2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSeymour Hersh says Gaddafi was a "tame cat" and finds Obama's deployment of 250 troops "horrifying"
Paints a bumbling picture of foreign policy in ME under Obama.
"...my favorite line about Hillary Clinton is, after Gaddafi was executedas you know, he was killed by his own people. He was actually sodomized by swords. It was a horrible death. And she said on one show, "We came, we saw, and he died," with a laugh. And that kind of talk is sort of almost bizarre.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (worst mistake) Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.
SH: Gaddafi was a tame cat. We got to him in the Bush-Cheney years. ...I think it was a year later, in 2004suddenly, Gaddafi, after allegedly having caughtwe caught a ship full of some dual-use goods, and we stopped a ship that was going to Tripoli with it. He suddenly announced that he was giving upunilaterally going to give up all his chemical arsenal and his WMD, his nuclear plans or options. And it was a big victory at a very much needed time by the Bush and Cheney crowd, that was a victory that showed our policy is working right. Money was involved, the CIA, covert money. A lot of stuff was going on. As you know, Ive been doing a book about Cheney for a long time. And I can tell you that it was a considerable amount of CIA activity involved to turn him around.
I dont thinkwhich is amazingits clear to me that the president and Hillary, the secretary of state, did not know about this secret agreement made. Its just amazing to me that one administration will leaveits one of the things I first learned from a friend who went to workI think it was way backmaybe it was for Clinton. This friend got a job, a high-ranking job, in the government. The first thing he discovered, that all the files related to everything significant that had happened, all the agreements that had been made in his areait was in the State Departmenthad been gone, had been cleaned out. Nothing was left. So, they wereyou know, as I said, they were going after a guy that had been doing a lot of good work for us, believe it or not, horrible as he was. He was a horrible human being. Bad things happened inside that country to the people. But he was actively working with us on the al-Qaeda issue, and, you know, if theI dont believe al-Qaeda exists there.
...So, they didnt really know what the hell had happened with Gaddafi. They took out a guy that didnt need to go. And the French were pushing for it, and we went along. It looked good.
Its a little bit like putting a couple hundred guys, and maybe a lot more that we dont know about, into Syria now, and many more than that into Iraq, where theGod knows whats going to happen in both places. Its justits done without consulting the Congress, which probably this Congress probably doesnt want to be consulted, but thats theyou know, the Constitution is not a nuisance, as many in the Republican Party, as Bush and Cheney, and now, in many areas, even Obama believes, it seems to be a nuisance. We dont tell Congress anything. We dont go andwe dont tell the people anything. And the controlthe control of the media that goes on now, the major media, is, I think, much more acute now.
http://m.democracynow.org/stories/16158
(Obama announces additional 250 troops to Syria.) "Well, one of the words he doesnt mention is Russia. Look, I cant begin to tell you whats in his mind. Its a little amazing at this stage hes putting more forces in, but thatsyou know, thats his prerogative, I guess, as president.
...the real winner in the last year or so of the war there has been the Russians. And the Russiansthe bombing was much more effective. If you remember, the president had said publicly, when Putin decided to put his air force hard at work there, he said it would be a quagmire, they wouldnt be able to get out, its going to be, you know, schadenfreudeit would be like what happened to us in Afghanistan, and is happening to us, and certainly did happen to us in Vietnam. But they did it. They came in, and they did very well.
...As usual, we dont really know what the game plan is. I do not understand why hes decided to jump into a war that was being run byits being won right now by the Syrian army and its allies, including Russia. I justI can just speculate that our anti-Putin, anti-Russian instinct in America continues apace. Thats all.
...Ive been in this town since the '60s. There's nothing more wonderful for a presidentyou can feel more like a president by taking a walk with somebody from the Special Operations community or, earlier, the CIA in the Rose Garden, and getting rid of somebody you dont like... I dont mean to be too sarcastic about it, but whatyou know, this guy ended up in the same place in far too many times, as you read and as I wrote, as Bush and Cheney were.
...And heres how things have changed, for me, anyway. Im writing the same kind of stories now about this president, very critical stories, because, you know, somebody has to hold him toyou know, at least based on what I think is as good as evidence Ive ever had in all the stories I wrote for The New York Times in the '70s.
http://m.democracynow.org/stories/16157
bjo59
(1,166 posts)"mistaken," etc. used when describing the Obama administration's foreign policies. The evisceration of Libya (and Iraq and Syria) is exactly what was intended.
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)polly7
(20,582 posts)PufPuf23
(8,785 posts)I thought we elected Democrats to put a halt to the neo-conservative redesign of the Middle East?
Hillary Clinton indicates that as POTUS she would be more supportive of Netanyahu and Likud than POTUS Obama.
We should stop dropping arms and monies into the Middle East when the result is more misery and violence for the innocents to better potential profit for the trans-national corporations.
I am all for humanitarian aid.
anigbrowl
(13,889 posts)Indifference to a looming catastrophe when you have the capacity to intervene is its own kind of moral failure. Isolationism is a soft option.
Tarc
(10,476 posts)and se if he has the courage to say that to them directly.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)including evidence hidden by the FBI?
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)Get a grip
Tarc
(10,476 posts)WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)You're ridiculous
Tarc
(10,476 posts)Oh, wait, you can't?
rockfordfile
(8,704 posts)Tarc
(10,476 posts)Try again?
VulgarPoet
(2,872 posts)Just like it'll be sexist to criticize Clinton if she becomes the next Commander in Chief.
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)"the Constitution is not a nuisance, as many in the Republican Party, as Bush and Cheney, and now, in many areas, even Obama believes,"
Psych! Those good old days never existed.
Demsrule86
(68,586 posts)That tamed cat killed my neighbor in Connecticut...a kid college.
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)and a stolen election could harm a lot of people down the road, in the names of all innocent people we need to do the right thing. And that's all I'm going to say.
Unicorn
(424 posts)the bombs and drones.