"No, I don't regret giving the president authority" (to start a war)

[DisgustipatedinCA]

"Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since," she said. "No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." -H Clinton
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/

No snark from me in this OP--the subject matter is too serious and too depressing. But this is why I don't want Hillary Clinton to be the President. I have other reasons not to support her, and I actively support Bernie Sanders on his own terms, but her vote to authorize George W Bush to do what he did cannot be erased by apologizing years later. George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith are primarily responsible for this psychopathic destruction of humanity. But they could not have done this without lots of assistance from soulless, dead-eyed Republicans in Congress and in the media, and more than a few wasters of life and limb in the Democratic Party. This includes John Kerry, Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, Joe Lieberman, and Mary Landrieu. But the list also includes Senator Hillary Clinton. And now she wants to be the President. She wants to be my President. I vehemently don't want her to be my President, and this is the primary reason.

I will not post these pictures in-line in the thread, but will instead post links so that those who want to can see what this vote caused to happen to hundreds of thousands of innocents. We used to post photos like this openly on DU. Should you choose to look, recall the strongest trigger warning you've ever seen, and double it. Also know that I chose the least horrific photos from the search results I got, because some of the photos are the most obscene, OBSCENE things I've ever viewed. The . before the file extension has been replaced with (dot). You know what to do if you need to see this.

http://www.sott.net/image/s9/191154/large/iraq_warVistims_children(dot)jpg

http://www.independent.co.uk/migration_catalog/article5137009.ece/alternates/w620/Pg-04-iraq-getty(dot)jpeg

http://www.chris-floyd.com/march/13(dot)jpg

[delrem]

1. What she did after, as SOS, was (arguably) worse.

What she did to Libya and the process she started on Syria has led directly to the monstrous emergency situation in the ME today.

It hasn't been sane, rational policy driven by enlightened self-interest.

"Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest."

[truedelphi]

2. Can you explain what you think she did to Libya?

I didn't follow that part of her policies and activities, and would love to know more.

[delrem]

3. I suggest that you keep track of history. nt

[Hortensis]

42. As a history buff, you might check how many diplomatic personnel died under Bush.

And under what circumstances.

As for the real issue, if I knew Bush's pretexts for invasion were phony, HRC certainly did. She apparently had other reasons why she supported the invasion. 250,000 or so Iraqis and a nation left in chaos later, no excuses for her.

[dae]

58. You are absolutely correct. If thousands of everyday people

knew Bush/Cheney were peddling lies HRC knew it as well.

[msongs]

5. she did what president obama, her boss, wanted her to do nt

[delrem]

12. She was a robot, you say.

Then why did she hire Dick Cheney's principal deputy foreign policy adviser, Victoria Nuland, to help her in her decisions? Was that also an Obama decision?
Why is Robert Kagan so hyped on Hillary Clinton? Is that because of Obama?

Why is Obama's second term a success, relative to his first? With rapprochements - if only Hillary hadn't been there for the first term, that could have started then. Rather than the hellscape that Hillary unleashed on the ME, in particular. But also in Honduras.

But you lay it all on Obama. Cool.

[truedelphi]

18. Who are you?

Msongs has been on this forum quite a bit longer than you.

She was on DU before it was a place wherein even people who basically agree with each other still act snide, arrogant and rather nasty.

Both msongs and I have been supporting your thesis yet you manage to try to cut us a new one.

Cool!

[delrem]

31. You didn't support any thesis. nt

[uponit7771]

36. An employee without a good enough reason to quit

[FlatBaroque]

40. I don't think so

I think she always resented Obama and ran the State department like her own faction of government and as a fundraising center for the Clinton Foundatioin. It gives me greater appreciation of what Obama had to put up with besides Repiglicans.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. President Hillary? More wars, more death, more excuses and apologies. No sale. K&R

[tecelote]

10. Agreed.

Owned by her donors and a hawk.

No more war is #1 with me. It's simply immoral but being driven by profits makes it worse. We are the evil empire.

Time to stop the war machine.

[hifiguy]

61. Never. She's a wholly-owned subsidiary of

the banksters and the MIC and will do their bidding without a second thought.

[liberal_at_heart]

6. remember how anti-war DU was when Bush was in office? All of a sudden when

Democrats take office, now we need to look out for national threats. How can war be okay when a Democrat is in office, and not okay when a Republican is in office? The killing of innocent people should not be considered bad one day and good the next.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

7. Yes, I do. Being against war is far more important than party association will ever be.

It felt absurd to even type the subject line above because it's so screamingly obvious, but here we are. And you're right, the killing of innocents will always be wrong, whether it's done by Republicans or by Democrats.

[FlatBaroque]

41. Therein lies the primary flaw of party affiliation nt

[Kelvin Mace]

52. Weirdly,

we used to be anti-surveillance, anti-drone, anti-death penalty, anti-Wall Street and anti-lobbyist. And yet, once Dems started doing it, things changed so fast I got whiplash.

[KoKo]

64. ....!

[jfern]

8. Of course she didn't regret it

Because exactly 8 years ago, she voted to give the President authority to go to war with Iran with the Kyl-Lieberman vote.

Sanders and Biden voted no.

[Stevepol]

15. The decisive moment for me.

The moment when it was clear to me that the Bush gang was a group of pathological liars and psychopaths happened in the fall of 2002. I was a little like Hillary I guess, not totally clear about the facts on the ground, so at the time I could understand her position a little better. The moment of realization was probably different for each DU-er or citizen, at least the ones who reached this realization, but for me this was the moment. Tony Blair was with Bush at Camp David and Bush was asked something about the potential war with Iraq. He said something like this, "The IAEA in its latest report said that Iraq could have the bomb in a year, and we can't let that happen." That's a paraphrase but it represents what Bush said. I can remember thinking at the time, well, there's a good point here. Saddam is clearly a bad actor, capable of great evil. If he could have a bomb within a year, then maybe going in at least makes some sense.

