I’m listening to Chris Matthews interviewing NBC’s great war correspondent Richard Engel. And they’re discusing, who are the Libyan rebels exactly? From what Engel is saying it seems like the rebels are made up of all people who said F- You to Qaddafi in late February or early March, grabbed and gun and took things over. Them and the regular military officers who defected and joined these rebels. I think I heard Engel say that one of the highest ranking generals who’d defected had taken the day off today. Which leaves me thinking, who are the rebels exactly?
This isn’t to dismiss the immense bravery of many of these people, who rebelled against a harsh dictatorship and now stand a decent chance of paying for that move with their lives. But Engel’s comments do give me the sense that what you have are ‘rebels’ in the incredibly inchoate sense of a bunch of people thinking and acting somewhat in unison as sometimes happens when a government seems on the verge of collapsing. Take away that momentum and you have a lot of people afraid for their lives.
Eric Kleefeld just skyped me over a paragraph of text near the words Qaddafi …
“Even more importantly, I am praying that Barack Obama and his pro-Israel troika of female advisors will not take us all down a road that seems ripe for another, ominous application of this precedent, with truly horrific repercussions – for Israel, for the United States and for freedom-loving people elsewhere.”
So I’m sitting here thinking, ‘Jeez, that Qaddafi dude is friggin’ whacked. Just listen to way he talks.’
And then I look closer and it’s actually from a post written by Frank Gaffney about our move into Libya. All I changed was the “anti” to a “pro” in front of “Israel”. For dramatic effect. Or something like that.
Republican presidential candidate and former Pizza magnate Herman Cain tells Muslims: Stop trying to convert us to Islam!
Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty has announced a new presidential exploratory committee … and a new fast-cut, high-production value Pawlenty action/adventure video.
Is there a fight within the White House over whether to embrace cuts to Social Security? That was the word last week. So we asked TPM’s Brian Beutler to find out what’s going on. Here’s his report.
Rep. Kucinich (D-OH) says President Obama should be impeached over the Libya campaign.
A short while ago a couple of our reporters were asking questions on the history of the War Powers Act and the necessity for a declaration of war for the president to go to war.
I explained that the current constitutional rule is that a president doesn’t have to do anything to send the military into battle. Except in cases where the ruling party believes an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) sets the party up well for the next election campaign.
So in general, it’s ideal to have a congressional vote except if you don’t have time or don’t want to.
Minority Leader Pelosi’s office has just released the following statement on her brief hospitalization early today in Italy … Read More
Newspaper published photos of US soldiers posing with dead Afghan civilian.
Speaker John Boehner is struggling to find a position on Libya as Washington Republicans are divided between aggressive support for intervention and opposition to it.