Posted on 10/20/2011 4:55:08 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama hailed Muammar Gaddafi's death on Thursday as a warning to authoritarian leaders across the Middle East that iron-fisted rule "inevitably comes to an end," and as vindication for his cautious strategy toward Libya.
Obama joined U.S. politicians and ordinary Americans in welcoming the demise of Gaddafi, who was for decades regarded as a nemesis of American presidents, and also claimed some of the credit for the Libyan strongman's downfall.
...
"This marks the end of a long and painful chapter for the people of Libya who now have the opportunity to determine their own destiny in a new and democratic Libya," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden.
Obama made clear he considered Gaddafi's death a validation of his "leading from behind" strategy that had drawn criticism at home for casting the United States in a support role in the NATO air assault in Libya. Some of his Republican foes see it as an "Obama doctrine" that abdicates U.S. global leadership.
He also issued a veiled warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other long-entrenched Middle Eastern leaders resisting home-grown democracy movements to take heed of Gaddafi's fate.
"Our leadership at NATO has helped guide our coalition. Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives, and our NATO mission will soon come to an end," Obama said in a televised statement ..
...
STARK WARNING
Obama also touted Gaddafi's death as a stark message to other authoritarian rulers in the Middle East where revolts upended longtime leaders in Egypt and Tunisia this year.
...
"For the region, today's events prove once more that the rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end," Obama said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Zer0 should spend even more time before the mirror.
He should hold that thought and look in the mirror.
Pay attention Barry
Does a U.S. President have the right to authorize killing people without a trial?
“cautious”
I think not. But thanks for the propaganda commentary anyway AP.
Nobel Peace Prize material.
You beat me to it. Great minds think alike.
FILE - In this Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009 file photo, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gestures with a green cane as he takes his seat behind bulletproof glass for a military parade in Green Square, Tripoli, Libya. Libyan special forces stormed a two-day-old protest encampment in the country's second largest city of Benghazi, clearing the area early Saturday, Feb. 19, 2011, said witnesses, as a human rights group estimate scores of people have died ...
The dictator warns other dictators. LOL
Narcissistic sociopath.
Establishing an iron-fisted dictatorship in the United States is what the Democrat Party is all about.
And remember: Karl Marx himself said that communism/socialism would require an iron-fisted dictatorship for their establishment and implementation.
You've been Obama-cized.
I can just picture Obambi’s raised fist while he sits on his girly bike wearing his bicycle bedpan on his head . . . ooooooh! That’ll scare those big bad people!
The liberal practice of projection..
Obama endorsed supported and fought for the new Libyan Govt.
Said govt. forces and Obama violated numerous International and American laws combined today and in the past :
1907 Hague IV Annex
1949 Geneva Conventions
18 USC § 2441
War Powers Act
Obama and the Libyan Govt. are war criminals .
Iron fisted or those who circumvent representative government by ruling ‘administratively’.
Pot, kettle, black!
That’s not racist, is it?
If they attacked us, the POTUS can begin a war.
“International and American laws”
OK for the American part, but I don’t agree that there are any such thing as international laws. Under whose jurisdiction do they fall? In what court are they prosecuted? There are treaties, but that is not international law
Obama is killing one dictator at a time so he can be the last dictator standing.
Not just our media...
“Well first of all, today’s not a day to be pointing fingers. I’m glad it’s all working out. Ultimately it’s about the freedom and liberty of the Libyan people. But let’s give credit where credit’s due, it’s the French and the British that led on this fight and probably even led on the strike that led to his capture or to his death,” Rubio said Thursday on Fox News.
Rubio said President Obama “did the right thing” by bringing the U.S. into the multinational intervention effort in Libya but “he just took too long to do it.”
Why do I keep thinking about The Godfather?
By his own mouth, PharaObama seals his fate.
The world has gone mad. People actually enjoy seeing a mob kill someone? I’ve seen animals killed with more respect.
Will Obama heed his own warning?
The Narcissist in Chief just cannot resist taking credit for ANYTHING he thinks is a positive.
The man does not have a humble bone in his body, and if anyone should it is he. What a complete, self-centered pos.
I think the murder of Qaddafi is a very bad thing, depraved. Disgusting. Reminds me of the murder of the czar and his family. Yeah, the guy was a bad guy. But you try him. He could have made it easier on himself. Still, the fact of the matter is this is about power and control, pure and simple. These rebels have no love for their “people,” just as Qaddafi didn’t. It is all about the wealth and status.
The devil stalks this pathetic planet.
Would the Animal Rights people be opposed to the way Gaddafi was murdered?
The killing of Qaddify and Osama suggests one thing to me: They were killed to keep them quiet, they should have been a treasure trove of information, some of it about the CIA, I’m sure, and it is that information that really got them killed..
And BOTH were captured ALIVE and then killed....welcome to the new government MOBSTERS
But not one any of them will likely heed. Most of them came from nothing. Faced with the choice between living a life of poverty and a life of luxury where they'll totally have their way with the men (and women) of their country for 42 years, which way are they going to tip? Obama gets it wrong again.
I'm personally glad he's gone, but I would have preferred a modicum of restraint to keep him alive to maybe answer a few questions, then be tried, THEN summarily executed. Savagery is not Democracy, and Democracy should not welcome Savagery as an acceptable division of its representation.
I'm not surprised Obama would crow about this outcome.
Does the Nobel committee want its Peace Prize back yet?
