This weekend, a coalition led by Libyan former interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril soundly defeated Islamist opponents in the country’s first election since Muammar Qaddafi’s ouster. While a full transition to democracy is by no means assured, the elections and their outcome suggest Libya is on a better path than one might expect. The results also demonstrate that fears the country was being taken over by al Qaeda sympathizers and ultra-conservative Islamists were massively overblown — fears, of course, that were being pushed to the fore by the American Right:

• Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): “We don’t know who the next leaders [in Libya] will be…it could be a radical element. It could be the Muslim Brotherhood. It could be elements affiliated with al Qaeda. …[U.S. intervention in Libya] is a very bad decision and it’s created more instability in the region, not less.” [Fox News, 8/23/11]
• Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX): “Our president used our treasure, put our military members at risk … now we’ve got the al Qaeda flag flying in Libya in Benghazi, over the historic courthouse that was the headquarters during the assault on Gadhafi.” [The Hill, 11/04/11]
• Sean Hannity: “I am fearful that these rebels that we’re helping in Libya with these al Qaeda connections, we are ignoring what our own State Department says about them and we can potentially be making a big mistake.” [Fox News, 3/30/11]
• Andy McCarthy: “NATO’s war of aggression is already inuring to the benefit of America’s Islamist enemies.” [National Review, 8/27/11]
• Fox News op-ed: “[T]he emir of a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization is edging closer to securing a leadership role in Libya’s new government. … [T]he post-Qaddafi era might very well retain certain features of the legacy left by a dictator whom Ronald Reagan once famously called the “mad dog of the Middle East.” [Fox News.com 7/07/11]
• Herman Cain: “Do I agree with saying that Gaddafi should go? Do I agree that they now have a country where you’ve got Taliban and Al Qaeda that’s now going to be part of the government?” [11/18/11]

Of course, hand-wringing about overblown threats of a radical Islamist takeover of Libya took place with full knowledge of the massacre that likely would have occurred in Libya had the U.S. and NATO not intervened. What’s more, the speculation flies in the face of what actual experts had been saying all throughout the Libyan crisis. And a recent study by two al-Qaeda experts for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point concluded that “armed jihadists — especially those sharing al-Qa’ida’s extreme ideology — do not appear to be in a position to contest the fragile Libyan state.”

Military contractors are eager to play up, and at times dramatically inflate, the economic costs of Pentagon budget cuts. Interestingly, while Lockheed Martin has threatened to cut 123,000 jobs if sequestration occurs, Lockheed, and its fellow contractors, are sparing no expense to lobby politicians in Washington, D.C.

DefenseNews reports that the top five U.S. military contractors boosted their lobbying expenses by 11.5 percent — a combined total of $15.9 million — in the first quarter of 2012 when compared to the same quarter in 2011. The increase in lobbying spending was led by Northrop Gurmman, increasing its spending by 51 percent, and Lockheed Martin, which increased its lobbying investment by 25 percent.

For companies that have warned about the economic costs of sequestration, the investment in high-priced Washington lobbyists is an interesting cost-benefit decision. But contractors, such as Lockheed Martin whose first-quarter lobbying spending had declined in past two years before the dramatic increase in 2012, are quick to justify their lobbying as a business necessity. Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Jennifer Allen told DefenseNews:

We’ve never seen a more problematic economic and global security environment in the U.S. and in so many economies around the world. That means the political leaders around the globe, and especially here at home, are going to have to make some very tough decisions. In this environment, there are many voices being raised, particularly in an election year, and we believe it is critical to have our voice heard on issues that are important to our future.

Aerospace contractors have been working overtime to have their “voice heard.” The industry hypes misleading statistics showing the oversized effects of cuts in military spending on economic growth and, in the case of Lockheed Martin, threatens the jobs of its own workers to fight looming sequestration.

