white America refuses to

accept blacks as US citizens,"

he told them, "it must therefore be destroyed."

Gaddafi also invited a group

of German rocket scientists

to come to Libya to build him a rocket.

He insisted that it had no military purpose.

Libya was now going to explore outer space.

I think it is peaceful and civil...

Civilian?

...civilian activity

for investigation of space

and something like this...

and...

it has nothing to do with any military things.

But no-one believed him.

Journalists warned that Gaddafi was

really preparing to attack Europe,

vividly dramatising the new danger.

That is something like this

which goes that way to put something into space.

But the same device tilted,

say, to an angle of 45 degrees

could, of course, become

something very different -

a missile possibly carrying a warhead.

That would put Libya within

range of an enormous area.

A chilling proposition with its range of 2,000km.

The Americans and Gaddafi

now became locked together

in a cycle of mutual reinforcement.

In the process, a powerful new image was created

that was going to capture the

imagination of the West.

Gaddafi became a global supervillain,

at the head of what was called a "rogue state" -

a madman who threatened the

stability of the world.

And Gaddafi was loving every minute of it.

So, you think, in the past,

his decisions sometimes have

been taken too quickly...

- Maybe, maybe. - ...on world affairs?

- Maybe.

I think, sometimes, that is what

has made people in the world

- nervous of you, perhaps?

- Maybe.

HE CHUCKLES:

Then, there was another terrorist attack

at a discotheque in West Berlin.

A bomb killed an American

soldier and injured hundreds.

The Americans released what

they said were intercepts

by the National Security Agency

that proved that Colonel

Gaddafi was behind the bombing

and a dossier that they said proved

that he was also the mastermind

behind a whole range of other attacks.

President Reagan ordered the Pentagon

to prepare to bomb Libya.

But again, there were doubts -

this time, within the American Government itself.

There were concerns that

analysts were being pressured

to make a case that didn't really exist...

...and to do it, they were taking

Gaddafi's rhetoric about himself

as a global revolutionary and his manic ravings

and then re-presenting them as fact.

And, in the process, together,

the Americans and Gaddafi were

constructing a fictional world.

The analysts were certainly, I'm convinced...

pressured into developing a prima facie case

against the Libyan Government.

From the somewhat incoherent ravings of a maniac,

both interceptions of a clandestine nature

and interceptions of an open

radio broadcast or whatever,

as well as other sources, quotations of his,

one can assemble a neatly-put-together package

demonstrating that the man had violent interests

against the United States and its European allies.

The European intelligence agencies

told the Americans that they were wrong,

that it was Syria that was

behind the bombing, not Libya.

But the Americans had decided to attack Libya

because they couldn't face

the dangerous consequences

of attacking Syria.

Instead, they went for Gaddafi,

a man without friends or allies.

Libya had less downsided

consequences, if you will.

There's less Arab support for Gaddafi,

we figured there would be less

Soviet support for Gaddafi.

There's no question that Libya was

more vulnerable than Syria and Iran.

- He was a soft target?

- And that is certainly an element, of course.

In April 1986, the Americans attacked Libya.

Their targets included

Colonel Gaddafi's own house.

Immediately after the attack,

Gaddafi appeared in the ruins

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