Webb was a Senator, not a governor. It isn't a sin for the author to have made that mistake, it is a sin for the fact checkers and the editors to not have caught it at a magazine as prestigious as that one. On the central point of his critique, if we hadn't intervened then Benghazi would have been destroyed by Gadaffi. That isn't speculation that is what Gadaffi himself said he would do to crush resistance.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/04/07/was-there-going-to-be-a-benghazi-massacre/

Was there going to be a Benghazi massacre?

BY DAVID BOSCOAPRIL 7, 2011

Was there going to be a Benghazi massacre?

In his recent essay on why America uses force so often, Steve Walt breezily dismisses the notion that the Libyan operation avoided a humanitarian disaster:

As Alan Kuperman of the University of Texas and Stephen Chapman of the Chicago Tribune have now shown, the claim that the United States had to act to prevent Libyan tyrant Muammar al-Qaddafi from slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Benghazi does not stand up to even casual scrutiny. Although everyone recognizes that Qaddafi is a brutal ruler, his forces did not conduct deliberate, large-scale massacres in any of the cities he has recaptured, and his violent threats to wreak vengeance on Benghazi were directed at those who continued to resist his rule, not at innocent bystanders. There is no question that Qaddafi is a tyrant with few (if any) redemptive qualities, but the threat of a bloodbath that would "stain the conscience of the world" (as Obama put it) was slight.

In the columns that Walt cites, Kuperman and Chapman made some interesting arguments casting doubt on claims of an imminent massacre. Kuperman is particularly struck by the absence of footage documenting assaults on civilians:

[Gaddafi’s] forces certainly harmed innocents while defeating rebels in urban areas, as U.S. forces have done in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he did threaten "no mercy" in Benghazi, but Gadhafi directed this threat only at rebels to persuade them to flee. Despite ubiquitous cellphone cameras, there are no images of genocidal violence, a claim that smacks of rebel propaganda.

To claim, as Walt does, that these provocative thoughts demonstrate that the chances of a bloodbath were slight is an epic overreach.

<snip>

And here's what Ghaddafi actually said:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/africa/18libya.html?_r=2

Qaddafi Warns of Assault on Benghazi as U.N. Vote Nears

TRIPOLI, Libya — Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi warned Benghazi residents on Thursday that an attack was imminent, as the United Nations Security Council seemed headed for a vote Thursday on a resolution authorizing not just a no-flight zone but additional steps to halt the movement of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

"We are coming tonight,” Colonel Qaddafi said. “You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets.”

Speaking on a call-in radio show, he promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away” but “no mercy or compassion” for those who fight.

<snip>

And what do you know? Who was egging on the disastrous intervention? From the same article:

In the most strident verbal attack on Colonel Qaddafi to date by an American official, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the Western powers had little choice but to provide critical military backing for the rebels. “We want to support the opposition who are standing against the dictator,” she told an applauding audience in Tunisia on Thursday. “This is a man who has no conscience and will threaten anyone in his way.”

She added that Colonel Qaddafi would do “terrible things” to Libya and its neighbors. “It’s just in his nature. There are some creatures that are like that.”

-------

A disastrous failed intervention based on lies. Between that and her Iraq war vote, Hillary disqualifies herself.

he was just a poor misunderstood man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Salim_prison

Abu Salim prison (Arabic: سجن أبو سليم is a maximum security prison in Tripoli, Libya. The prison was notorious during the rule of Muammar Gaddafi for alleged mistreatment and human rights abuses, including a massacre in 1996 in which Human Rights Watch estimated that 1,270 prisoners were killed.[1][2][3]

No one ever said Ghaddafi's hands were clean.

What we are discussing is the lies about what he was going to do in Benghazi, and using that as an excuse for our disastrous, failed intervention there. Propaganda is propaganda, whether it's emanating from RT or Foggy Bottom.

he was known to massacre people in the past. So yeah it was a quite reasonable assumption that he would do so again.

We aren't allowed to mention it. I mean a failed state here, a failed state there, it's not a big deal. Hillary supporters have made it perfectly clear that the dead piled up in the middle east because of her foreign policy are irrelevant.

But that's what you expect out of libertarians with simplistic world views like that article's author.

Plenty of similarities.

Do you wish to argue differently?