While U.S. based military contractors claim to care about U.S. workers and supporting local economies — although a recent study shows that public sector investment in education, health care and clean energy produce 50 percent more jobs per dollar spent — aerospace and defense companies are already looking abroad to sell their products. Military contractors have racked up $500 billion in “incentive deals” — contracts which often take form of investments by the contractor in the buying country’s defense industry — to secure weapons sales with foreign countries through 2016. Reuters notes that such deals with foreign governments are done with little oversight and are “seen as a particularly fertile area” for corruption.

Yesterday, Mitt Romney held three fundraisers in the Hamptons, the exclusive beach towns known as a playground to super-rich New York City financiers. According to the Los Angeles Times, one event was co-hosted by Daniel Loeb, a hedge-funder who turned against President Obama and bankrolled a neoconservative pressure group that called last month for the U.S. to attack Iran. The Los Angeles Times reported:

At Romney’s luncheon with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor at the Creeks, supporters were asked to contribute or raise $25,000 per person for a VIP photo reception. Among the co-hosts were lobbyist Wayne Berman, a former bundler for George W. Bush, as well as financiers Lew Eisenberg and Daniel Loeb.

Loeb supported Obama’s first run for president, raising $200,000 for him in 2008. But, comparing Obama to an abusive spouse to the hedge-fund industry — “[Obama] really loves us and when he beats us, he doesn’t mean it,” he told friends in an e-mail — he turned away from Obama and began supporting partisan, right-wing causes.

Among the beneficiaries of Loeb’s shifting political allegiances was a right-wing pressure group called the Emergency Committee For Israel (ECI). According to FEC filings, Loeb remains the largest single overall donor to ECI’s PAC.

Led by neoconservative don Bill Kristol, ECI is best known for publishing patently dishonest attacks on Obama, smear campaigns against its ideological opponents, and attempting to paint the Occupy Wall Street Protests as anti-Semitic (trying to discredit Occupy seems a natural move for a hedge-funder).

Last month, ECI launched a television ad calling on Obama to bomb Iran. Watch it here:

Kristol quickly followed-up on ECI’s pro-war ad with a long article in the Weekly Standard calling for Congress to authorize war with Iran — only the latest in a long line of such calls from Kristol.

Romney’s Iran policy is more difficult to nail down. The presumptive GOP nominee regularly employs militaristic rhetoric toward the Islamic Republic, and many of his top foreign policy advisers often call for war with Iran. But when asked how Romney’s Iran policy would be a change from Obama’s, his campaign has a hard time trying to differentiate.

One wonders, though, how quickly the divide will be bridged now that Romney and Kristol are feeding from the same trough.

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) blasted the White House for what he characterized as a “total lack of leadership” in Syria. But while McCain has been a consistent voice attacking the administration’s handling of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, his criticisms fail to acknowledge the efforts made by the Obama administration to assist the Syrian rebels or offer any meaningful policy suggestions. McCain said:

MCCAIN: The United States behavior so far has been shameful and disgraceful. [...] The President of the United States should be speaking out for the people of Syria. Second of all we should get arms to them so we can balance the forces. [...] We need to establish a sanctuary so that [the rebels] can organize, they can resist, and they can prevail.

Watch the clip:

Noticeably, McCain offers no details about how his laundry-list of increasingly provocational acts should be implemented. And when McCain says the Obama administration needs to be “working with countries in the region,” he ignores that fact that that’s exactly what it is doing.

The concrete steps taken by the Obama administration, working with allies, to hasten Assad’s departure include: logistics and communications assistance to the rebels; consulting on arms sales; gathering intelligence on the numerous rebel groups; and providing technological aid and training.

While McCain is dismissive of the Obama administration for its efforts to build an international coalition against Bashar al-Assad, recent news indicates that progress on the ground might be forthcoming. This weekend, the New York Times confirmed that Syrian Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass — a Sunni confidant of Bashar al-Assad, defected and “at least one deputy minister and 15 generals, all of them Sunnis, have defected to Turkey.”

This morning, U.N. and Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan told reporters he had held constructive talks with Assad and “agreed to an approach” to end the violence and the Russian government announced it will not deliver Yak-130 fighter planes to Syria while the situation there remains “unresolved.”