To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now.
How many who voted for Obama (or at least against John McCain) would expect their vote would elect a President who would violate the sovereignty of Pakistan with a special forces operation, murder an American citizen without due process, and enter into armed conflict with Libya without the consultation of Congress and eventually assassinate a sitting head of state?
Those that knew what to look for saw this coming before even he ran for president.. As soon as he voted to give retroactive immunity to telecom companies spying on US citizens, it was clear what stuff he was made from.
I still very much admire his propaganda ability. His campaign was amazingly successful. Yes, Bush being Bush helped a lot, but still. The disconnect (even among the intellectual liberals who rabidly supported him) between the perception of who Obama is and who he really is, is amazing (even after all this time).
Nobody denies that it is easy to lead and brainwash ignorant masses with fears of 'terrorism', 'communism' & 'homosexuals' but one has to admire the ability to brainwash relatively liberal and intelligent people. Looking back at Obama I will mostly remember him winning the AdAge 'Marketing Campaign Of The Year' award.
I don't think it's known at this point that Qaddafi was assassinated by the US. The two more common things I'm hearing is that he was either shot by rebels or hit by a NATO air-strike, which is kind of ambiguous.
Providing material support to a revolution isn't the same thing as an assassination. Due process doesn't apply on a battlefield, but it should apply to a prisoner in custody.
“It’s a great day,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said on CNN on Thursday morning. “I think the administration deserves great credit. Obviously, I had different ideas on the tactical side, but the world is a better place.”
I would say a court marshal ending with a televised execution wouldn't been better.
This man was evil. And he was crazy. A violent death, no matter how, is what he deserved.
That's what they said on TV, didn't they? Must be true then.
In other words - how do you know? How do you know the picture you are being fed by the media is accurate enough to assign him a "violent death" as a proper punishment? And without a public trial at that.
This kind of pseudo-intellectual relativism is depressing. The man massacred his own people. He was insane. Don't take CNN's word for it; listen to the damned audiotapes yourself.
Critically analyzing media portrayals is good. Dismissing any conclusions reached as, "well nobody can really say" is facile and lazy. It's what people who don't have anything to add to the conversation say in an attempt to sound smart.
> It's what people who don't have anything to add to the conversation say in an attempt to sound smart.
This applies to literally every comment on this page.
It is not "well nobody can really say" dismissal. It is a matter of media feeding made-up facts since current conflict started. You must've missed the photos of insurgents storming strongholds in their flip-flops, the same guy posing dead in more than one position and other marvels of staged photography. The fighting was there, but it was not done by "insurgents" photographed by the press. Whatever was coming out of the tube was an A grade orchestrated bullsh#t. That's what's depressing. If you are comfortable cheering on his death provided with such accurate and transparent media coverage, who am I to spoil the fun.
> It is a matter of media feeding made-up facts since current conflict started
Therefore the past 30 years mean nothing?
His crimes did not begin and end with the NATO operation. He was notorious for decades, in particular when certain Western governments were all too happy to offer him hospitality and (military) trade deals knowing full well what he sanctioned against his own people. But who cares about such trivialities when they're our friends, right?
Well if you don't trust the collective portrayal of dozens of different media outlets and books printed from all over the world by people of different nationality, allegiences, motives, and religions, then you really can't believe anything. And so at that point what is a trial? Couldn't that all be fake too?
At some point you will have to trust something - you can't even be sure of what you see with your eyes as shown by numerous studies of false eye witness testimony.
On the cases where the evidence is slim or the news has just broken I'm very critical - this morning I didn't quite belive that he was even dead. But when you have such overwhelming evidence of horrible deeds over the last couple of decades it is pretty easy to say he was a bad man.
I don't have to trust anything. I am perfectly fine with not having an opinion on a subject of Libya or Gaddafi or any other evil-du-jour. Especially, when there is oil involved (which always seems to be the case). It gets way too complicated to judge given the facts available.
How many who voted for Obama (or at least against John McCain) would expect their vote would elect a President who would violate the sovereignty of Pakistan with a special forces operation, murder an American citizen without due process, and enter into armed conflict with Libya without the consultation of Congress and eventually assassinate a sitting head of state?