Of course, it turned out that what Bush said was a total fabrication with not the slightest connection to truth. Some reporter, I believe one from the Washington Times (which in itself says a lot about our M$M), actually called the IAEA to find out about this report. They told him that not only was there no such statement in any report of theirs, but the latest actual report on Iraq's nuclear capability had concluded that Iraq couldn't even BEGIN working on the bomb for at least 5 years and that would take a commitment in money and effort that was highly unlikely to take place. When I heard that, I realized Bush was a sociopath and a great danger to the whole world. I was never tempted to believe anything Bush or any of his fellow psychopaths had to say after that.

I do think that Hillary, who was privy to a lot more than I was, should have concluded well before I did with my limited access to the "facts" that a war with Iraq was both immoral and a terrible mistake that could have horrific consequences. It turned out to be one of the greatest tragedies in the history of this country and of the world, a monstrous decision that seems to be having increasingly negative effects on the ME and on the US, western civilization, and the world.

[Martin Eden]

20. Very good post

In addition to what you noted, the Bush administration was full of PNAC signatories. It was obvious that once given authority, Bush would invade Iraq regardless of the UN. They had utter contempt for the UN, appointing John Bolton as US rep. On top of that, the lies in their campaign to sell the war were increasingly evident. Here are DU we knew all this and if Hillary didn't, she is unqualified for office.

No. She's not that dumb. She knew full well what the White House Iraq Group was all about, and she was on board with their agenda.

After this war of choice founded on lies turned into a costly fiasco Hillary had to admit her vote was a mistake; WTF else could she do?

No Democrat who voted for the IWR in Oct 2002 will ever get my vote in a primary election.

[KingCharlemagne]

38. Bravo! Should be its own OP, imo. - nt

[Kelvin Mace]

54. There are only three possible answers as to why HRC voted the way she did:

1) She actually believed Bush, meaning she is either dangerously naive or dangerously stupid.

2) She didn't believe Bush, but agreed with his methods, meaning she was as evil a warmonger as Bush.

3) She didn't believe him, but voted that way to advance her career, meaning she is more evil than Bush.

None of these explanations qualify her for the White House.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. ...

[Skittles]

11. unforgivable as far as I am concerned

and that goes for EVERYONE who voted for IWR

F*** THEM ALL

[neverforget]

13. THE biggest reason that I don't support her. Iraq, Libya and Syria

show me that she's way to much of a hawk.

[Major Hogwash]

14. There's still time for her to learn to regret it.

But, don't hold your breath waiting for her to make that announcement!

Voting for the worst foreign policy decision made in at least the previous 40 years disqualifies her from becoming the Presidential candidate for the Democrat party.

[Catherina]

21. That and her debacle in Syria, that she tried to blame Obama for

Hillary Clinton blames rise of ISIS on Obama “failure” to intervene in Syria civil war even thought it was clear to anyone following closely that Obama tried to stay out of it and work with Russia.

Last week, the White House firmly pointed the finger at her hawkishness for the Syria horror and I'm glad they did. Notice who her buddy was in it, Petraeus of the missing emails the Hillary Camp keeps insisting aren't important.

I remember how stony Obama's face was after he won the Primaries and was whisked away in a car for an unscheduled meeting with Clinton. I don't think he ever wanted her on his team and I'm sorry for him that she was forced on him because I don't think we'd be entangled in Syria, Yemen and other mideast countries to the extent we are now.

Worst foreign policy decision ever and she wants the American people to trust her judgement at 3AM? Not even remotely possible.

Finger-Pointing, but Few Answers, After a Syria Solution Fails
By PETER BAKERSEPT. 17, 2015

WASHINGTON — By any measure, President Obama’s effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure. The military acknowledged this week that just four or five American-trained fighters are actually fighting.

But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place — a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At briefings this week after the disclosure of the paltry results, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, repeatedly noted that Mr. Obama always had been a skeptic of training Syrian rebels. The military was correct in concluding that “this was a more difficult endeavor than we assumed and that we need to make some changes to that program,” Mr. Earnest said. “But I think it’s also time for our critics to ‘fess up in this regard as well. They were wrong.”

...

The idea of bolstering Syrian rebels was debated from the early days of the civil war, which started in 2011. Mrs. Clinton, along with David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director, and Leon E. Panetta, then the defense secretary, supported arming opposition forces, but the president worried about deep entanglement in someone else’s war after the bloody experience in Iraq.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/world/finger-pointing-but-few-answers-after-a-syria-solution-fails.html?_r=1

[Fawke Em]

24. Threw him right under the bus.

But her supporters keep alleging that Sanders is the one dissing PBO for merely saying he could have gone further with his agenda had he rallied the American people.

[Catherina]

30. The great thing is that Obama's throwing her under the bus

He's been studiously avoiding any contact with her, turning down invitations to Clinton F events and hasn't lifted a finger to help her emailgate go away. After all the shit she did to him, after being foisted on him as SOS and making him out to be a war hawk, I say good for you Barack.

Her most fervent and loud supporters aren't exactly known for objective analysis. It's not like they have any interest in helping Sanders, just hurting him.

[delrem]

37. I think you're spot on with this entire analysis, Catherina.

There's no question in my mind that Obama's 2nd term, free from Hillary Clinton, has been much more positive, with rapprochements with Cuba and now Iran that would have been unimaginable with Hillary Clinton still serving as SOS, and a laughably impossible "alternate universe" had Hillary Clinton won against Pres. Obama in the primary.

I'm totally happy to take these wins.

The Clintons, the Bushes, they front a military/corporate machine that's been totally entrenched for decades now, and they come with *people* and those people have been training all their lives. Hillary Clinton just naturally brought on board Victoria Nuland, for example - and nothing much was thought or said or written about it at the time, it was so natural and unobjectionable. Obama's entire third-way cabinet was Clintonesque. He didn't have the *people*. It seems that the entire Democratic party caved to the third-way apparatchiks, and there wasn't a deep progressive caucus with deep alignments to draw from, he had no *people* in high places to have his back for any real change.

My first massive shudder of despair was at the time of inauguration, or even before that but after the election won it for Obama and Bush was clearing house and there was this photo-op of the new Dem admin along with select other Dems standing beside and behind Bush, smiling proudly away, while Bush signed this massive and unparalleled corporate give-away, to "solve" a phony crisis. I was shocked and I already knew it was over.

