Because Obama wants more Repub support??
Because we have lots of cool weapons??
Because we have not learned from very recent mistakes??
Because at least we are not alone--yet??

As the world's leading democracy it's our job to support budding democratic movements where ever they occur. (Translation: ...as the kid on the block with the biggest stick it's somehow our job to get rid of all the b*sterds in the world .... at least those with oil.)

Jack my response is that we have enough on our plate supporting "budding democracies" elsewhere. Let someone else do it. Hey Libya is a former colony of Italy. Let's tell Berlusconi to take some time out from diddling 16 year old girls and take care of Libya for the world.

I'd be happier if it were Darfur. Not happy just happier.

Our justification for getting involved escapes me. I guess one could argue some Arab Nations and other allies have asked for our support, so we help to stay in the good favor with those we align with, and with our oil rich friends.

However, our supporting role includes the US providing 90% of the military hardware, and virtually all of the strategic oversight. I guess that makes it our campaign with all the others in support of the US?

Because we have not spent all of our Recovery Act-Stimulus money yet.

Rwanda.

Because it's easier to support Libyan revolutionaries than Iranian revolutionaries. Seriously, Iranian dissidents have to be asking WTF.

Wake me when Barry lands on the aircraft carrier.

Because the UN said jump. And we couldnt be one-upped by the French.

Seriously, Iranian dissidents have to be asking WTF.

Easy one. Iran has a real ground military, air force, and navy, and real electronic warfare capability. Also, you can't just pull up to their shores and start bombarding without getting attacked by said military.

But all this aside, the posturing about Qadaffi by the US government is humorous. we regularly sell Libya weapons. We're the largest arms dealer in the world. And if readers can't find something to laugh about in the fact that the world's largest arms dealer being the world's largest instigator of wars, I don't know...

Does anyone in the administration have any real reason to believe that the rebels, if they are successful, will become US allies. History would suggest that belief is fantasy. Even if the rebels are successful in overthrowing Gaddafi, it will be years before someone emerges as a leader, and we will not be in a position to positively influence that result. So aren't we putting US lives at risk to aid a rebellion that, even if it is successful, will result in a government that is more likely to be an enemy than a friend. Just because two sides are fighting doesn't mean one is good and the other is bad. Sometimes they're both bad (see Iran 1979).

Easy one. Iran has a real ground military, air force, and navy, and real electronic warfare capability.

Wait...ground military? Who said anything about ground forces? Barry has been specific that we're not sending in ground forces. That is, of course, until we do.

Second, I remember hearing that same line about the Iraqis back before Desert Storm. I'd be curious how loyal the Iranian army might be were they put to the test. I suspect Ahmadinejad and the mullahs already know the answer.

Who's arming and communicating with the "rebels", I wonder?

Because War is Peace?

First paragraph, WSJ item:

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies are watching for signs that a desperate Col. Moammar Gadhafi, under attack from a coalition air assault, could resort to acts of terrorism against Western targets.

Libya and the familiar patterns of war, By Glenn Greenwald, March 19, 2011

The Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2003:

U.S. Raises Terrorism Alert Amid Concerns of Retaliation

Bracing for a backlash from impending war with Iraq, the Bush administration put the nation on high alert for a terrorist attack and announced that it was redoubling efforts to enhance security at home.

The decision to raise the terrorism threat level from yellow to orange, the third such move in the last six months, followed several months worth of intelligence reports indicating a strong likelihood of some type of terrorist attack or retaliation if the U.S. went to war with Iraq. Those strikes, officials said, could come from organized Al Qaeda cells or groups sent here by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, or from individuals or small groups who sympathize with them.

The New York Times, today:

American Official Warns That Qaddafi May Lash Out With New Terrorist Attacks

The United States is bracing for possible Libyan-backed terrorist attacks, President Obama’s top counterterrorism official said on Friday.

Recognize in advance that in order to understand global-scope imperial strategies prosecuted through tactics of decades-long logistics, you must read more than a day's news report.
The following blog post runs longer than the usual barstool explanation, as professors tend to do. Somewhere in it is the pull-quote supplied first, here, to answer a simple question about attacking Libya, or Qaddafi.

Behind the 2011 Orgy of Destabilizations: Pre-Emptive Coups by the CIA to Halt an Exodus of US Satraps and Viceroys Leading to a Multipolar World, Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D., TARPLEY.net, March 15, 2011

... During the most recent days, the time of the Libyan civil war, the old Suez 1956 coalition of aggressive and unreconstructed British and French neo-colonialists has also reemerged as a strange historical atavism.

The Anglo-American Empire is now undergoing a collapse phase, (although not caused by debt as claimed ....)

The overthrow of existing governments and the breakup of existing national states, wherever possible, is intended to put the brakes on this [CIA-empire] collapse by preventing the national states from taking timely political action to save themselves from the imperialist shipwreck by defecting to other power centers, reversing existing alliances. The Anglo-American plan is for a super-national empire over the planet, with a neo-feudal war of all against all on the ground.

The Threatened Return of a Multi-Polar Middle East

The current goal of London and Washington is to stop a jailbreak by their former clients. ...

Because gas is four bucks a gallon.

oops, forgot to mention, in his essay Tarpley explains that Brazil is a 'rescuer' of Libya and so Obama is gone there to coerce Brazil to O BEY U S A and stop undermining CIA-Empire hegemony.

Lockerbie. And Muammi getting over on GB & USA on the recent release of that Libyan prisoner.

Because he can, and there ain't squat we can do about it!

