NATO says explosives and dummies found on Libya boat

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: Reuters

BRUSSELS May 16 (Reuters) - NATO said its warships found explosives and mannequins on a small boat off the Libyan port of Misrata on Monday, in what they believe was a plan by Muammar Gaddafi's forces to lure ships and destroy them.

A NATO statement said the boat was abandoned when NATO forces approached to check two rigid-hull inflatable boats (RHIB) heading towards the rebel-held port. The other craft escaped at high speed.

"An explosive ordnance disposal team from an allied warship was deployed to inspect the abandoned RHIB and discovered a large quantity of explosives (approximately one tonne) and two human mannequins," the statement said.

Read more: http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFLDE74F20S20110516

[guruoo]

1. Rebel lure, or black ops propagnda?

:shrug:

[aquart]

3. That sweet guy Gaddafi, we malign him so.

Also, he's brownish and therefore cannot be expected to come up with clever plans. That takes white guys in suits. I really hate this kind of racism.

[EFerrari]

5. Both sides have been engaging in all kinds of dirty tricks.

That's not racism. That's a legitimate question.

[TheWraith]

8. Yeah, those civilians were just throwing themselves in front of the army's guns!

It's all a conspiracy to make the iron-fisted dictator look bad. :sarcasm:

[joshcryer]

9. That question is preposterous, and totally illegitimate.

Why would the rebels waste valuable explosives blowing up incoming ships (which are aid ships)? They gain absolutely nothing from it, they lose an aid ship if successful, and IOM / UN aid will have a very hard time from that point forward getting charters to take aid in to Misrata. It requires a conspiracy of epic proportions to believe this, first that they believe that the attempt wouldn't be successful, second that they felt that if it was successful then it wouldn't affect the aid that they're getting, third that they need more political capital when the reality is that they have representation in a handful of states already and support from dozens of states.

For the same reasons Gaddafi gains a lot. He knows there are paranoid-delusional people who believe the rebels are evil at all costs and will sow doubt about the plan (particularly leftists who have falling for his anti-imperialism propaganda, despite that he has billions invested in the west), and he knows that NATO and other aid agencies have received heat in the past two weeks for failing to rescue overloaded migrant ships that Gaddafi's regime overloaded at gunpoint. So it's actually kind of clever to fill a boat with dummies that look like migrants so that either an aid ship or NATO is proactive in rescuing them, then either destroying or badly damaging said boats. It's an all win for the regime (because people will again blame the rebels of covert ops conspiracies, and the Gaddafi regime counts on that).

This is close to being a terrorist act, if he put live migrants on those boats, people wouldn't be so quick to defend Gaddafi here.

[guruoo]

11. They worked for Gaddafi, but escaped towards the rebels, you see.

[joshcryer]

12. They were all reformists, many were persecuted.

[Hubert Flottz]

2. What were republicans doing in a damned boat?

[formercia]

4. No Martyrs Today?

AlQ must be having a problem with recruiting. :rofl:

[makhno]

6. Gaddafi is a regular Wile E. Coyote!

A belated justification for being wary of those boats full of migrants if there ever was one. And an awkward one, too, since now we know NATO naval forces have been operating in Libyan territorial waters and really could have been a lot more proactive in saving migrants' lives.

Twenty NATO ships have been patrolling the central Mediterranean Sea to enforce a United Nations arms embargo on Libya.

What embargo?

[joshcryer]

10. UNSC resolutions 1970 and 1973?

20 ships to cover 1100 miles of coastline. :rofl:

Fast little boats can be deployed quickly and randomly and can easily go under the radar of those 20 ships, this is not the first time that Gaddafi's regime has deployed those kinds of boats to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/29/501364/main20058556.shtml">sabotage the port of Misrata. Which, btw, is a war crime, to target aid ships.

[greiner3]

7. "dummies found on Libya boat"

Is that all the Republicans running for Prez in 2012?