[Major Hogwash]

35. From what I read last year, that was simply a political maneuver to portray Hill as being . .

. . to the left of President Obama on the political spectrum.
It was a calculated political attempt that would differentiate her from President Obama.
Nevertheless, you are correct, arming the Syrian rebels was her first response to that mess, not Obama's.

Obama is undoubtedly a genius, and I think that a lot of his political friends and allies underestimated his intellect.
They underestimated his lightning-like ability to grasp the very core of a situation upon first learning of it.
I think that is primarily because Obama's formative years were spent in Indonesia.
He was exposed to so much as a kid that was different that he never became set in one ideological pattern until he was a young adult.
And even then, his thinking wasn't set in concrete as he was open to new ideas and adopting new attitudes toward issues.
I think he must have spent a lot of time alone as a child, thinking and learning from others since his mother was absent much of the time during his youth.
I also think that his grandparents were a great influence on him and helped him come to fruition.

So, as a result, in many respects, I think Obama is completely different than any President we have ever had before.
FDR seems to be the only previous President that comes close to comparing Obama to.
And that is really stretching the old adage of comparing apples to oranges to even attempt to make that type of comparison.
But, that's because Obama is such a different type of President, he has designed for himself a completely different scale to be used for comparisons.

There was another article posted here at DU that I read the other day that was printed in the New Yorker written back in 2012 about the uneasy relationship between President Obama and Bill Clinton.
And coupled with an article that was written about the takeover of the Democratic party by the Clintons that was posted here a few days ago, it has become increasingly obvious to me that Syria is about the only issue that Obama has had to deal with as President, and hasn't succeeded in solving it yet.
However, I think this is just another sign of Obama's brilliant intellect.

He went ahead with their plan to arm and train the Syrian rebels, knowing that it wouldn't work, but appeasing those that thought it would.
Demonstrating to those people -- like Hillary, Petraeus, and Panetta -- once again, that the old-style, so-called 'tried and true' method of creating armies in foreign countries made up of foreign soldiers does not work.
It was the easiest fix to attempt, but was never going to work.
And I think Obama knew that and by implementing it, it would give him some more time to work out something that is actually going to work towards solving that crisis.

I don't know how many banana republics we tried to create in Latin America over the last 110 years, but Central America eventually threw off of all of the puppet governments that we had set up in their countries.
Much the same way the Middle Eastern inhabitants eventually threw off all of the puppet governments we set up in the Middle East, including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and even Syria.
In the final analysis, starting all those proxy wars did nothing to further our cause or make us a better country.

So, I would be happy to follow Obama's administration with one led by Bernie Sanders because I think a Sanders administration would be even more liberal, more progressive, thus moving this country forward to a brighter, better future to come more in line with other countries like Sweden, Switzerland, and others in Europe.

[Catherina]

51. I'm sorry, I just saw this a few minutes ago

I agree with your last paragraph. If we want to keep moving forward, it has to be followed by a Bernie administration. I just caught a clip of Hillary blaming Obama for the Syria mess yesterday and couldn't believe the nerve. Thanks for your post!

[Major Hogwash]

69. I saw that clip of Hillary the other day, too.

It really doesn't matter what she says anymore because it won't be too awful long before she will take the other position on the same issue, if she deems it necessary for her to cover all her bases.
The fact is, she has been wrong so many times, and during those times that she was wrong and it resulted in someone being killed, she dismisses her decision with an 'aw, shucks, I guess I messed up' attitude.
It isn't convincing or heartening to watch her act in that kind of manner about someone else's unnecessary death.

Blaming President Obama for ISIS is the same tactic that the Republican presidential candidate will take before this election is over.

[Scuba]

16. One of several disqualifiers in Hillary's portfolio.

[hifiguy]

62. It's a LONG list.

[Dems to Win]

17. "I vehemently don't want her to be my President" Me, too.

I don't want Biden, either, for the same reason.

Funny how the Democratic establishment keeps handing up presidential candidates with this fatal flaw. Do they not understand how repellent this is to the anti war activists in the party base?

It makes it very hard for the Democrats to drag enough grumpy, disgruntled people to the polls to try to eke out a win. We didn't win with John Kerry, I don't think we'll win if Hillary is the nominee.

[nichomachus]

19. Saddam Hussein had been a real problem?

Really? He wasn't a nice guy, but the US has never had a problem cozying up to people who weren't nice guys. Also, what the US has done in Iraq since 2003 -- torture, rape, imprisonment, destruction, terror, has been far worse than what Saddam did.

On the other hand, Saddam led a state where women could walk around unveiled and be educated, where Christians were safe. He kept Al Qaeda and Iran at bay. He kept the religious factions in their places.

Hillary is an out-and-out liar.

[RufusTFirefly]

22. But, but Saddam was the next Hitler!

The world is full of tinpot dictators, many of which are our allies, that is until they double-cross our corporations or make the mistake of trying to nationalize industries that were once cash cows for American business.

For example, to the best of my knowledge, the United States has never called for "regime change" in Uzbekistan, where the ultra authoritarian President Islam Karimov has allegedly had his political opponents boiled alive in oil. On the contrary, since the Global War on Terror^®, he's been a valued ally.

[nichomachus]

25. I thought Putin was the next Hitler -- or was that Qaddafi?

It's so hard to keep track of Hillary's Hitler List.

[RufusTFirefly]

26. So many Hitlers. So little time! n/t

[cheapdate]

29. Sadaam Hussein was a supreme asshole.

Yes, Iraq was outwardly calm, with an educated middle class and functioning civil institutions.

But make no mistake about it, Sadaam Hussein was a cruel, deadly, and dangerous criminal. He murdered his way into power and consolidated his power with continuing murder. He started an aggressive was with neighboring Iran that cost the lives of untold thousands of people. His oppression of the Shiite in his country was extraordinarily brutal and deadly.

I was opposed to the war in Iraq from the very beginning. I never believed it was justified. Nor am I a fan of Hillary Clinton. But her statement "Sadaam had been a real problem" was not a "lie" and her saying that doesn't make her an "out-and-out liar".

I don't casually accuse people of lying.

