When unrest exploded in Libya last month, Khamis Gadhafi--the youngest son of the country's embattled leader Muammar Gadhafi--wasn't around. He was on an internship program in the United States. Khamis, who runs Libya's special forces, quickly returned to his home country, where he has led a military unit that has brutally suppressed rebel forces.
The internship, which lasted a month, was sponsored by AECOM, a Los Angeles-based global engineering and design company that has been working with the Libyan regime to modernize the country's infrastructure. Khadis made stops in San Francisco, Colorado, Houston, Washington, and New York City, meeting with high-tech companies (including Google, Apple, and Intel), universities, and defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. While in the Big Apple, Khamis even took in the Broadway show "Mamma Mia."
News of Khamis's internship, which was approved by the State Department, was first reported by ABC News.
Since coming home, Khamis appears to have played a key role in helping his father's regime in its violent campaign to quell the uprising. He has led the elite 32nd Reinforced Brigade, known at the Khamis Brigade, which reportedly has been involved in brutally suppressing rebel forces.
Vice Adm. William Gortney of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described the Khamis Brigade, whose headquarters were the target of U.S. Tomahawk missiles, as "one of the most active in terms of attacking innocent people."
On Monday night, Libyan television showed Khamis dressed in his military uniform and greeting people at his father's Tripoli compound.
A spokesman for AECOM told CNN that the company was "shocked and outraged" to learn of Khamis' military role.
AECOM added in a statement: "The educational internship, which consisted of publicly available information, was aligned with our efforts to improve quality of life, specifically in Libya, where we were advancing public infrastructure such as access to clean water; quality housing; safe and efficient roads and bridges; reliable and affordable energy; and related projects that create jobs and opportunity."
This isn't the first time that Gadhafi's sons--and their ties to the west -- have hit the headlines. As we've written, the regime was embarrassed after Wikileaks cables shed light on the lavish New Year's parties that another son, Muatassim, has held on the Caribbean island of St. Barts, at which Mariah Carey, Usher, and Beyonce have all been paid to perform. And the current crisis also has spotlighted the Libyan leader's own personal eccentricities.
(Soldiers and dozens of tanks from the Libyan military's elite Khamis Brigade, led by Khamis Gadhafi. take positions and check vehicles in Harshan, Libya, Feb. 28, 2011.: Ben Curtis/AP)

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Originally Posted by Ranger84

Well, therein lies the crux of the problem.

The "rebels" we're supporting today are far too often the "terrorists" we're fighting tomorrow. Not sure how many times this vicious cycle is going to perpetuate itself, but it's not doing us much good.

And the only real solution...I suppose...is to go in, and do as we're doing in Iraq and just stay indefinitely to try and help them actually build an effective democracy and power structure. Of course we've also got a long history of supporting "democracy" provided it's the "right type" of democracy, ie, who we want to be in power.


I guess I'll just have to have some degree of faith that Obama is going to get us out of there quickly and we'll have to see if the rebels turn out to be enemies in 20 years or not. I'm not too confident right now...

Sorry but this completely naive.
The "terrorists" are against the US government because the Arab world is aware of the continued suppression by "our" government of democracy in the region. Khomeini called the USA the "Great Satan" because of what "we" did to the Iranian people in supporting the Shah, (whose Savak took lessons from the SS apparently). In their eyes we are hypocrites & perpetrators of evil upon a populace that in 1950s had a democratically elected government overthrown by our CIA because we didn't like their anti-colonist petrol policies.

This has been the US's long standing approach to the Middle East: Get OUR people in power so we get the OIL & if we squelch the human rights of their people along the way, too bad. No wonder that many of the people of the Arab world are anti-American. When that happened in our country we started our own revolution 235 years ago.

If we were really serious about Democracy we wouldn't be enforcing puppet dictators across the world. And since we continue to do that then one can see by inductive reasoning that our government's real goal is empire building not world wide democracy.

I suppose...is to go in, and do as we're doing in Iraq and just stay indefinitely to try and help them actually build an effective democracy and power structure.

I meant this part. We supported Hussein when he was in power & then turned on him when he wanted to take back Kuwait & used it as an excuse to go in & take back the oil, (that & WMDs & 9/11). So to go in & build a democracy with people who know you backed the dictator means that know that the USA only wants to put in their "puppets" again.

I wasn't being condescending so sorry if you took it that way. I was just pointing out that thinking that our government is going to actually put in a real democracy is not realistic. It will just not happen with the current state of the world.

If you real my already very long post on the previous page I outline why those leaders are backed by the USA & then become our enemies. They usually become so not by their own choice but by the fact that they try to demonstrate some form of self determinism which "we" cannot tolerate.

