NATO, The Ultimate Transformer By Pepe Escobar http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MF21Ak01.html

Forget about the Hollywood Transformer franchise; as facts on the ground go, the ultimate transformer in real life is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO has just admitted it was "probably" responsible for the humanitarian liberation of nine Libyan civilians, plus 18 injured, via an early morning strike against an apartment building in a densely populated Tripoli neighborhood. Liberating Northern Africans in their sleep under tons of debris now adds to NATO's - and the Pentagon's - routine liberation of Pashtun wedding parties.

In the dizzying labyrinth of NATO's Ministry of Truth - which includes schemes such as Partnership for Peace, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Mediterranean Dialogue, to name but a few - one now finds virtually every certified or aspiring member of the Gulf Counter-Revolution Club (also known as GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council), as well as monarchic minions Jordan and Morocco. These paragons of democracy are all involved in liberating the wretched of the world for "humanitarian" reasons. Unctuous Danish opportunist and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is on overdrive across Europe.

Yet the most sinister Rasmussen utterance was that, "we can help the Arab Spring well and truly blossom". That is code for never-ending bombing of Libya, fierce lobbying for a "humanitarian" intervention in Syria, and, why not, weaponized "humanitarian liberation" slouching towards Algeria and even Lebanon. As for Egypt and Tunisia, Rasmussen has already stated NATO wants to re-train their military establishments - an operation modeled on the ongoing retraining in Iraq. The Transformer's tentacles are ubiquitous.