[Vattel]

32. Hussein was a total scumbag, but he posed no grave and imminent threat to the US

[cheapdate]

33. No he did not. The war was a war of aggression

that contradicted what was, up to then, the general understanding of "just war".

[hifiguy]

63. He was a scumbag totally confined within his own borders.

The way his army was rolled up shows he was a threat to absolutely no one outside of Iraq.

And he'd been buddy-buddy with Rummy and GHWB when he was warring with Iran.

Anyone with a lick of sense could see that Chimpy's "justifications" for war were completely transparent bullshit. So what was HRH's excuse?

[dionysus]

68. he was a very real problem to iraqis who disagreed with him.. but as you said, not a threat to us

and a bulwark against iran. never should have gone in there...

I wouldn't go so far as to say we were worse than saddam, probably more like on par with the type of shit he did to the dissidents who didn't toe the line.

but if you played by the rules... much safer than what we turned it into.

he WAS a murderous piece of shit, just not a threat to us or his region...

[restorefreedom]

23. once a hawk, always a hawk. nt

[cheapdate]

27. To be clear, she hasn't apologized.

[jkbRN]

28. Bernie got the same information

And saw through the b/s and voted no.

I do not want someone in charge of foreign policy that wasn't able to decipher that Bush and Cheney were full of crap.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

34. I remember watching her Senate speech --

before the vote. I listened as she spouted a bunch of triangulating bullshit. I wanted to put my foot through my TV.

As the years have gone on and the body count has mounted, my disgust for her cowardly vote has only increased. There are somethings that are unforgivable in my book. She committed one of them.

I voted for Kerry despite his equally cowardly vote out of sheer desperation. That's the last time any how supported that obscenity every gets my support.

[delrem]

39. The 21st century began with the USA introducing the world to a new US social program:

"preemptive war".

This is the idea - made into a reality - that a US leader, using the MSM, can simply make up shit about what any country in the world might do, what "threat" they might pose, and use that as excuse to invade and destroy that country. To destroy the physical-economic and social infrastructure of the people. And at the same time, to tell the whole world that it would be OK because, even before the preemptive war destroyed everything, no-bid contracts were being let to select companies, to make massive profits on a "rebuilding" that would make everything better, free and democratic. More than that, the USA told the world that this "rebuilding", these massive war profits, would be "paid for" by the USA acquiring rights to the natural resources belonging to the victims of these predations.

This program hasn't been challenged yet.

Just think about it. About how outrageously amoral the entire course of the "war on terror" in the ME has been.

Think about how the USA portrays itself as "the only world superpower" and as "the police force for the world", this last being justified because the USA claims to represent a perfect or near perfect set of "Western Values". The people in the countries that the USA destroys are described as being medieval and barbaric in all ways. When the US war profiteering doesn't produce anything of good, but only more war, it is blamed on the victims who aren't "evolved" enough to understand or accept the US's "gift of freedom", no word or thought whatever being given to the effect on the people of a country when their physical-economic-social infrastructures is totally, deliberately and with the utmost malice, destroyed.

It's so outrageous.

It isn't just "War is hell". It's also "The warmongers, the war profiteers, are Satan".

[DanTex]

43. That was a mistake, she's admitted it. Hillary is not going to go around starting random wars like

Bush did, and everyone knows this.

[polly7]

44. She sure pushed hard for the ruin of Libya, didn't she?

A 'mistake' is putting a dime in the parking meter instead of a quarter, not voting for something that anyone with functioning grey matter knows is going to kill, maim, mutilate, make homeless, destroy infrastructure and on and on and on for millions of people.

People who were already struggling over crippling, deadly sanctions and who did not have any way to fight back.

What a load of bull.

[DanTex]

45. You're joking, right? Libya was in the midst of a civil war already when the European led

bombing campaign took place, and Gadafi was about to kill huge numbers of innocent people. There is no comparison whatsoever to invading a random nation with a massive ground force, and trumping up false evidence to justify it.

People who think that Syria and Libya would have turned out just great if only Obama did something a little different need a serious reality check.

[polly7]

46. Nah. I'm not joking at all.

Educate yourself a bit. It was an 'humanitarian intervention' based on complete and well-known lies, just like any other coup.

Again, do some research.

[DanTex]

47. You're the one who needs education on the events in Libya.

[polly7]

48. No. I did a lot of it while the deadly farce was going on.

As did many others here.

Were you sleeping?

[DanTex]

50. Maybe in some fantasy world. You weren't even aware that Libya was at war before the bombing

campaign. I have no idea how you can be so ill-informed.

[polly7]

53. What???

Last edited Tue Nov 3, 2015, 01:50 PM - Edit history (3)

You make no sense at all.

Here - for starters.

Exposed: The "Humanitarian" War In Libya

Check this out - 'The Humanitarian War' = http://www.laguerrehumanitaire.fr/english It's horrifying.

A bunch of LIES submitted to the ICC ..... by the UN - who got their 'numbers and crimes' from the NTC Prime Minister - 'word to ear'. Pages and pages redacted.

No Evidence? No Problem!!

How the CIA Used "Libyan Expatriates" To Engineer Consent For Regime Change

One of the main sources for the claim that Qaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR), an organization linked to the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH). On Feb. 21, 2011, LLHR General Secretary Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir initiated a petition in collaboration with the organization U.N. Watch and the National Endowment for Democracy. This petition was signed by more than 70 NGOs.

Then a few days later, on Feb. 25, Dr. Bouchuiguir went to the U.N. Human Rights Council in order to expose the allegations concerning the crimes of Qaddafi’s government. In July 2011 we went to Geneva to interview Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir.

"How to circumvent international law and justice 101." - originally published by http://laguerrehumanitaire.fr

A film by Julien Teil

Official Website:
http://laguerrehumanitaire.fr
Official web:
http://thehumanitarianwar.com
Official TV:
http://laguerrehumanitaire-film.rutube.ru/

Videos now here (I watched them on the original site when all of it was happening and posted these here at DU) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29428.htm

Must watch videos, the western trained NTC 'Prime Minister' - 'word to ear!' was the source of the 'data (all unofficial and lies, of course) that led to the UN resolution.


*************************************************************************************************
What you don't know about the Libyan crisis:

...

