At Los Angeles Times, "CIA officers in Libya are aiding rebels, U.S. officials say." And also ABC News, "President Obama Authorizes Covert Help for Libyan Rebels: Head of House Intel Committee Says Arming Unknown Rebels May Be a Mistake" (via Memeorandum). This part's the best:
Earlier this week, Obama declined in an interview with ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer to rule out arming the Libyan insurgents. When asked by Sawyer whether he would consider sending weapons to the rebels, Obama said, "We are examining all options to support the opposition."As always, the fear is that Islamists may end up in power, and thus the U.S. will have backed a (new) regime opposed to American interests and those of our allies, especially Israel. Not only that, the administration's been all over the map, with confused and contradictory statements, and of course a Jello policy on regime change or not. More on that from Melanie Phillips, "Humpty in Toytown and the Arab Boomerang."White House spokesman Jay Carney repeated echoed Obama today saying the president is "not ruling something in or ruling something out in terms of lethal assistance to the opposition... We're coordinating with the opposition and exploring ways that we can assist them with nonlethal assistance. And we'll look at other possibilities of assistance as we move forward.
Rep. Mike Rogers, head of the House Intelligence Committee, warned the Obama administration against sending arms to the Libyan insurgents.
"It's safe to say what the rebels stand against," Rogers, R-Mich. said. "But we are a long way from an understanding of what they stand for. We don't have to look very far back in history to find examples of the unintended consequences of passing out advanced weapons to a group of fighters we didn't know as well as we should have."
"We need to be very careful before rushing into a decision that could come back to haunt us," Rogers said.
Now that Bill Kristol has announced that after confering with Obama in secret last week, the finding in Libya might be followed by a finding on Syria, which is also beginning to persecute its MAJORITY Christian and Druze citizens! Hillarious swears Syria is "different," but Bashar Assad is as clueless as Mubarak & the Tunisian leader were.
ReplyDeleteAssad's as stupid and mindless as Kaddaffy-Duck & as remote as the Bahraini & Yemeni leaders, all of whom are in jeopardy of losing their perches. In Syria there are FIVE intelligence agencies who compete with one another in their criminal persecution of the poor citizens of that land, ruled by the 12% minority of Shi'ite Alawites, who are close to Iranian madman Ahmedinejad in their world view. Saddam was the despot ruler with the support of his 20% Sunni Arab minority. Time's up and this fool & his cronies are going into the dustbin of history.
Sounds like another despot ready for the recycling bin.