Secretary of Defense Gates on Odessey Dawn: No vital national interest or imminent threat in Libya

If there is no threat to the United States or its interests by Libya, why are we sending our military into the skies of Iraq as part of the UN Odessey Dawn?

There had been no plans to do a post today until Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on ABC 'This Week' hosted this morning by Jake Tapper. Hard to believe they paid big bucks to the former CNN correspondent Christine Amanpour to host 'This Week'when Jake Tapper is so good and she is horrible as a host. Tapper should be doing the Sunday morning ABC show every week -- we would actually get the facts not spin and be willing to watch instead of waiting for what was said to come out. Don't want to start a Sunday morning off by watching Amanpour.

Why some people still push Hillary Clinton for President is beyond us and for anyone who needs reminded read her remarks this morning from 'This Week' which are highlighted in the Hot Air article below. She doesn't understand the Constitution or the War Powers Act (WPA) any better than Obama.

Constitutional division of War Powers:

The Constitution divides war powers between the Congress and the President. This division was intended by the framers to ensure that wars would not be entered into easily: it takes two keys, not one, to start the engine of war.

The Constitution's division of powers leaves the President with some exclusive powers as Commander-in-Chief (such as decisions on the field of battle), Congress with certain other exclusive powers (such as the ability to declare war and appropriate dollars to support the war effort), and a sort of "twilight zone" of concurrent powers. In the zone of concurrent powers, the Congress might effectively limit presidential power, but in the absence of express congressional limitations the President is free to act.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires there to be:

“(1) a declaration of war,
(2) specific statutory authorization, or
(3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”

before a President can send US military forces into a new conflict.

The WPA is pretty straight forward and we certainly don't see the wiggle room that Clinton has taken.  It is becoming more apparent that Clinton and Obama ignored not only the Constitution but the WPA rushing the United States into this conflict in Libya without consulting Congress. As reported earlier, Vice President Joe Biden as a Senator said that he would start impeachment against any President ignoring the WPA. Looks to us like Obama and Clinton need impeached after this fiasco in Libya ignoring the Constitutional duties and the WPA.

Clinton brags about the coalition the United States (Clinton) has put together but it is way smaller than WWII and half the size of the Bush Coalition on Iraq plus Bush spent six months getting Congressional approval before launching the strike on Iraq which is a huge difference than the Obama/Clinton days rush to war. Add to the fact that Obama launched the war effort while in Brazil by a recorded message and you have two people who are so far over their head in governing.

Obama and Clinton in this imperial administration are creating a very dangerous precedent and putting our military in harm's way without regard to Congress. A Republican President would have been aggressively attacked by the likes of Obama and Clinton when they were in the Senate for doing what those two have done.

Now we have the Secretary of Defense finally admitting there is no vital national interest or imminent threat in Libya before Odyssey Dawn was launched. Wonder if someday Gates, Obama and Hillary are going to admit that the rebels in Western Libya who they are supporting are members of Islamic Jihadists aligned with Al Qaeda? Clinton should have been the first to admit the fact since the State Department has the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) listed as a terrorist group in Libya. Why let a little detail like that stand in the way.

What started out this morning as a post about Gates and Clinton is now turning into much more. While researching the State Department Designated Terrorist Group, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), we discovered that the United States has probably been funneling arms to the rebels for sometime. Guess that little fact is the reason that Obama left the door open on arming the rebels. We also learned that On November 3, 2007, the LIFG was welcomed into Al Qaeda.  Since this LIFG is officially part of Al Qaeda so does that mean we are fighting alongside Al Qaeda now thanks to Obama and Clinton?

As mentioned earlier we are now learning that the United States has been funneling arms to this terrorist organization as they consider them rebels against Gadhafi. The CIA is really lame if they were involved in this operation because even the State Department website lists the LIFD as terrorists with known ties to Al Qaeda. The New American.com has a must read, well researched article about the LIFD:

The organization is officially on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. But according to countless news reports, the U.S. government has been covertly funneling arms to the Libyan rebels for weeks, via Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other nations.

Islamic extremists around the world have actually announced their support of the Libyan rebels as well. And as Raven Clabough pointed out in an article for The New American, a powerful coalition of leftist and globalist forces are also backing the war against Gadhafi’s regime.

The more I read from the article, the scarier all of this has become. Looks like Obama/Clinton got the United States involved in Libya on the side of Al Qaeda to oust Gadhafi. This whole effort in Libya to protect civilians makes no sense when Obama and others in Administration are saying they want Gadhafi taken out in favor of the rebels.  The UN Resolution specifically calls for civilians to be protected and forbids targeting of Gadhafi but Obama and Clinton seemed to be ignoring the UN Resolution as well. Was Gadhafi trying to rid Libya of Al Qaeda? We will probably never know the truth because we are sure not getting the truth from Obama or Clinton.

This excerpt from the The New American.com should make most Americans stop and ask the question, "What is the United States doing involved in Libya?"

