Gadhafi regime crumbling...and fast

ah. so we're getting broadcasts from stupidville about libya?

the place to look at for the moment is tunisia, which folk kinda forgot about out there in media-land, but which is about to have elections:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/oct/21/tunisian-elections-2011-tunisia

 

Obama=chuck Norris
--- merged: Oct 22, 2011 12:49 AM ---

Expanded on Pres. Bush's policies yes. Killed Ghadafi...not so much

As to the next republican administration, can you imagine anyone of any party surendering the powers of the previous administration? It's gonna happen.
--- merged: Oct 22, 2011 12:50 AM ---
oops, that should have b een a video find it at CNN
--- merged: Oct 22, 2011 12:52 AM ---
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/world/meast/iraq-us-troops/index.html?section=cnn_latest
there

 

i was super excited to hear the troops are coming home. i will hold my breath though, are these troops soon going to be deployed elsewhere like syria or iran for the next regime change? are we going to send billions of dollars over there everywhere so blackwater can break shit then build it back up?

of course obama didn't pull the trigger, but he was the sole person in the US facilitating the thing. sending bombs, sending weapons, making the declaration of 'gadaffi must go.' i find it odd that's it's somehow more pc that we didn't put troops on the ground.

its ok for the president to do whatever he wants as long as its viewed favorably by the world government? i dont like the sound of that. congress is supposed to commit the military, not the president. and it's not ok when every other president did it either.

 

Nice to hear that you are excited that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is coming to an end. I think we probably all share your excitement. It is unfortunate that you had to qualify it with a baseless insinuation about invading Syria or Iran with ground troops.

IMO, it is also baseless to characterize the limited use of US force with no combat troops on the ground as opposed to an occupation and invasion as PC. Rather than what it was...a strategic and measured application of US foreign policy...to act as part of broad coalition within the framework of the War Powers Act and with a UN mandate and a specific limited mission, in which the US took a background role with NATO allies taking the lead.

This is the act of a dictator as you so ignorantly ideologically suggested?

 

Given that Libya is so far the only place in the Middle East which the US handled well, samcol's opinion seems to be off. It's hardly a decision requiring congress approval to declare support to the rebels and denounce the Gaddafi dictatorship. I would imagine it doesn't take congress approval to fire rockets into another country, either. Especially as part of a UN mandate and with backing from the Arab League.

Unlike Egypt, where Obama waited until the last second to declare support for the protesters and hence destroyed all chance of being well-received in the future, US policy on Libya didn't leave much to complain about. Now it only matters to see how many atrocities the CIA helped Gaddafi commit, and how many of those the NTC will uncover in secret documents scattered all over the country.

 

Well, Obama is a Christian....and they kill Christians in Egypt now, so I'd say Obama is no worse off.

 

Right.

Because the Tahrir Square protesters were all-Muslim and none of the millions of Coptic christians in Egypt took part in the nation-wide movement.

I fail to see the correlation between the protests and current ethnic tensions (which are not based on the political situation) between two groups of people.

 

why shouldn't it be qualified? they aren't out yet and obama hasn't given me much reason to believe what he says thus far. i will be happy to give credit when it's due. actually his speech about iraq was like that breath of fresh air during his campaign against mccain. a lot of the things he said i felt would of helped the country, but he hasn't come through on most of them. so we wait...

there sure is a lot of saber rattling by the obama administration regarding iran with rhetoric, sanctions, and he also said no options are off the table. the situation has the same buzz around it as iraq 2, evil dictator, wmds etc.

even obama said libya didn't fall under the war powers act. so what does it fall under?

i really dont think we should be following what the un or nato says. if they declare something are you ok with a president ignoring or bypassing us laws in some way to execute the un's policy? i understand you feel libya is a war powers act (i feel differently), but what if it didn't fall under that. would the action in libya by the us still be ok in your book?

 

Previous regime was interested in maintaining working relationships with western countries, new Islamic militant regime is interested in killing Christians and other non-muslims.

 

Your interpretation of the nuances of foreign policy is guided by your extreme ideological perspective and not by any real indicators that Obama would consider invading Iran or Syria, any more than he considered invading Libya.

It is correct that Obama said the Libyan action did not fall under the War Powers Act, but he did provide Congress with a detailed report of the actions (in compliance with the requirements of the Act) explaining why it was not in violation of the Act.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/16/us/politics/20110616_POWERS_DOC.html?ref=politics

This was not an act of war nor the act of a dictator.

Characterizing a US president as a dictator because one disagrees with his foreign policy actions certainly does not make for a meaningful discussion, but simply paints one as an extreme ideologue.

