House rips Obama Libya policy

[ElNono]

House rips Obama Libya policy
By Alan Silverleib, CNN

Washington (CNN) -- The Republican-controlled House of Representatives issued a rebuke of President Barack Obama's Libya policy Friday, passing a measure declaring that the president has failed to provide a "compelling rationale" for military involvement in the North African country.

The non-binding resolution criticizes the president for insufficiently consulting Congress before launching air strikes in Libya and urges the administration not to put any ground troops in the country, something Obama has already promised not to do.

The measure, reflecting what GOP leaders consider a lack of presidential deference to the legislative branch, passed in a 268-145 vote. Most Republicans supported it, while most Democrats were opposed.

House members rejected a separate resolution offered by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the NATO-led military operation. Kucinich's measure was defeated in a 148-265 vote.

[Rest of the article here (http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/06/03/house.libya/index.html?hpt=hp_t1)]

[ChumpDumper]

Wow.

Non-binding.

[Wild Cobra]

Wow.

Non-binding.
So.

It is action by congress expressing their idea of it.

[DMX7]

Political theater, and I thought they hated political theather. How masochistic of them.

[Wild Cobra]

Political theater, and I thought they hated political theather. How masochistic of them.
They had to do something. Think of the thousands of letters they must have been getting from people like me.

[DMX7]

Yeah, they really did something alright.

[ElNono]

They had to do something. Think of the thousands of letters they must have been getting from people like me.

They could have voted to end operations if they were so up in arms about it...
but they didn't...

[MannyIsGod]

They had to do something. Think of the thousands of letters they must have been getting from people like me.

You think this is doing something? SMH

[ChumpDumper]

lol WC thinks his letter made them do this something which is nothing.

How does it feel, WC?

[Winehole23]

Wow.

Non-binding.Hand waving, regarding lip service.

The President should wholesomely pretend to weigh the opinion of the US Congress in his counsels of war, and feign to seek its approval in a timely fashion when he goes on the warpath.

[Winehole23]

Certain appearances, such as adherence to constitutionally explicit norms, should be kept up.

[TDMVPDPOY]

since he ordered the attack with little consultation....will he be up for the hague? lol

seriously why congress is pissed about it, libya has oil...

[boutons_deux]

If Barry does anything, the Repugs are against it, will block it.

Repugs aren't against the Libyan action (they bomb the fuck out of any country. USA! USA! USA! OIL! ), just feeling that their over-blown egos were trashed because of no consultation.

[RandomGuy]

Good. Obama deserves it. Get Congress' permission or get impeached.

I have no problem with that.

(edit)

Yes, I know the resolution is worth little more than toilet paper and is not impeachment, but if they had any balls they would go that way, and should.

We need the Congress to stand up to the President just once and call them on the imperial power creep that the executive branch has been on in the last 10-15 years.

[DMX7]

The only thing a reasonable person can conclude from this measure is that republicans are weak on national security.

[ChumpDumper]

Republicans are emboldening the enemy.

[jack sommerset]

Good. Obama deserves it. Get Congress' permission or get impeached..

Amen

[ChumpDumper]

Eh, no president has ever considered himself to actually be bound by the War Powers Act. I don't know how that would make it to the courts to be decided.

[boutons_deux]

In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war


from today's Washington Post -- has anything to do with it:

The relationship between Gaddafi and the U.S. oil industry as a whole was odd. In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier. . . .

Yet even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more U.S. government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence U.S. policies. . . .

When Gaddafi made his deal with Bush in 2004, he had hoped that returning foreign oil companies would help boost Libya’s output . . . The U.S. government also encouraged American oil companies to go back to Libya. . . .

The companies needed little encouragement. Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves -- 43.6 billion barrels -- outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects. . . . Throughout this time, oil prices kept rising, whetting the appetite for greater supplies of Libya's unusually "sweet" and "light," or high-quality, crude oil.

By the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in 2008, U.S. joint ventures accounted for 510,000 of Libya's 1.7 million barrels a day of production, a State Department cable said. . . .

But all was not well. By November 2007, a State Department cable noted "growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism." It noted that in his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi said: "Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money." His son made similar remarks in 2007.

Oil companies had been forced to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names, the cable said. . . .


when representatives of the rebel coalition in Benghazi spoke to the U.S.-Libya Business Council in Washington four weeks ago, representatives from ConocoPhillips and other oil firms attended, according to Richard Mintz, a public relations expert at the Harbour Group, which represents the Benghazi coalition. In another meeting in Washington, Ali Tarhouni, the lead economic policymaker in Benghazi, said oil contracts would be honored, Mintz said.

"Now you can figure out who’s going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi," Saleri said. "Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The Western companies are positioning themselves."

"Five years from now," he added, "Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in."

I have two points to make about all this:

(1) The reason -- the only reason -- we know about any of this is because WikiLeaks (and, allegedly, Bradley Manning) disclosed to the world the diplomatic cables which detail these conflicts. Virtually the entirety of the Post article -- like most significant revelations over the last 12 months, especially in the Middle East and North Africa -- are based exclusively on WikiLeaks disclosures.

(2) Is there anyone -- anywhere -- who actually believes that these aren't the driving considerations in why we're waging this war in Libya? After almost three months of fighting and bombing -- when we're so far from the original justifications and commitments that they're barely a distant memory -- is there anyone who still believes that humanitarian concerns are what brought us and other Western powers to the war in Libya? Is there anything more obvious -- as the world's oil supplies rapidly diminish -- than the fact that our prime objective is to remove Gaddafi and install a regime that is a far more reliable servant to Western oil interests,

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/11/libya/index.html