The Obama administration’s UN-backed military intervention against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is aiding al-Qaeda, which, according to media reports citing high-level commanders in the terror group and Libyan rebel leaders, is deeply tied to the revolution. When the dust settles, the anti-American Islamic extremists could easily emerge as the new rulers of that nation, or at least a part of it. And al-Qaeda is already reportedly grabbing up  (see excerpt below) advanced military weaponry there. 

AL-QAEDA'S offshoot in North Africa has snatched surface-to-air missiles from an arsenal in Libya during the civil strife there, Chad's President says.

Idriss Deby Itno did not say how many surface-to-air missiles were stolen, but told the African weekly Jeune Afrique that he was "100 per cent sure" of his assertion.

"The Islamists of al-Qaeda took advantage of the pillaging of arsenals in the rebel zone to acquire arms, including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries in Tenere," a desert region of the Sahara that stretches from northeast Niger to western Chad, Deby said in the interview.

Ironically, perhaps, Gadhafi has been claiming for weeks that al-Qaeda and drug use were responsible for the uprisings. "Bin Laden ... this is the enemy who is manipulating people," he told state television in late February. "Do not be swayed by bin Laden."

Most observers assumed the allegations were deliberate lies or the delusions of a madman trying to keep the reins of power. But it turns out that the claims of al-Qaeda involvement were at least partially correct.

The man identified in news reports as the leader of Libya’s rebellion, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, actually battled U.S. and coalition forces during the invasion of Afghanistan a decade ago. He was captured in 2002, handed over to U.S. authorities, and eventually released in Libya in 2008. Now, al-Hasidi, with U.S. and international air support, is supposedly leading the anti-Gadhafi revolution.

A Reuters report citing Qatar-based Gulf News said earlier this month — before Western intervention became official — that senior al-Qaeda commander Abu Yahya al-Libi released a videotaped message urging rebels in Libya to continue the battle. He also warned that failure to topple the Gadhafi regime would be unacceptable.

“The Libyan people have suffered at the hands of Kaddafi for more than 40 years.... He used the Libyans as a testing ground for his violent, rambling and disgusting thoughts,” the alleged terrorist leader said in the video. "Retreating will mean decades of harsher oppression and greater injustices than what you have endured.”

The al-Qaeda leader also blasted the U.S. government and other Western regimes — now fighting the same battle he praised — for propping up dictatorships in the region. By press time, Gulf News was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the video posted on Jihadist websites.

More recently, Libyan rebel leader al-Hasidi, who fought U.S. troops in Afghanistan, offered another startling revelation. He admitted in an interview with an Italian newspaper that Islamic warriors from Libya, whom he had recruited to battle Western forces in Iraq, are now actually fighting alongside U.S. and international forces to help topple Kaddafi.

The Daily Telegraph, in an article entitled "Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links,” quoted al-Hasidi as saying that his warriors "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists." He also praised al-Qaeda, saying they are “good Muslims ... fighting against the invader."

According to U.S. and British government sources cited by the paper, al-Hasidi is part of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The organization represents the second largest contingent of foreign fighters in Iraq battling coalition forces.

Excerpt: Please read more details at The New American.com

Ed Morrisey's comments at Hot Air from the interview this morning on ABC by Jake Tapper with Gates and Clinton are very telling about how little Hillary Clinton regards the Constitution or the War Powers Act as she spins and lies:

Gates: No vital national interest or imminent threat in Libya before Odyssey Dawn
Ed Morrisey
Hot Air
March 27, 2011, 10:15 a.m.

Jake Tapper reminds ABC why they foolishly spent money on Christiane Amanpour last year for the anchor job on This Week with a tough joint interview of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Tapper asks Gates exactly what vital national interest the US has in Libya and what kind of imminent threat to our security Moammar Gaddafi posed at the beginning of Operation Odyssey Dawn. Gates says … none in either case:

On “This Week,” ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Gates, “Do you think Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States?”

“No, no,” Gates said in a joint appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “It was not — it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about. The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake,” he said.

(snip)

Hillary felt the need to swoop to the rescue. She claimed that Obama didn’t need to go to Congress because this coalition is so darned multilateral:

Tapper asked Clinton, “Why not go to Congress?”

“Well, we would welcome congressional support,” the Secretary said, “but I don’t think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”

“I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission which we are in the process of fulfilling,” Clinton said.

Obviously, the Secretary of State has trouble with both math and the law. There is no “multilateral” waiver in either the WPR or the Constitution, but even if there were, Obama would be the least likely President to qualify for it. This coalition is the smallest since World War II involving the US in military action, only half the size of George W. Bush’s Iraq War coalition.

She also fails vocabulary test in her claim that the mission has a limited timeframe. Later, Gates says that no one knows how long this will drag on:

On “This Week,” ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Secretary of Defense Gates how much longer we might be there.

"Some NATO officials say this could be three months, but people in the Pentagon think it could be far longer than that. Do you think we’ll be gone by the end of the year? Will the mission be over by the end of the year?” Tapper asked

“I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that,” Gates said.

Excerpt: Read more at Hot Air

Tomorrow night you can tune in and watch Obama lie on his 'war' in Libya as he addresses the Nation.