*************************************************************************************************

The horror of Libya - to fulfill the PNAC objective of overthrowing yet another country. "7 countries in 5 years!" This was NO "Humanitarian Intervention", and certainly not for all those migrants Qaddafi had allowed in over decades, Qaddafi loyalists and others who were raped, tortured, mutilated, hung, burned to death .... all known of by the NATO 'humanitarian team'.

It was a bullshit, self-serving, western funded and backed coup against yet another sovereign nation not yet indebted to the IMF and controlling its own resources, not to mention not allowing U.S. bases 'Africom' into all of Africa.

Some of these links don't work anymore, but read and discover just what a sham this was and why. The video at the end is particularly interesting.

The Untold Story in Libya

Posted by polly7 in General Discussion
Tue Oct 18th 2011, 10:06 AM

In May 2010, Libya was voted on to the UN Human Rights Council by a huge majority. The UN Watch's campaign to remove Libya from the Human Rights Council began immediately.

In March, 2011, a report, containing positive quotes from UN diplomatic delegations in many countries, was due to be presented by the UN Human Rights Council, leading to a Resolution commending Libya's progress in a wide aspect of human rights (listed in the article). March 19, 2011, the attack on Libya began.

Libya was one of only five countries without a Rothschild model central bank, Quaddafi openly discussed, in 2009, the nationalization of US, UK, Germany, Spain, Norway, Canada and Italy's oil companies, switching to the gold dinar - a single African currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar and allow African nations to share the wealth. Libya has an abundance of water - Gaddafi’s Great Man-Made River Project project offers limitless amounts of water for Libyans and would allow them to be totally self-sufficient. In the near-future, water will be the next resource equated with money and power, other countries may be dependent on its reserves. A self-sufficient, dictator-ruled nation with control over some of the world’s most precious resource waves a big red warning flag.

In 2010 Gaddafi made a motion to the UN General Assembly to investigate the circumstances of the invasion of Iraq. He was also wasting the west's ....... 'libya's' oil on free education, housing, tolerance of immigrants, raising the standard of living in Africa, lowering infant mortality while raising life expectancy.

Many of these things are completely similar to what we learned of Iraq.

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Yes, simply put, Nato's member nations are trying to steer back Libya Central Bank into the mainstream financial structure, under the watching eyes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Funds, to provide (reconstruction) funds to Libya with hefty interests payments - and transform a country which was free of debts into a heavily indebted country - as done everywhere else in sub-Saharan African countries.

http://businessafrica.net/africabiz/graphs...
http://businessafrica.net/africabiz/arcvol...

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From a 'no fly zone to all out bombing of targets called out by rebels'. NATO's high-precision bombing preceeded 'rebel' incursions.

http://antemedius.com/content/libya-r2p-no...

"It's now common knowledge that British SAS, French intelligence, US Central Intelligence Agency assets, Qatar special forces and mercenaries of all stripes were parachuted as boots on the ground for months, planning and training the "rebels" and in close coordination with that philanthropic prodigy, NATO.

That was never the UN mandate - but who cares? NATO/GCC paid the bills, NATO conducted the bombing and NATO/GCC will "stabilize" the mess, according to a 70-page plan leaked by the British to Rupert Murdoch'sz Times of London."

"Expect local - and global - fireworks as far as grabbing the loot is concerned. Without even considering the (still unexplored) oil and gas wealth, Libya's foreign assets are worth at least $150 billion. Libya's central bank, now about to be privatized, has no less than 143.8 tons of gold. Then there's at least a millennium supply of fresh water, which had started to be harnessed by Gaddafi via the spectacular, multibillion dollar Great Man-Made River (GMR) project."

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"Oil-rich but with a relatively small population of 6.6. million, Gadhafi's Libya welcomed hundreds of thousands of black Africans looking for work in recent decades. "

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/01/l...

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NATO’s War on Libya is an Attack on African Development–Dan Glazebrook

6 09 2011

http://globalciviliansforpeace.com/tag/afr... /

To prevent this ‘threat of African development’, the Europeans and the USA have responded in the only way they know how – militarily. Four years ago, the US set up a new “command and control centre” for the military subjugation of the Africa, called AFRICOM. The problem for the US was that no African country wanted to host them; indeed, until very recently, Africa was unique in being the only continent in the world without a US military base. And this fact is in no small part, thanks to the efforts of the Libyan government.
Before Gaddafi’s revolution deposed the British-backed King Idris in 1969, Libya had hosted one of the world’s biggest US airbases, the Wheelus Air Base; but within a year of the revolution, it had been closed down and all foreign military personnel expelled.
More recently, Gaddafi had been actively working to scupper AFRICOM. African governments that were offered money by the US to host a base were typically offered double by Gaddafi to refuse it, and in 2008 this ad-hoc opposition crystallised into a formal rejection of AFRICOM by the African Union.

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The force used by the occupier to displace the old regime always makes sure the new regime is supine and complaint. The National Transitional Council, made up of former Gadhafi loyalists, Islamists and tribal leaders, many of whom detest each other, will be the West’s vehicle for the reconfiguration of Libya. Libya will return to being the colony it was before Gadhafi and the other young officers in 1969 ousted King Idris, who among other concessions had let Standard Oil write Libya’s petroleum laws. Gadhafi’s defiance of Western commercial interests, which saw the nationalization of foreign banks and foreign companies, along with the oil industry, as well as the closure of U.S. and British air bases, will be reversed. The despotic and collapsed or collapsing regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria once found their revolutionary legitimacy in the pan-Arabism of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. But these regimes fell victim to their own corruption, decay and brutality. None were worth defending. Their disintegration, however, heralds a return of the corporate and imperial power that spawned figures like Nasser and will spawn his radical 21st century counterparts.

Libya: Here We Go Again

Monday 5 September 2011
by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed

http://www.truthout.com/libya-here-we-go-a...

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LIBYA: Rebels execute black immigrants while forces kidnap others

http://somalilandpress.com/libya-rebels-ex...

