Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, January 12, 2020
When the Obama administration went after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi without congressional approval, the major media and Democrats cheered.
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously boasted: “We came, we saw, he died.”
So, if the media and Dems had no problem with the Obama team’s leading role in killing the leader of a nation — who was not an “imminent threat” at the time — why would they now object so strenuously to President Donald Trump ordering the strike that killed Iran terror kingpin Qasem Soleimani?
Their answer is that the Obama administration didn’t kill Gadhafi.
“In other words, the hypocrisy coming from the media and Democrats is staggering,” Breitbart’s John Nolte noted in a Jan. 11 analysis.
On Friday afternoon, Trump’s deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley tweeted: “Soleimani was, in fact, planning ‘imminent attacks.’ While Democrats and the media quibble over its definition, quick point: When Obama killed … Qaddafi without Congressional approval, there were NO ‘imminent attacks’ and Democrats did not ask or care.”
After Gidley had tweeted this “inconvenient truth,” Nolte noted, “proven serial liars, far-left, anti-Trump activists like CNN’s Jake Tapper and Andrew Kaczynski, like Washington Post ‘fact checker’ Glenn Kessler, immediately leap to Precious Barry’s defense by spreading the fake news that Obama did not kill Gadhafi.”
Tapper tweeted: “Gaddafi wasn’t killed by the US”
Kessler tweeted: “Wait, Obama killed Gaddafi?!”
Kaczynski tweeted: “The White House press secretary has invented that President Obama killed Gaddafi.”
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
In October 2011, the Telegraph described exactly how the targeted killing of Gadhafi had occurred:
NATO forces designated Gadhafi as a military target after the former Libyan leader’s forces started firing on civilians as they tried to escape Sirte in a convoy of up to 100 vehicles.
It is understood that RAF Tornados were patrolling over Sirte at the time of the escape attempt but were not directly involved in the operation.
Gadhafi had been under surveillance by NATO forces for the past week after an intelligence breakthrough allowed them to pinpoint his location.
An American drone and an array of NATO eavesdropping aircraft had been trained on his Sirte stronghold to ensure he could not escape…
MI6 agents and CIA officers on the ground were also providing intelligence and it is believed that Gadhafi was given a code name in the same way that U.S. forces used the name Geronimo during the operation to kill Osama bin Laden.
The Predator drone, flown out of Sicily and controlled via satellite from a base outside Las Vegas, struck Gadhafi’s convoy with a number of Hellfire anti-tank missiles. Moments later French jets, most likely Rafales, swept in, targeting the vehicles with 500lb Paveway bombs or highly accurate AASM munitions.
Gadhafi survived the attack on the convoy but was captured and killed by rebel forces a few hours later.
Nolte wrote: “Fact: The Obama administration successfully targeted the head of a country for assassination. To facilitate this assassination, and without congressional approval, we designated him a military target, we spied on him, we trapped him, and then we fired a hellfire missile at him to ensure his demise — which was the ONLY possible outcome. That missile was either going to kill Gadhafi or it would expose him to the mob seeking his head. And that is precisely what happened.”
Mission accomplished, cue Hillary’s “cackling victory lap to take credit for Gadhafi’s death.”
As Gidley pointed out, President Barack Obama targeted Gadhafi, the actual leader of a country, at a time when he was no threat to America.
Nolte went on to point out:
“1) America’s direct role in killing Gadhafi is the worst foreign policy decision ever, and Obama abandoning four Americans to die in Benghazi is, unfortunately, the least of it. To begin with, Libya was the cork between Africa and Europe. After America removed that cork, Europe was invaded by millions who will never assimilate. If Europe goes down as a Western culture, this will be why. Secondly, we promised Gadhafi if he gave up his nuclear and WMD programs, the United States would leave him alone. Obama and Hillary gleefully and recklessly broke this promise. How will we ever again convince North Korea to peacefully disarm?
“2) Degenerates like Tapper, Kaczynski, and Kessler will never stop lying, will never stop deliberately deceiving the public. They are not here to inform us. they are overpaid Internet trolls.
“Finally, it should go without saying that Gadhafi was a bad guy, a monster. But no sane person can claim the world is better off without him, and no one who cares about his own integrity can claim Obama is not directly responsible for his death. And not only did the media’s Precious Barry not seek congressional authority for this reckless move; he violated America’s longstanding (and wise) policy of not assassinating the leader of a country.”
The reaction to Soleimani’s killing, Nolte wrote, “is a blatant effort to undermine President Trump’s effective handling of Iran’s escalating aggression. The fake media and Democrats are not only openly siding with the terrorist state of Iran; they’re openly mourning the death of a monster and trying to claim this was, at worst, some sort of illegal assassination and, at best, extra-constitutional.”
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