Is Qaddafi victorious against the combined forces of France, Britain, and the US (aka NATO)?

According to this report he is. We can’t vouch for its reliability, but from the look of things we think it may be right.

Neither the US nor Russia sees anyone in the Libyan rebel political or military leadership capable of taking over the reins of power in Tripoli. It is therefore assumed that a member of the Qaddafi clan will be chosen as Libya’s interim ruler.

Obama and Medvedev also quietly agreed, those sources say, that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, despite their excessive involvement in the Libyan war, were wasting their time because they had no chance of making Qaddafi leave.

According to the information the Russian president offered Obama, NATO attacks had not disabled a single one of Qaddafi’s five brigades. Obama confirmed this from his own sources.

Qaddafi might not, however, be able to hang on to power:

The same report claims  that Medvedev and Obama “traded” Assad for Qaddafi – ie. they agreed that Bashar Assad, the tyrant of Syria, would stay in power as the Russian leadership wishes him to, and Qaddafi would go as the Obama administration desires.

Word [is] going round that President Barak Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev Friday, May 27, came to a reciprocal understanding on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Deauville about the fate of the Syrian and Libyan rulers.

Obama is reported to have promised Medvedev to let Assad finish off the uprising against him without too much pressure from the US and the West. In return, the Russian president undertook to help the US draw the Libyan war to a close by means of an effort to bring about Muammar Qaddafi’s exit from power – in a word, the two big powers traded Qaddafi for Assad.

What sort of man is it that Obama is protecting, if the report is true?

This story graphically confirms what the world should already know about Bashar Assad:

Hamza al Khateeb, a 13 years old boy … was detained among hundreds of Syrian during the massacre of Siada.

After weeks of absence Hamza was returned to his family as a dead body … with scars testifying to the torture … bruises, burns to the feet, elbows, face and knees and his genitals removed. …  wounds consistent with those seen of victims of electric shock devices and cable whippings. The child’s eyes [were] swollen and black, and both arms showed identical bullet wounds. …

After receiving his body, Khatib’s family was visited by Syrian secret police, who arrested the boy’s father. The boy’s mother said officers ordered her husband to say the boy was killed by armed Salafists, or ultra-conservative Muslims, whom Assad has claimed as being behind the unrest.

She said the secret police had warned her not to speak to the press, threatening, “You know what would happen if we heard you had spoken to the media.”

What is more, Assad is a tool of Iran, and Obama knows it:

Washington Post has quoted unnamed US officials as saying that Iran has been sending trainers and consultants to Syria to help the Syrian regime in its brutal crackdown against the protesters .

The paper also reported that this is in addition to special equipment the Iranians sent to the Syrian authorities to help them in identifying and tracking down the protesters that use Facebook and Twitter.

This means that the Syrian and Iranian regimes, far from being targeted as enemies of the US, are enjoying a form of protection by the Obama administration.