"Many Africans have virtually nothing after years in Libya, many have been looted, robbed, while others saw their living quarters and apartments go in flames. Now they are praying to God to send them home.
While the international leaders are busy drafting resolutions to dismantle Muammar Gaddafi, the African Union has not yet commented on the situation in Libya.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court is said to have started a formal inquiry into possible crimes against humanity in Libya that will investigate the Libyan regime."

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JohnPilger.com
8 September 2011

http://johnpilger.com/articles/hail-to-the...

..."I quote that not so much for its Orwellian quality but as a model of journalism's role in justifying "our" bloodbaths in advance.
This is Rupert's Revolution, after all. Gone from the Murdoch press are pejorative "insurgents". The action in Libya, says The Times, is "a revolution... as revolutions used to be". That it is a coup by a gang of Muammar Gaddafi's ex cronies and spooks in collusion with Nato is hardly news.

The self-appointed "rebel leader", Mustafa Abdul Jalil, was Gaddafi's feared justice minister. The CIA runs or bankrolls most of the rest, including America's old friends, the Mujadeen Islamists who spawned al-Qaeda.
They told journalists what they needed to know: that Gaddafi was about to commit "genocide", of which there was no evidence, unlike the abundant evidence of "rebel" massacres of black African workers falsely accused of being mercenaries. European bankers' secret transfer of the Central Bank of Libya from Tripoli to "rebel" Benghazi by European bankers in order to control the country's oil billions was an epic heist of little .

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Sirte a 'living hell,' says aid group

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/co...

Tuesday 04 October 2011 by Our Foreign Desk Printable Email

A Red Cross team finally entered the besieged Libyan town of Sirte yesterday and delivered urgently needed surgical supplies to treat about 200 wounded people.

Nato has repeatedly targeted Sirte in its seven-month bombing campaign that enabled armed rebels to topple the government of Muammar Gadaffi and gain control of most of the oil-rich state.

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Absolutely horrible to use rape as a propaganda weapon for war, while ignoring the reality of it for all those brutalized, raped and some, murdered by the NATO supported 'rebels' - just one example of their many atrocities.

********* http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2174087 **********

http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2011/08/26/lies-war-and-empire-nato’s-“humanitarian-imperialism”-in-libya

In early March of 2011, news headlines in Western nations reported that Gaddafi would kill half a million people.

<1> On March 18, as the UN agreed to launch air strikes on Libya, it was reported that Gaddafi had begun an assault against the rebel-held town of Benghazi. The Daily Mail reported that Gaddafi had threatened to send in his African mercenaries to crush the rebellion.<2> Reports of Libyan government tanks sitting outside Benghazi poised for an invasion were propagated in the Western media.<3> In the lead-up to the United Nations imposing a no-fly zone, reports spread rapidly through the media of Libyan government jets bombing the rebels.<4> Even in February, the New York Times – the sacred temple for the ‘stenographers of power’ we call “journalists” – reported that Gaddafi was amassing “thousands of mercenaries” to defend Tripoli and crush the rebels.<5>

Italy’s Foreign Minister declared that over 1,000 people were killed in the fighting in February, citing the number as “credible.”<6> Even a top official with Human Rights Watch declared the rebels to be “peaceful protesters” who “are nice, sincere people who want a better future for Libya.”<7> The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights declared that “thousands” of people were likely killed by Gaddafi, “and called for international intervention to protect civilians.”<8> In April, reports spread near and far at lightning speed of Gaddafi’s forces using rape as a weapon of war, with the first sentence in a Daily Mail article declaring, “Children as young as eight are being raped in front of their families by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya,” with Gaddafi handing out Viagra to his troops in a planned and organized effort to promote rape.<9>

As it turned out, these claims – as posterity notes – turned out to be largely false and contrived. Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International both investigated the claims of rape, and “have found no first-hand evidence in Libya that rapes are systematic and being used as part of war strategy,” and their investigations in Eastern Libya “have not turned up significant hard evidence supporting allegations of rapes by Qaddafi’s forces.” Yet, just as these reports came out, Hillary Clinton declared that the U.S. is “deeply concerned by reports of wide-scale rape” in Libya.<10> Even U.S. military and intelligence officials had to admit that, “there is no evidence that Libyan military forces are being given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas”; at the same time Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, “told a closed-door meeting of officials at the UN that the Libyan military is using rape as a weapon in the war with the rebels and some had been issued the anti-impotency drug. She reportedly offered no evidence to backup the claim.”<


Untrue, says US

US says Gadhafi troops issued Viagra, raping victims
Allegation suggests troops encouraged to turn to sexual violence, envoys say

By Louis Charbonneau
updated 4/28/2011 9:31:26 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council Thursday that troops loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi were increasingly engaging in sexual violence and some had been issued the impotency drug Viagra, diplomats said.

Several U.N. diplomats who attended a closed-door Security Council meeting on Libya told Reuters that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice raised the Viagra issue in the context of increasing reports of sexual violence by Gadhafi's troops.

"Rice raised that in the meeting but no one responded," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. The allegation was first reported by a British newspaper.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42809612/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa#.TqXeG96ImU8


US intel: No evidence of Viagra as weapon in Libya

http://www.msnbc .msn.com/id/42824884/ns/world_news-mide...

UN Ambassador Rice reportedly had said drug was being used in systematic rapes
NBC News and news services updated 4/29/2011 1:52:00 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS — There is no evidence that Libyan military forces are being given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas, US military and intelligence officials told NBC News on Friday.

Diplomats said Thursday that US Ambassador Susan Rice told a closed-door meeting of officials at the UN that the Libyan military is using rape as a weapon in the war with the rebels and some had been issued the anti- impotency drug. She reportedly offered no evidence to backup the claim.

While rape has been a weapon of choice in many other African conflicts, the US officials say they've seen no such reports out of Libya.


