OH DEAR, CAN ALL THIS BE TRUE? – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  As readers know, we've been asking the fundamental questions about the "democracy" rebellions in the Mideast:  Who are the rebels?  What do they stand for?  The answers, day by day, are getting very depressing.  This, from Toronto's Globe & Mail: 

Who are these Libyan rebels whom the Western powers, including Canada, are helping with their air raids?

The little we know is anything but reassuring. And it makes one wonder why Western leaders were foolish enough to provide major support to a group that might prove to be even more dangerous than Moammar Gadhafi’s regime. Colonel Gadhafi is a cruel despot, to be sure, but at least he stopped sponsoring international terrorism; he’s now al-Qaeda’s nemesis and a violent foe of radical Islamists.

Yeah.  Absolutely evil, but maybe the lesser of two evils.  In the Mideast, a human-rights sewer, that may even count for something. 

In late 2009, a Canadian intelligence report called the anti-Gadhafi stronghold of eastern Libya an “epicentre of Islamist extremism,” pointing out that “extremist cells” operated in the region, including in some of Benghazi’s mosques.

Happy days are here again.

Last month, the Transitional National Council, the group formed by the anti-Gadhafi rebels during the uprising of 2011, was endorsed by Abu Yahya, a Libyan-born al-Qaeda official (and alleged member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group), who broadcast a video message urging the Benghazi rebels to continue the fight for the establishment of an Islamic regime.

And...

The council’s chairman is Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former justice minister in Col. Gadhafi’s government. The appellate court of which he had been president twice confirmed the death penalty for five Bulgarian nurses who had been arrested in 1999 on the ludicrous charge of contaminating Libyan children with the AIDS virus.

And...

Abdul Fatah Younis, a senior military commander of the insurgency, is a former interior and public security minister. As such, he was responsible for the system of torture set up by the Gadhafi regime.

And...

Idris Laga, the council’s “military co-ordinator,” was head of the Association of Relatives of Children Infected with AIDS, an organization set up by the regime to raise the price exacted for the Bulgarian nurses held hostage. Vladimir Chukov, a Bulgarian expert on the Arab world, says Mr. Laga “harbours a deep hatred for the West.”

COMMENT:  Have a nice day.  Remember that Hitler was democratically elected.

April 5, 2011