[vundy33]

Gaddafi was Libya's head of state when NATO, mostly the US, began air strikes. He was deposed as a result of our aid to Libya. We did not begin supporting the rebels after Gaddafi was overthrown. I am not defending Gaddafi at all. His death was a good thing and I know that it may be a cliche, but the ends do not necessarily justify the means.

There is nothing that you can say that will make the way that Obama personally waged war on Libya without asking for Congressional approval in accordance with the War Power Act. Every president has complied with that law since it was passed, regardless of which party controlled Congress. Bush sought and received approval of Congress, including a Democratic-controlled Senate, before he committed US troops to war in Iraq. He was heavily criticized for the flawed intelligence that resulted in that approval, but the truth is the decision had widespread public support - and that is why the invasion of Iraq received bi-partisan support.

As to the blue passage of your post, you could not be more wrong. As I said before, Gaddafi was the head of the Libyan government when Obama agreed to support the rebels, and the only legitimate government that could have asked for our help was the Libyan government.

I am not anti-war and certainly not anti-military. I have praised Obama for not keeping his campaign promise for the timetable for withdrawing from Iraq and I supported his escalation of the war in Afghanistan. I even support his program of killing terrorists with drone attacks to avoid having to decide which court to try them in. So, as bad as you may want to make my harping on Obama's failure to follow the law during the war on Libya a case of political bias, that dog won't hunt. Had the adventure into the Libyan civil war taken "days not weeks," as Obama promised, then the War Powers Act would not have applied. Once that law's 60-day limit passed, Obama was violating federal law every single day that force was being used in Libya.

When Nixon tried to place himself above the law, both parties slapped him down for it. When Obama does the same thing, Democrats rally around him and say that the law doesn't matter and Republicans hardly make a whimper. Congress has set a dangerous precedent by not making Obama's actions in Libya a bipartisan issue. What really bothers me is that I believe a majority of both Democrats and Republicans would have given Obama the green light had he simply complied with the law and made the case for deposing Gaddafi.

Hoot, Gaddafi was shelling his own people, entire cities! NATO was created to keep things like that from happening!

I know what you support and what you don't, I've paid attention, and on Iraq and Afghan we have agreed almost always. I'm not criticizing you for criticizing Pres. Obama and his admin for how they went about Libya, I am talking about the fact that you always talking about how the Dems try to make the Republican side look bad purposely by overstating certain events, over and over, when you are doing the same thing. You can't compare Pres. Bush going before congress to receive approval before "committing" troops to Iraq to our part in the conflict in Libya...we INVADED Libya, we staged hundreds of thousands of troops in Kuwait and the build-up took months. The conflict in Libya was alot faster, and the international community had to do something. He was ordered to stop shelling and killing his own people, he refused, so NATO stepped in. Not the U.S., NATO. Yes, U.S. units were under NATO command, but you can hardly call cruise missiles and airstrikes "at war with Libya". And it wasn't "NATO, mostly the U.S." that began airstrikes. It was as much the British and French as it was U.S., and if the U.S. did have more forces in the first few days/weeks than the Brits and French, it was because of our first-strike capabilities that are much bigger and better than any other country on earth. Pres. Obama made perfectly clear that we did not want to be involved in this and weren't to be involved in it for very long, and that was the case.

There is hardly anything comparable about the conflict in Libya and the war in Iraq, there just isn't.

Pres. Obama would have surely went before Congress for approval if he would've had the time. If you remember, this was a conflict that was getting worse day by day, and something needed to be done. You are acting like we were in it alone or something...the British and French were easily the top players in this and in wanting to intervene in Libya, not the United States.