This communist son of a whore is responsible for thousands of shoulder fired AA missiles falling into the hands of his fellow muzzie subhuman animals.
Every commercial jet that is shot down by one of these is blood on his hands.
This nation also made a deal with Qaddafi that if he dropped his nuke program and paid reparations to the victims of the Pan Am 103, we would take him off the terrorist list and let him be.
This degenerate monster in the WH is out to put radical islamists in charge of every stable country in the Mideast, and let them take back all of the territory paid for with American blood in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I bet not one of the GOP candidates will even bring this up.
Libya Is Off U.S. Terrorist List
By KIRIT RADIA (@KiritRadia_ABC)
May 15, 2006
After spending more than a quarter-century on the United States’ State Sponsor of Terrorism list, Libya has finally completed its journey back into the relative good graces of the U.S. government.
The State Department announced today that it would remove Libya from the list in 45 days as part of a three-pronged process of normalizing U.S.-Libyan relations, declaring that Libya was “out of the terrorism business.”
In a statement announcing the restoration of full diplomatic relations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Libya was being rewarded for its “renunciation of terrorism and the excellent cooperation Libya has provided to the United States” in the war on terror. Libya has, in recent years, shared intelligence with the U.S. government that has helped track terrorist networks, including al Qaeda.
The re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the removal of sanctions is also seen as a reward for Libya’s surprising dismantling of its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The announcement comes at a time when the United States is looking to convince two other countries on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list — Iran and North Korea — that cooperating with international demands will ultimately lead to greater gains for their countries.
“Today’s announcement demonstrates that, when countries make a decision to adhere to international norms of behavior, they will reap concrete benefits,” Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs C. David Welch said.
The United States will also reopen its embassy in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, for the first time since the building was set aflame by a mob and closed in 1979. The United States withdrew its last ambassador in 1972, but withdrew its remaining personnel from the embassy after the attack. Less than two years later, Libyan diplomats were expelled from Washington.
Libya will also be removed from another list: countries not cooperating with the U.S. war on terror. Venezuela was added to this list today, with the State Department citing the country’s ties to Cuba and Iran. The decision means that the United States will ban arms sales to Venezuela, whose leader, Hugo Chavez, has been an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy.
Removal from these two lists will mean that Libya will no longer be subject to restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance, a ban on arms sales, certain export controls, and other financial sanctions.
The State Department sought to reassure those who remained unsure about the decision to re-establish diplomatic ties with Libya. “This was not a decision that we arrived at without carefully monitoring and assessing Libya’s behavior,” Welch said.
“The relevant U.S. government agencies conducted a thorough review of Libyan conduct since 2003,” he said, citing Libya’s having distanced itself from terrorist organizations with which it once had maintained relations.
Scars From Pan Am Flight 103 Linger
The State Department said today’s announcement did not indicate the United States had resolved its other concerns about Libya.
“Instead, these steps will enable us to engage with Libyans more effectively on all issues,” Welch said. “In particular, we continue to call upon Libya to improve its human rights record and to address in good faith cases pending in U.S. courts with regard to its terrorist activities of the 1980s.”
After the mob attack on the U.S. embassy in 1979, U.S.-Libyan relations deteriorated further as the United States accused Libya of supporting several terrorist bombings. Most notable among these were the 1986 bombing of a discotheque in West Berlin frequented by American soldiers that killed three people, including two American service officers, and an explosion aboard Pan Am Flight 103 that brought the plane down over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 — killing 270 people, most of whom were American.
The Libyan government reached a settlement with the crash victims’ families in 2002, to which the United States government was not a party, in which it agreed to pay $2.7 billion, or $10 million per family, in monetary compensation for the attack.
Of that settlement, $4 million was paid to each family after the United Nations removed sanctions on Libya, and an additional $4 million was paid to each after the United States removed additional sanctions. The remaining $2 million was to be paid when Washington removed Libya from its State Sponsor of Terrorism list. The timeline for this decision, however, expired in February 2005, and the money, which had been held in a Swiss escrow account, has since been removed.
The announcement on Libya was met with mixed emotions by the families of the crash victims.
Jim Kreindler, the attorney representing 130 of the 270 victims’ families during negotiations with the Libyan government, spoke with many of the families today. He told ABC News that some were pleased that Libya had taken steps to reform itself and ensure that no more lives would be lost as a result of its actions. Others, he said, still maintained bitter feelings toward Libya and especially its leader, Moammar Ghadafi, saying that he should be imprisoned.
Now that Libya has been removed from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list, under the original agreement Libya is to pay the remaining $2 million to each family. It remains to be seen if this agreement will still be honored since the escrow account has expired.
“We have continually expressed to the Libyans that whenever the secretary of state offers findings that Libya will come off the list, that Libya should put the money back into the escrow account and then indicate that it’ll abide by the agreement,” Kreindler said.
As others are saying, when I heard ZerO on tv today I said ‘is he talking to the mirror again?’
GONE 2012
AMEN, BROTHER!!!
Should be a warning to some of the crooks in our government as well.
Record kill list for any Nobel Peace Prize winner!
Piece Prize.
What happened to his female bodyguards? Did they abandon him? Turn on him?
Gaddafi death is warning to iron-fist rulers................................. Does this mean that Chavez, the Castro brothers and little Kim could be next? Wow!
Especially the closer it gets to election time.
I agree, clever you are.
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