was founded in 1995 to set up an islamist state or emirate inside libya, u.s. state department has designated the lifg a terrorist organization with links to al-qaeda, belhaaj fought against the soviets in 19 199 #, he lived and travels to 22 countries, including pakistan, turkey and the sudan, was arrested in malaysia in 22 on 20044 and later imprisoned in libya as part of a rehabilitation program. military analysts say bahaaj underscores a larger problem we don t know who s going to be in charge of the overall government. by all accounts right now, the very fabric of society is falling apart, and this is where we got in trouble in iraq. reporter: for context, the lisg claimed in march it was supporting the revolt against qaddafi and now under the national transitional council. then the lsig rebranded
martha libya can t just be viewed as a one off, we have to look at our broader strategy in the region, and based on what you re telling us on libya internally, would you support a strategy that is more defensive or offensive in the region as far as our american involvement in the formation of a new government? well, as i said then and i ve said since, i think you have to think of a matrix. on one side is our values. surely, we don t want humanitarian catastrophes anywhere, and we did the wrong thing in rwanda by not intervening sometime ago, and some of the policymakers now were part of that mistake. but on the other side of the matrix is our interest, our strategic interest. and if you map these countries which are different from each other on that matrix, libya doesn t come out very high. i mean, because it doesn t threaten our strategic interests. a country like syria does, yemen does because there are people in yemen actively plotting to send and actively sending materials
desperately need help there. wendall goler live at the state department with more on this. reporter: hi, rick. the u.s., europe, in fact, much of the international community have been trying to keep libya from suffering the economic and societal collapse that iraq went through after the fall of saddam hussein. but until the rebels take tripoli and actually control the country, the u.n. can t establish a mission there. in fact, the u.n. is not supposed to free up frozen libyan assets until there s a new government to give the money to. but the head of the rebel movement says his people can t wait that long. big meeting going on in istanbul right now, the 30-nation libya contact group where rebel leaders who include a number of ambassadors who served under moammar gadhafi have been asking countries to free up frozen libyan assets. earlier he met with the italian prime minister who agreed to free up about $500 million in
need now. so there really isn t a back to school selling season. what do i need now? kids feet grow faster than paychecks, so it s all about what does my kid need to get in the door at school? new pair of shoes, new backpack. and, unfortunately, you can see it with stock performance, you can see it just going to the mall. all of our shopping habits have changed, unfortunately. jenna: we ve had quite a few years to change that. it s funny, i was just talking to rick s daughters about their new schools they got for school, the light-up kind. [laughter] very fancy, but their feet were growing, so it was a necessary purchase. kristin, always great to have you on. thank you very much. stay dry. jenna: we ll try. [laughter] rick: and breaking news now out of libya. the head of-in ya s rebel government libya s rebel government is making the diplomatic rounds in europe, and he is pleading for the release of frozen assets to help stabilize the country and restore critical services like sch
stocks and chlorine and mustard gas, and it worries me that this could be some self-generated fireworks show that would be very unfortunate. jenna: let me just check with the control room. the video we were showing was the inside of gadhafi s compound, guys? yes,s the. we were running some video of destruction in the area, and that s inside gadhafi s compound which is an interesting look on a life we don t know a lot about. something else we don t know a lot about is the internal forces inside of libya and whether or not we really do have an extremist islamic element there, whether or not al-qaeda is active there. what can you tell us about that? let me say one more thing about the internal forces. according to news reports this morning in the washington post, the transitional government based in benghazi has detailed plans and actively is sending text messages in to tripoli telling people not to loot buildings. those are the buildings that will be part of the government