{"id":5984,"date":"2011-04-14T11:02:31","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T16:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=5984"},"modified":"2011-04-14T11:02:31","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T16:02:31","slug":"false-pretense-for-war-in-libya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/04\/14\/false-pretense-for-war-in-libya\/","title":{"rendered":"False pretense for war in Libya?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The op-ed piece <a title=\"Kuperman op-ed article\" href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/editorial_opinion\/oped\/articles\/2011\/04\/14\/false_pretense_for_war_in_libya\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>False pretense for war in Libya?<\/strong><\/a> by Alan J. Kuperman says what I have been thinking since the beginning of this misbegotten adventure.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The \u201cno mercy\u2019\u2019 warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya\u2019s leader promised amnesty for those \u201cwho throw their weapons away.\u2019\u2019 Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight \u201cto the bitter end.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>If bloodbath was unlikely, how did this notion propel US intervention? The actual prospect in Benghazi was the final defeat of the rebels. To avoid this fate, they desperately concocted an impending genocide to rally international support for \u201chumanitarian\u2019\u2019 intervention that would save their rebellion.<\/p>\n<p>On March 15, Reuters quoted a Libyan opposition leader in Geneva claiming that if Khadafy attacked Benghazi, there would be \u201ca real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda.\u2019\u2019 Four days later, US military aircraft started bombing. By the time Obama claimed that intervention had prevented a bloodbath, The New York Times already had reported that \u201cthe rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda\u2019\u2019 against Khadafy and were \u201cmaking vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.\u2019\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It just drives me around the bend every time Obama repeats his dishonest justification for picking sides in a civil war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The op-ed piece False pretense for war in Libya? by Alan J. Kuperman says what I have been thinking since the beginning of this misbegotten adventure. Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The \u201cno mercy\u2019\u2019 warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5984"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5986,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5984\/revisions\/5986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}