[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]
lead inL Opponents of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi protesters shout anti-Gadhafi slogans during a protest after the Friday prayer at the court square, in Benghazi, eastern Libya, on Friday March 11, 2011. French President Nicolas Sarkozy faced increasing pressure from fellow leaders Friday who complained he was out of line to suddenly give a Libyan opposition group diplomatic recognition. Rebels held out Friday in part of a strategic oil port after fierce fighting with Moammar Gadhafi loyalists waging a heavy counteroffensive trying to push the opposition further east away from the capital. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) (Associated Press photographs)


[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]
The gap between Hillary Rodham Clinton's rhetoric warning of a Rwanda-like slaughter of civilians in Libya and the facts gathered by career intelligence staff is taking on significance as the former secretary of state prepares another bid for the White House and her national security credentials are re-examined. (Associated Press)



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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...
bvar22:

The Untold Story in Libya:

How The West Cooked Up The People's Uprising

http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/08/31/now-that-... ... /

The Global Disaster Capitalists never let a good disaster go to waste.
In the case of Libya, they used their Enforcement Arm (NATO & The US Military) to CREATE a disaster where there was none.

” For all his dictatorial megalomania, Gaddafi is a committed pan-African - a fierce defender of African unity. Libya was not in debt to international bankers. It did not borrow cash from the International Monetary Fund for any "structural adjustment". It used oil money for social services - including the Great Man Made River project, and investment/aid to sub-Saharan countries. Its independent central bank was not manipulated by the Western financial system. All in all a very bad example for the developing world.”

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/M...

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Libya: Oil, Banks, Water, the United Nations, and America’s Holy Crusade by Felicity Arbuthnot

Posted on April 5, 2011 by dandelionsalad

.."The country was commended: “for the progress made in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, namely universal primary education (and) firm commitment (to) health care.” There was “praise” for “cooperation with international organizations in combating human trafficking and corruption ..” and for cooperation with “the International Organization for Migration.”

“Progress in enjoyment of economic and social rights, including in the areas of education, health care, poverty reduction and social welfare” with “measures taken to promote transparency”, were also cited. Malaysia: “Commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for being party to a significant number of international and regional human rights instruments.” Promotion: “of the rights of persons with disabilities” and praise for “measures taken with regard to low income families”, were cited...

.."So how does the all tie together? Libya, in March being praised by the Majority of the UN., for human rights progress across the board, to being the latest, bombarded international pariah? A nation’s destruction enshrined in a UN., Resolution?
The answer lies in part with the Geneva based UN Watch.(vii) UN Watch is : “a non-governmental organization whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations.” With Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council, with ties to the UN Department of Public Information, “UN Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.” (AJC.)"

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/0... /

Interesting ..... the involvement in HR Watch of persons whose core values include securing energy resources.

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Colonel Muammar Gaddafi died after being stabbed with a bayonet in the anus and not in a firefight as originally claimed by Libyan authorities, according to a report on the Libyan dictator's last hours.

Two Nato missiles forced the group to leave the cars and escape on foot, seeking shelter in a drainage ditch. A bodyguard hurled grenades at approaching militiamen but one grenade "hit the concrete wall and bounced back to fall between Muammar Gaddafi and Abu Bakr Younis", Younis junior said.

"The shrapnel hit my father and he fell down to the ground. Muammar Gaddafi was also injured by the grenade, on the left side of his head," he said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Gaddafi was already bleeding from head wounds caused by blast shrapnel as he tried to flee Sirte, his hometown.

The charity obtained unedited mobile footage that showed militia fighters abusing Gaddafi as they took him into custody in October 2011.

"As he was being led on to the main road, a militiaman stabbed him in his anus with what appears to have been a bayonet, causing another rapidly bleeding wound," the report said.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/gaddafi-killed-bayonet-stab-anus-libya-395224



The Grand finale - sodomized with a bayonet, beaten, tortured and murdered in the street - "We came, we saw ....... he died, lol".

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The campaign in Libya began with an innocent sounding UN Security Council Resolution calling for the protection of civilians. Both China and Russia abstained rather than voting to veto the resolution. Then they realized they had been tricked. In her book, Clinton describes how Russia “chafed as the NATO-led mission to protect civilians accelerated the fall of Qaddafi”. In reality the NATO led mission “to protect civilians” resulted in vastly more civilian deaths than had occurred before it began.

Horace Campbell and Maximilian Forte have written two solid accounts describing the reality versus myths of regime change in Libya. Clinton’s characterization of “accelerating” the fall of Qaddafi is a cynical understatement, like her self congratulatory comment that “we came, we saw, he died” after rebels killed Qaddafi on the street. Many of the refugees drowning in the Mediterannean Sea or reaching the shores of Italy today are a direct consequence of that operation. Yet who has been held to account?

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/09/the-wicked-war-on-syria/

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Britain, Libya and the Mediterranean - The Creation of a Humanitarian Emergency

by Dan Glazebrook / May 1st, 2015

Last week’s drownings in the Mediterranean were the foreseeable, and indeed deliberate, a result of the anti-human policies of strategic violence by a dying neo-colonial empire. They were the consequence, firstly, of a series of wars of aggression that have made life intolerable across vast swathes of Africa and West Asia, and, secondly, of the fateful EU decision last November to end Italy’s search-and-rescue programme, Mare Nostrum. This much has been admitted by politicians and commentators from across the entire British political establishment, from Nigel Farage and the Daily Telegraph to David Cameron and Ed Miliband. Whilst these admissions have often been tempered with caveats, denials, distortions and half-truths, the hideous reality behind them is increasingly impossible to deny.

NATO’s war of aggression against Libya in 2011 turned the country over to racist death squads, with hundreds of sub-Saharan migrant workers and black Libyans beaten and burnt to death by the ‘revolutionaries’ and tens of thousands illegally detained and tortured by the militias. Tawergha, the only black African town on the Mediterranean, and formerly home to around 30,000 people, is now a ghost town after NATO’s shock troops – militias with names like the ‘Brigades for the purging of black skins’ – ‘ethnically cleansed’ the region. Last week’s butchering of 30 Ethiopian workers by ISIS is but the latest chapter in the anti-African pogroms that have characterised the Libyan insurgency from the very start. This is the reality of NATO’s ‘Libyan revolution’ (led by AbdulHakim BelHaj, now leader of ISIS in Libya) and it is precisely this from which black Africans in Libya are now fleeing. As Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi put it, “a person has to risk his life because he needs to escape from a situation where they are chopping off the heads of those near him”.