And instead of you just calling for Putin to help Assad butcher his own people, you'd be calling for Putin to help Qaddafi butcher his own people.

Or, in Hillary's case, the first resort of the politically expedient.

Neoliberals have no conscience or ethics.

War and death are HRC's go to first resort.

I'm tired of war and the waste of life and treasure that it brings.

The Obama administration pursued a path of low-grade intervention in Libya that was very much UNLIKE Iraq. No U.S. ground troops were to be used and there was no presumption that the U.S. would occupy the country or try to control its politics in the aftermath. Minimizing the risk of U.S. casualties, and in concert with many other countries, our air power was used to protect population centers against threats by Qadhafi and weaken Qadhafi forces.
* * * * *
Whether things ultimately would have gone better or worse in Libya if the U.S. did nothing at all in response to the conflict which had already broken out there, who knows? At the time of the decision, the approach taken by the Obama administration seemed reasonable and humane to many, including to me. It was certainly better than the sort of response desired by the true war-mongers of the GOP, who want to use U.S. troops to address every foreign policy problem.
* * * * *
I completely oppose the notion that if we act in any way at all when violence has already broken out in a country (Libya and now Syria for example), then it's basically our fault if things don't wind up as we wish. It was up to those inside Libya to decide what kind of country they would be post-Qadhafi, not us. I think that it's good that our administration did not try to take on the task of controlling Libya simply because we participated with many other nations in helping to oust Qadhafi.
* * * * *
When it comes to war and peace, it's not Hillary I worry about, it's the party of John McCain and Lindsay Graham and the 47 who sent the letter to Iran. My guess is that Hillary will continue Obama's cautious approach regarding the use of the U.S. military, and she will similarly endure a lot of GOP criticism for not being a knee-jerk militarist.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002388548
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002405978
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002768036
http://betterment.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6720333
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=468383
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025452028
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=161306
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002752959
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php/www.scn.org/youtube.com/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x638549
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3611795
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=240964
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002467606

bad apples! teething pains! Bastille Day! amazing how so many can pour bleach in their own eyes if it's a Dem doing it

she didn't have the authority to declare a war or name it after herself.

Time for this shit to end. Peddle your love for war elsewhere, Hillary.

Good enough of one that it was responsible for this year's peace prize.

Namely that the military turned against Ben Ali and ousted him, much like the situation in Egypt.

Libya's military did no such thing. They obeyed orders and attacked the protestors, much like the situation in Syria.

I do fault a number of Democrats including Hillary for their lack of courage on the Iraq vote. Having been battered for decades by the GOP as being a party that isn't patriotic and is weak on military matters, there were many Democrats who should have known better, but gave in to the post 9/11 climate of fear within the country. They chose to not deny the President the authority he was requesting -- even though the potential for its abuse by a deceitful administration should have been clear.

* * * * *
But a look at the series of events in the Libyan civil war (see link below) shows that it is ridiculous to dub a civil war, which gradually became a cause of international concern and intervention, to be Hillary's (failed) war. It is also absurd to equate this brief use of air power in the midst of a pre-existing civil war with a full-scale, U.S. initiated war involving the invasion of a country under false pretenses followed by a protracted U.S. occupation.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/20/world/libya-civil-war-fast-facts/
* * * * *
Hillary is not the certain Democratic nominee, but she is the most likely one. There is no good purpose to be served by FALSELY convincing anti-war Democrats that Hillary is indistinguishable from folks like Dick Cheney or John McCain or Lindsay Graham on foreign policy (and thus why not just stay home and not vote?). Instead, this will likely lead to completely handing over the country to a GOP that is truly intent upon: putting boots on the ground all over the place, destruction of our already weak safety net, no action of climate change, putting more Scalias and Thomases and Alitos on the Supreme Court, and policies which further maximize wealth inequality.

The suggestion is nonsense.

...

Bush sent 150,000 troops into Iraq, rolled tanks into the capitol, and over threw the Iraqi government.

And those troops stayed and occupied Iraq for ~10 years.

When we do that in Libya, you let us know ... ok?

We can only support the citizens to select and elect a good government. What we find is most of those government are corrupt and win by fraud means. So what is the US to do. We just try to work around them to get changes done.
I know G. Bush said he would make every country a Democracy. What was his plan to do this? Did he succeed? He failed at everything as President.