And yes, I would support a similar limited action as part of a broad coalition and with a UN mandate to protect citizens of a country from the threat of massacre by a brutal dictator regardless of who occupies the White House.

 

dropping bombs is not war.....? we drop bombs and target another nations leader for resigning or killing and it's not war? i just cannot take your argument seriously.

i'm pretty sure if any country dropped a single bomb on the united states and targeted it's leader for resignation/assasination it would be considered war.

you sound similar to a white house spokesman or speech writer. stretching laws too their absolute max and using words games to talk your way out of the stuff that your boss did.

 

Your analogy of a country dropping a bomb on the US is just nonsense (very ace like)....until a US president threatens to massacre civilians engaging in a popular uprising. Is that really the best you can do?

BTW, stretching laws to the absolute max, if that is what you are suggesting is the case, is not breaking those laws. You are undercutting your own argument. Beyond that, the manner in which laws are interpreted are not defined by Ron Paul's narrow rigid ideological perspective, whether you like it or not. I might disagree with a president's interpretation of a law, I wont call him a dictator.

 

Are you being serious here, or just trolling?

The distorted sense of reality of today's Egypt you display here is baffling.

What Islamic militant regime? Remnants of the old regime are still largely holding onto power.

The only sizable group you could possibly brand a successor to the previous regime would be the Muslim Brotherhood. With the amount of effort they've put in over the past 9 months to re-invent their image and to display themselves as staunchly moderate Muslims, it makes not the slightest bit of sense for them to engage in ethnic tensions such as the ones occurring now, especially not before the first real elections are to be held.

What do you think, they'll launch a Holocaust-esque hunt for Christians in Egypt?

Ethnic tensions between Muslims and Copts have existed for decades, and have nothing to do with the political situation.

 

i feel like it was breaking the law, your position would have to be stretching to the max i would assume.

sometimes i think if the government had an act that said the sky was red you would follow that. people saying 'hey but the sky is blue' and you'd pull the quote from the bill and say nope its red we have the documentation. likewise, i dont need an act to tell me that killing people with bombs and engaging in regime change is war.

i just can't engage in that level of double think.

 

I dont think it was the stretching the law, but a reasonable exercise of presidential power and a limited action short of a declaration of war and an invasion/occupation that I said I would support again regardless of who (or what party) was in the White House.

But I am not a rigid ideologue....or a Ron Paul type isolationist who will simply give brutal dictators around the world a free hand to massacre their citizens with no concern about any US response, even as limited as was the case in Libya. I prefer a more nuanced foreign policy that is dictated by circumstances and morality rather than ideology.

 

you realize that the burning of the coptic church in aswan never happened that set off last weekend's police riot, right? the massacre in maspero was largely staged, it seems, by scaf...it's amazing that out there in the depths of the ultra right, in a zone where seemingly light nor fact penetrates, the numbing idiocy of the huntington thesis continues to be functional and organize racist dispositions with all the plausible deniability required for right-wing racism to speak itself rather than simply run just beneath the surface.

a lot of my judgment about the libya operation is at the moment clouded by the revulsion at the murder of gadhaffi and his being displayed in the meat section of a misrata supermarket. no human being deserves that, not even an despot of gadhaffi's proportions. of course, he didn't accord the victims of his various campaigns to solidify support by murdering real and imagined enemies treatment worthy of the basic dignity a human being should be accorded, but fucking hell it has to stop somewhere and i don't think it was too much to hope for from a movement that was all about liberation to not have a cold-blooded execution as the very first thing it did once it finally achieved its end. hopefully that stops with this.

i'm also not concerned with the right's attempts at infotainment control with the end of preventing the obama administration from being able to say anything about its involvement with a positive outcome, in terms of stated objectives, of conservatives' favorite type of blood sport, particularly given that they are themselves not so great at either articulating objectives, fashioning coherent strategies, carrying them out or even invading countries for legitimate reasons.

finally, i hope that the end of the iraq debacle, brought to you by the neo-con wing of the republican party, will finally come to a conclusion as stated. it's about fucking time. it never should have happened in the first place. no wonder the right has to try to frame infotainment. a lot to answer for. better to disable rational discussion than risk that.

 

I watched that video of the rebels hauling Ghadafi in the back of the pickup truck. Can wait for that crew to be in charge.

 

Sorta like the way US troops treated prisoners at Abu Ghriab? Did you make sweeping judgements about the Bush administration or the US led Coalition Provisional Authority based on the acts of a handful of US military forces?

I dont condone the ultimately handling of Ghadafi but I can see how an untrained, undisciplined and relatively unstructured rebel army could act in a less than professional military manner, particularly having lived under the guy's brutal regime their entire lives.