And this head-chopping has not been restricted to Libya’s borders. NATO’s war has boosted head-choppers across the entire region, from Tunisia and Algeria to Mali, Nigeria and Cameroon. Before 2011, Boko Haram barely existed. Today, thanks to NATO opening up Libya’s arsenals to them and their friends, they are killing hundreds every week, often burning them alive in churches and mosques. As one Nigerian told a reporter last week, “We prefer to die trying (to migrate) than stay back there and die….Stay at home and get shot dead or maybe burnt to death; I just prefer to die while trying or survive.”

Yet the Libyan war itself is only the latest in a long series of acts of aggression launched by the British state and its allies, all of which continue to have disastrous consequences across the entire Middle East and North Africa region. A look at the list of where the migrants come from makes this devastatingly clear. The majority of the world’s refugees come from one of three countries: Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria. What all have in common is that they have all been subject to vicious terror campaigns by Britain, the USA and their allies: whether directly, as in Afghanistan; through allied states, as with the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 (which toppled the first stable government the country had had in decades); or through the provision of cash, weapons and diplomatic cover to sectarian death squads, as in the case of Syria. Yemen is the latest additional source of refugees, with the Saudi bombing campaign bringing new arrivals to almost 10,000 per week.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/05/britain-libya-and-the-mediterranean/

Behind Every Refugee Stands an Arms Trader

http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/04/behind-every-refugee-stands-an-arms-trader/

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Trapped in Libya: the flotsam of the West’s wars

By Vijay Prashad
Source: al-Araby
May 14, 2015

Next week, the EU will launch work on its plan to tackle the Mediterranean migrant crisis. The EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has asked the UN for help to dismantle the smuggling networks.

European ambassadors have drafted a UN resolution, under chapter VII (which allows use of force), to tackle the crisis. For them the military option is the brightest light. As Mogherini said, the EU wants the authority to “use all necessary means to seize and dispose of the [smugglers’] vessels.

“Thus far in 2015, over 60,000 people have tried to cross from Libya to Europe. Of them, close to two thousand have died – a death toll 20 times higher than in 2014,” it continues.

Since 2011, Libya has been ripped apart, its social fabric torn asunder and its state structure largely absent. Nato’s bombardment precipitously destroyed the state and handed over the country to warring militias.

The threat to the refugees is a direct outcome of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, ironically under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) banner. A new UNSC resolution is not going to be about the protection of the refugees, but to use force to destroy their lifeline. R2P has been ground under by the West’s behavior in Libya.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/trapped-in-libya-the-flotsam-of-the-wests-wars/


On Monday, a New York Times story demonstrated more specifically why Clinton's interactions with Blumenthal may have been a bad idea. Blumenthal, the Times reports via solid sources, was advising the Secretary of State both before and after former Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi's death while also advising a group of private individuals who hoped to make money by obtaining reconstruction-type contracts in a post-Qaddafi Libya.

Much of the Libya intelligence that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton appears to have come from a group of business associates he was advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional government. The venture, which was ultimately unsuccessful, involved other Clinton friends, a private military contractor and one former C.I.A. spy seeking to get in on the ground floor of the new Libyan economy ...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/18/hillary_clinton_sidney_blumenthal_libya_unofficial_adviser_represented_business.html


The detritus of regime change in Libya

By Vijay Prashad
Source: al-Araby
November 1, 2015

.......In Iraq, parts of the deposed army and some Baath Party members linked up with al-Qaeda in Iraq, and then later the Islamic State of Iraq. It was these motivated and trained men that formed the backbone of the IS advance on Fallujah and Ramadi in 2014.

Much the same story is being repeated with the emergence of IS in Libya. Adversaries of Gaddafi in the 1990s took refuge in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group; one of whose strongholds was the town of Derna.

These fighters fled the country to join the Jihad International in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

It had become a familiar matter to meet an al-Libi in the redoubts of the jihadis. Studies show that Libya provided per capita the highest number of jihadis to this global campaign.

The lesson of Iraq was not learned. It was repeated in Libya. Both countries still hang by a thread. Their people suffer painfully. They have been sacrificed to a theory that is arrogant and erroneous. It deserves a place only in the dustbin of history.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-detritus-of-regime-change-in-libya/

Just as much a fucking sham as Iraq, with the exact same results. And on ........ to Syria.

[DanTex]

56. Wow, a bunch of links from websites I never heard of and people that probably think that

Rwanda is a perfect model for how the international community should deal with impending mass murders.

Sorry, but back on planet earth, there is no comparison whatsoever between Iraq and Libya. Like I said, Libya was already at war, and if you think Gadafi wasn't killing a lot of innocent people, you are out of your mind.

[polly7]

57. Ick. nt.

[Comrade Grumpy]

59. "Gadafi was about to kill huge numbers of innocent people." No.

You are referring to the armed rebellion in Benghazi. A column of Libyan military forces was headed to Benghazi to put down the rebellion. Gaddafi told the insurgents to lay down their arms or be killed.

And then the West intervened. And the rest is history.

[Avalux]

49. I know, she still refuses to admit there were no WMDs and Saddam was no threat to us.

It's one thing to be completely wrong at the time but to continue to pretend that the lies were truths is mind-boggling.

Hillary stood at that podium over a decade ago, full of conviction, and declared it was "the hardest decision I've ever had to make", then voted to give Bush the power he wanted.

She obviously wasn't misled if she's still trying to just her vote; still trying to convince us that she has a clear conscience and did nothing wrong.

This is why I find Hillary untrustworthy.

[upaloopa]

55. Your reason to support Bernie is because Hillary

voted for the IWR? I did not like the vote either but I am not supporting Bernie.
There will be a lot more wars in the near future if the repubs get the White House.
Hillary stands a better chance of making that not happen.

[Comrade Grumpy]

60. You'll vote for the war hawk because you don't want war? Okay.

[hifiguy]

65. 2 + 2 = eleventy six.

Amazin', ain't it?

[upaloopa]

67. She is not a war hawk

I have been in war in Vietnam and know that this isn't a black and white issue.

[Kelvin Mace]

66. How is that a logical statement?

She voted FOR the last war. So why would she not go along with whatever war the GOP cooks up next? As president, she is in a far better position to help them with any war they want.