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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio on Liberty Radio Network.
Got one eye on MSNBC, another on Al Jazeera English, and my third eye over on antiwar.com.
Eye number four is at McClatchyDC.com, McClatchy Newspapers, where Jonathan Landay is national security and intelligence correspondent.
If all of y'all had read what he wrote before the war with Iraq, it would have never happened, but you didn't, so it did.
Welcome back to the show, Jonathan.
How are you doing?
Up to my eyeball, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing just great.
I got to tell you, it is a lot of work to be done this week, but it's also a really exciting world historical sort of time that we're all going to really have a good time being able to look back at in the future, I think, so I'm taking it all in and actually having a great time with it, although there is bad news.
People are dying, particularly in Libya today.
I was wondering if you could give us the latest, what you're hearing out of Libya.
It's very hard to communicate with anybody there, and we've been trying, and we have managed to get a couple of calls through.
I just got off the phone with a doctor at the main trauma center in Tripoli, who says that at least 64 people have been killed since the uprising against the dictator Muammar Gaddafi began in the capital yesterday.
He says they're getting between two and three casualties every half an hour into the trauma center.
The doctors there are giving their own blood.
He said that he's unsure of what the situation outside the facility is.
He says that bystanders are getting killed.
He told me about a woman who got hit as she watched the clashes in the street from her windows, and beyond that, other people we've managed to get through too are staying in their homes because of the violence that's taking place.
There have been reports of government aircraft bombing demonstrators in Tripoli, but the doctor I talked to and some of the other people we've managed to get through to are unable to confirm that.
Yeah, I was interested in that.
We've been hearing that actually for a couple of days now, and I haven't seen any real confirmation.
I wonder if you know about Al Jazeera's report that some of the Air Force pilots have instead defected and gone to Malta rather than carrying out their orders.
That is what the reports coming out of wire agencies are saying, that several MiGs flown by Libyan pilots and a helicopter, I believe, arrived in Malta today.
There are reports out there of Libyan diplomats defecting in Europe, giving up their jobs.
The Libyan embassy here in the United States in Washington is closed.
No one's answering the phone there.
We tried that.
Wow.
Well, this is what Al Jazeera is calling the latest pictures.
Huge, just, I don't know, throngs, is that the right word, of people out there in the streets of Tripoli?
And this looks, at least this section looks peaceful right here.
And this, as far as the protesters are concerned, they really have followed the Egyptian model of nonviolent resistance and disobedience, right?
Well, I don't think it's quite like that, simply because it appears at least, I think that probably those pictures are of large throngs of Jubilan people are probably coming out of the eastern city of Benghazi, the second largest city in the country.
It fell yesterday when a crack military unit defected.
I've been talking to people there today as well as yesterday.
People are in the streets waving flags, driving around honking horns.
But they also, when the city fell yesterday, overran a bunch of police and military facilities.
And there are a lot of weapons out in the streets.
There were some tanks being driven around yesterday.
And so the situation, as joyous as it is, is also one fraught with instability and uncertainty.
When one of Qaddafi's sons, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, went on television, state-run TV last night, and delivered this rambling monologue about the situation, he warned that civil war could be in the offing.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like he was completely wrong about that.
Well, what do you know about foreign mercenaries being brought in to fight?
There have been some reports of that, on the side of the state, that is.
That looks to be pretty accurate.
There are YouTube videos.
I've talked to people about this in Benghazi, who confirm this.
There are YouTube videos, in fact, of people who appear to be African mercenaries.
There's one rather, and they are rather gory videos.
There's one of two of these guys lashed to the trunk of a white pickup truck, being driven by local citizens of Benghazi, who are armed.
There's another of citizens carrying the body of a person they say is an African mercenary, bleeding profusely.
He's dead from the head, wearing a blue camouflage uniform.
And then there's another that I've seen of a guy who was captured, who's being manhandled and hit by the people who caught him telling the crowd, pleading with the crowd, that he was only doing what he was told, because he was ordered to do so.
Well, now, do you think that that speaks, or can we conclude one way or the other, whether that speaks to Gaddafi's weakness, that is he resorting to using mercenaries here because his army can't get it done, or won't?
Yes, I mean, I guess that does.
I mean, it tells you that he's unable to completely rely on the loyalty of his own troops.
I believe, but don't quote me, that the Libyan army outside of the officer corps is like a lot of armies in that part of the world.
It's a conscript army, and therefore the troops are ordinary Libyans who don't necessarily want to serve and who aren't going to necessarily open fire on their own people.
All right, now, you guys at McClatchy are on the cutting edge of all this stuff, beat the Post and the Times to everything, if they even cover the right thing at all.
Can you tell us about what you're hearing out of Bahrain?
Yes, we have a reporter, Nancy Yousef, our Pentagon reporter is there.
She's been there for the last three or four days.
Essentially, you have, at least her last story spoke of a carnival-like atmosphere following this horrendous incident in which the Bahraini troops opened fire on peaceful demonstrators in the streets after they converged there following funerals of people who had been shot.
She said that families are there, they've pitched tents, they've put blankets down, and they are intent on occupying the square in kind of like a recreation of what happened in Tahrir Square in Cairo.
But they are still pushing, their leaders, the leaders of the opposition, are pushing for reforms.
Some of them are unwilling to talk to the government until the government agrees to some of their reforms, including the resignation of the Cabinet, and the killing of the protesters, she says, has transformed what was this movement that was willing to abide by a constitutional monarchy.
They wanted direct elections of the government.
They now, because of the killing, are now, a lot of the protesters, she says, now want the Al Khalifa family out completely.
And they really did retake that square peacefully, right?
They just marched in there unarmed and faced the army down?
Yes, when the army withdrew, the army withdrew.
I mean, but it withdrew first and then they came or they kind of faced them out, marched them out?
They kind of marched in, but the army just kind of faded away.
Wow, that is so cool.
Sorry, I know you're reporting and I'm talking about how great it all is, but it really is something to behold.
Across the Middle East, can you tell me anything real quick about Algeria, Morocco, do you know?
I think people should keep their eyes on all of the region where there are monarchs and despots in power.
The region is obviously undergoing what may be changes of seismic proportion that this country and others are unable to do anything about.
But what we've seen thus far are changes that mitigate against what some right-wing Americans are talking about, you know, Islamics taking over and are indeed demanding democratic reforms and democracy, not Islamic rule.
Right on.
All right, everybody, that's Jonathan Landay at McClatchy Newspapers.
Thanks very much.
My pleasure, Scott.
