Ugh — the whole thing is patch-written from Wikipedia articles by a non-native English speaker and published by a hungover and careless editor.

No, it's not just you. It's annoying when professional editors working for major media outlets don't know what a comma splice is and seem to lack an understanding of basic English grammar. It's irritating.

K, you've got a typo/tense problem under the first post about Libya (should be had* not have).