Last Thursday March 24th, President Barack Obama, just back from a five-day trip to Latin America, convened his national security team for a White House meeting on Libya.
The meeting came five days into the U.S.'s air strikes targeting Libyan air defenses and military sites. And some lawmakers on Capitol Hill were already expressing misgivings over what they said were insufficient White House consultations with Congress on the nature and depth of America's military commitment there.
The Thursday meeting appeared as a sort of afterthought in the publicly announced March 24 schedule for the president: "Also in the afternoon, the President will meet with his national security team to review our efforts in Libya." But the confab stretched from the afternoon into evening--and by the time it wound down, CIA Director Leon Panetta had offered to send CIA personnel covertly to work on the ground in Libya.
"Once again, we were the only ones at the table who stepped up," Panetta later described the Agency role, according to a source who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitive consultations.
A CIA spokesman did not immediately respond to a query on the CIA's role in Libya, which was first reported Wednesday by the New York Times.
There were many reasons the sudden commitment of personnel came from the CIA, and not the U.S. military. Not surprisingly, political concerns place high on that list, with a war-weary American public skeptical about any more long-term troop commitments in the Arab world. Indeed, on March 18, Obama had explicitly told a group of congressional leaders at a White House briefing on Libya that he had not authorized any deployment of U.S. ground troops, according to Hill officials with knowledge of the briefing.
That same refrain was repeated today, in Defense Secretary Robert Gates' testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.
Asked by a committee member if there were any U.S. "boots on the ground" in Libya, Gates responded: "Not that I am aware of," and then added: "The opposition said they don't want any."
Gates then fielded another question about the likelihood of a later deployment of U.S. troops on the ground in Libya.
"Not as long as I am in the job," he replied sharply.
So with no U.S. ground troops in play, the CIA is tasked with gathering intelligence and performing logistical groundwork at a critical stage of the effort to rein in Muammar Gadhafi from brutalizing civilians and tip the balance against him in Libya's civil war.
Former CIA officers who have worked on the region said they believed the operatives are gathering intelligence on the Libyan opposition forces, to help better assess who the rebels are and what are their capabilities and organization structures, to inform U.S. decision-making including on possibly training them. Additionally, the former officials say, CIA personnel would be helping identify targets for precision air strikes.
"They are in there collecting intelligence, deepening our understanding of who the rebels are," one former U.S. intelligence officer who has worked on the Middle East told The Envoy Thursday on condition of anonymity. "It gives intelligence color to what is in fact a covert action, interacting with the rebels. They are not doing quasi-covert diplomacy, they are doing intelligence."
Air-strike logistics will also be a critical component of the CIA mission, the former intelligence said. "In the paramilitary world, where you've got an air campaign, you need what are called FACs?forward air controllers?someone who can provide coordinates [for targets]," he explained. "In modern warfare, you don't drop 1,000 bombs to hit one target."
Of course, there's a disconnect between the White House's depiction of the Libyan mission as a bid to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe, and the recent reports suggesting deepening covert U.S. involvement on the ground. But the former senior intelligence official said it would be naive to have believed it would have been otherwise once the first U.S. Patriot missiles exploded in Libya last Saturday.
"I would hope there was not a single person in the administration [involved in Libya decision-making] who was childish enough to think that anybody who was involved in the first military operation ? could ever again be engaged in a relationship with the Gadhafi regime," the source said. "It ain't going to happen. Of course we took sides. We crossed that rubicon."
But another former CIA officer took a different view, saying the disconnect may arise from a certain degree of wishful thinking in the administration's initial decision-making on Libya.
"It's really simple: we incrementally get involved and [then] don't know what to do," the second former CIA officer said. The Obama administration "really thought a little pressure and he [Gadhafi] will fall."
"The model is we [the CIA] go in and do a limited amount of training," the second former CIA official said. "So there is someone we can work with?as we increase air operations, and eventually hit artillery and armor."
"Those clowns are not able to do anything effective until they are trained and have new weaponry, " likely from Egypt, the former CIA officer said, referring to the Libyan rebels. He suggested the CIA's ground-branch division, which includes many personnel who have para-military backgrounds, may also "train the Libyan rebels how to fight, how to shoot, how to organize into groups."
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee Thursday that he estimated there were only 1,000 Libyan rebels who had a real military background. The rebels are joined by civilians without much military experience. Mullen also estimated that Muammar Gadhafi had a 10-to-one advantage in military weaponry over the rebels, including tanks and armored vehicles.
Defense Secretary Gates, a former CIA analyst and CIA director, offered lawmakers three possible scenarios for Libya.
"I think there are several alternative outcomes," Gates told the House panel Thursday. "One is that someone from his military takes him out and then cuts a deal with the opposition. ... Another would be the tribes abandon him and cut their own deals with each other. Another alternative ?our preferred option?[is that] these opposition forces and tribes come together and begin to create a democratic state that protects rights of its people."
At the same time that he outlined the best-case option Gates also cautioned that the United States' ability to influence such outcomes is extremely limited. "We don't have any real influence with the tribes."
(Defense Secretary Robert Gates, center, sits with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, left, and Vice President Joe Biden, right, as they listen to President Barack Obama speak about Libya at the National Defense University in Washington, Monday, March 28, 2011.: Charles Dharapak/AP)

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