Pepe Escobar: 'Libya is Iraq 2.0'

­As matters escalate in Libya as rebels comes the closest yet to bringing down the regime of Colonel Gaddafi, what fate does that nation — and the rest of the world — face in the days to come?

Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar says that what the US and NATO perceive as a collective victory in the making will just be the next step in expanding their agenda into Libya. He says that “the master plan is to isolate,” and while the United State might call it humanitarian interventionism, he reminds us that that’s what the American ruling elites “rebranded” Bush’s agenda in the Middle East during his administrations.

“People have such short memory,” says Escobar. “This reminds me of . . . the coalition provisional authority in Iraq in 2003. This is the same thing.”

“We’re going to have western boots on the ground and we’re going to open up Libya for hardcore, no holds barred, terrible capitalism,” adds Escobar. “This is completely crazy.”

According to Escobar, the next step is to get American hands on Libyan oil, and, in his words, “if this is the way that US and NATO goes, we’re going to have Iraq 2.0.”

And with Americans in control in place of Gaddafi, Escobar next suggests that Syria will be only next in the stepping stone for American domination.

In the meantime, however, most of America will be in the dark as the mainstream media fails to report on the actual events overseas. Escobar says that forces began “killing everyone in sight and hitting everything in sight” over the weekends, but that the journalists with the mainstream media are held up in hotel rooms safe from harm.

According to Escobar, all the mainstream media is doing is perpetuating the “cover story” that they’ve created for Americans to eat up. From there, he says, they’ll eat whatever they’re fed.