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[olemars]

Rifles with bayonets...

Someone should try to spread the word to the revolutionaries that they should send all the videos to dozens of news organizations, other governments, as many video uploading sites as they can find, and Wikileaks all at once. I'd like to see all of that get lost.

They do that (now).

This site belongs to one of the youth groups getting info out of Libya: http://www.libyafeb17.com/
They update very often, like every 5 minutes or so.

[Leafsnail]

20:29 Al Jazeera: Army officers report that Gaddafi said: “I was the one who created Libya, and I will be the one to destroy it”

...Yeah, this maniac needs to be stopped.

[Aqizzar]

Another image of African mercs in Tripoli (courtesy al-Jazeera, who is doing a bangup job compared to the other major networks):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Huh.  When I heard "African Mercenaries", I was expecting a bunch of Afrikaner douchebags and internationalists like Tim Spicer, not... well, actual Africans.  Given Qaddafi's penchant for ethnically eclectic confidants, but whatever.  Has anyone figured out where they're actually from?  I can't identify the equipment, but it looks British to me.

[RedKing]

I've seen some speculation that they're Chadian, and that some of the wanton violence is payback for the Chad-Libyan war in 1986. Which seems utterly barking mad to me ("hey, we can get our revenge on the Libyans by shooting up Libyans while the Libyan dictator pays us to!" Oh. Okay, maybe not so crazy). Dunno where the equipment is, could be surplus from any number of countries, and it's a true merc unit then hell...they could be buying direct from the manufacturers. Yay for PMCs.

[olemars]

Their gear looks far more modern than any sub-saharan military is handing out to their regulars.

[Aqizzar]

Well, those are definitely Jeeps that they're driving, late 90s Wranglers I think.  The rifles could be anything in a picture like that (nice touch with the bayonets guys, real subtle).  The first thing I noticed was the hats - they're definitely uniform, but I've never seen anything like that.  They seem French for some reason.

I figured that most African mercenaries would be former military, and would use the same equipment, which would itself largely be from whichever power their country of origin used to be a colony of, but those guys do look pretty recently equipped.

Hmm... I wonder how that whole British Petroleum deal is going to be effected by this, and what Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is up to these days.

Two Libyan fighter pilots defect, fly to Malta

They said the two pilots, both colonels, took off from a base near Tripoli. One of them has requested political asylum.
The two said they decided to fly to Malta after being ordered to bomb anti-government protesters in Libya's second largest city of Benghazi, the sources said.

The king called up his jet fighters, he said you better earn your pay.
Drop your bombs between the minarets down the Casbah way.

As soon as the Sharif was chauffeured outta there,
The jet pilots tuned to the cockpit radio blare.

As soon as the Sharif was outta their hair,
The jet pilots waaaiiiled...

[RedKing]

The hats looks like French-style kepis, but then since the vast majority of sub-Saharan Africa was run by either the French or the Belgians for so long, the uniforms tend to have that French flair to them.

Update: Al Arabiyya is reporting that an ex-pilot on the ground in Tripoli is stating that the bombardment is being carried out by F-16s rather than MiGs. The Libyan AF doesn't have F-16s, primarily MiGs and Sukhois instead. Italy has 28 F-16s.

Still can't tell if this is just paranoia or if the Italians are genuinely somehow involved. Berlusconi would be in massively deep shit if he actually sent Italian F-16s to help out Qaddafi. (And in case you're wondering, Tripoli is within the service range of Italy's F-16 squadrons, which are based at Trapani, Sicily).

[Nadaka]

So this is how world war 3  begins.

[olemars]

Egypt has a shitton of F16's too but they're not likely to bomb libyan civilians either. Going to bet on incorrect ID by the ex-pilot.

[Aqizzar]

It wouldn't surprise me if Libya did have a few F-16s.  After Qaddafi decided to back a different horse and started kissing up to the US and Britain, certainly there's been some deals struck.  F-16s are one of America's favorite things to pawn off on erstwhile allies, and look at all the other American hardware roaming the streets.  That, or Qaddafi could have bought a few, since there's quite a few of them around.

[Phmcw]

Berlusconi couldn't possibly be this stupid. He would be arrested for sure. No question there. Even I would riot (well the ten minutes it would take for the embassy personnel to come protest with us, we wouldn't have a lot to riot against) if it was true, and the whole Italian community of Belgium with me.

[olemars]

Libya definitely do not have any F16's.

[RedKing]

If he did, it's news to all the major clearinghouses I'm familiar with. There are folks out there, even outside the DoD, that keep a careful inventory on every plane, every tank, every ship that foreign militaries have in their arsenal. Obviously light vehicles and small arms are impossible to track that closely, but an F-16 is a hard thing to buy on the down-low.

Could always be disinformation planted to support Qaddafi Junior's crazy spiel about the Italians and Turks and Israelis wanting to carve up Libya and recolonize it.

Al Jazeera is going to be broadcasting some footage of casualties in Tripoli soon.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There were functioning nuclear missiles that went missing during the Cold War and were never found. I don't think it's all that impossible that Mr. Psycho-Dictator #005421 managed to get his hands on a few F-16s.

[Phmcw]

We have a polemic in Belgium : back when Kadhafi was best pal with Europe, we (the fn o be exact) sold them some weapon, now there are call by at least on major political party for an inquiry. We there is a law that forbid selling weapon to country who could use them illegally . Of course the poeple targeted are the politician that ave he permission, since it was their responsibility.