RAY HARRIS-IRAQ VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR

Lockerbie.

lol

If we were still so concerned about Lockerbie, GWB wouldn't have taken Libya off the list of state sponsors of terror and McCain wouldn't have been meeting face-to-face with Gadaffi in 2009, just days before Megrahi's release.

Barry's getting rolled by Bill and Hill who've themselves been rolled by the Arab League who are nervous about their own hold on power, so they're setting us up to be the bad guys in case their own populations start getting ideas about revolution and such.

Come to think of it, maybe Barry's playing a double-reverse whammy here. We don't really want freedom over there, so we set ourselves up to be the heels, thus giving the despots a real bad guy for their populations to rally around.

Ah, the Kenyans...

Barack Obama's visit to Brazil had a very unpromising start after police had to quell riots against the U.S. in Rio de Janeiro with rubber bullets and tear gas...

...But after the riots he was forced to cancel an outdoor speech that he was set to give in a Rio square...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367871/Obamas-Brazil-visit-Violent-welcome-rubber-bullets-tear-gas-riots-US.html#ixzz1HDKmVe83

Are his popular speech days over?

Bill and Barack want to get Hillary out of country whenever they can.

Because President Obama is tired of cleaning up George Bush's messes and wants a chance to clean up a mess of his own making.

Is Obama a cleaner upper of Bush's messes?

If a president Palin were doing exactly what Obama has been doing the left would be crucifying her as worse than Bush in ways limited only by their imaginations.

In my estimation Libya is getting the attention because of the global distribution of oil involves an interdependency that is fragile.

France, Germany, Italy, and others get a major portion of their oil from Libya.

If that supply is disrupted they will need to tap other sources which would then disrupt the the greater distribution and push barrel prices even higher.

Governments also realize how dependent essentially all consumables are on oil.

The price of nearly everything is at risk of ramping up and further destabilizing the gloabl economy that is already weak and vunerable.

Therefore we, and our allies, cannot allow some major markets to be cut off from their oil supply. It would chain react into a much greater problem.

Does that sound rational?

This is hilarious reading. Tensky excluded, where were you guys in February, 2002?

...the Russians were against it.

Echo Ben. Add to that Hillary's announcement that she won't come back for a second tour in the Obama admin, signaling political trouble if she didnt get her way.

At least this appears to be france's quagmire (if it turns out that way).

Here we go again.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK4XCLc9O18

Guys, guys, we're overthinking this. It's a training exercise.

After all, we have to train the new kids how to fire Tomahawks and since it's not wise to do it from an guided missile cruiser that's parked on the Willamette River during Portland's fleet week we might as well send them half-way around the world for their training rite.

(That's how we justify sending army troops to rescue stranded climbers on Mount Hood, and kids who get stuck on some rock out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in high tide...)

because we support Western-backed rebels when it suits the cause of the globalists.

Hey these "rebels" (Arab terrorists in this case) even have jets!

because asking for permission is no longer possible, so they are just going to flip off "we the people" and grab whatever territory they feel like- as long as you call it a "humanitarian mission".

I like being naive. Maybe we are just doing for Libya what France did for us during our own revolution.

Bobo does what his handlers tell him to do. Wait doesn't the prez have to get congressional approval before he goes to war? Oh that's right he is a constitutional professor he don't need no stinking permission.

This guy agrees:

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-president-does-not-have-power-unde#

How about precedence established by Jefferson in commencing the First Barbary War:

"On Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, Yusuf Karamanli, the Pasha (or Bashaw) of Tripoli, demanded $225,000 from the new administration. (In 1800, Federal revenues totaled a little over $10 million.) Putting his long-held beliefs into practice, Jefferson refused the demand. Consequently, in May 1801, the Pasha declared war on the U.S., not through any formal written documents but in the customary Barbary manner of cutting down the flagstaff in front of the U.S. Consulate. Algiers and Tunis did not follow their ally in Tripoli.

In response, Jefferson sent a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress. Although Congress never voted on a formal declaration of war, they did authorize the President to instruct the commanders of armed American vessels to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli 'and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War

How about precedence established by Jefferson in commencing the First Barbary War:

Excellent. I have an alternative proposal: How about precedence established by Eaton and O'Bannon, almos 250 years ago? Note the bolded part:

The turning point in the war came with the Battle of Derna (April–May 1805). Ex-consul William Eaton, who went by the rank of general, and US Marine First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon led a mixed force of eight United States Marines[16] and 500 Greek, Arab, and Berber mercenaries on a march across the desert from Alexandria, Egypt to assault and to capture the Tripolitan city of Derna. ,b>This was the first time in history that the United States flag was raised in victory on foreign soil. This action was memorialized in a line from the Marines' Hymn—"the shores of Tripoli."

That's right--the glorious hymn of the Marine Corps memorializes one of the first steps of US imperialism. From there, we proceeded to wipe out most Native Americans, practice genocide throughout the Pacific, and gradually establish permanent "flags" around teh world. But like all bad historians, you like to pick and choose carefully where the story begins and ends; as if the story of Libya and Qadaffi began a few years ago, or 20 years ago, or last week. That's key to the disagreement between those who break out the flag and wave it at any American overseas activity--that the larger story is ignored for

The bolded part, repeated: This was the first time in history that the United States flag was raised in victory on foreign soil.

Sorry, I meant "precedent," a term most familiar to attorneys, including the Constitutional lawyer who spoke so eloquently against a President's war-making prerogative prior to becoming one himself.

It is distressing that mainstream coverage has made Mr Wolfowitz and Mr Negroponte (John, not Nick), among other ancient voices of American imperialism, so prominent in the present gambit.