Some Thoughts on Libya. I left some comments at an article on AOL News, "US Closes Libya Embassy, Freezes Gadhafi Assets", today. I think there were more than the 29 I show below. The word-processing program into which I copied my comments, WordPerfect 11, has been crashing several times a day recently. I don't know why. So I may have lost some comments I hadn't stored.

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Libya is 97% Sunni, and its Shiite population is too small even to mention. The Middle East comprises many countries, not one.
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No, Obama is Christian.
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You don't need "weapons of mass destruction" to kill a great many people.
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Human rights IS our business, no matter where.
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The Libyan situation is only about a week old, and Obama has been actively consulting with allies, UN officials, etc. "Paralysis of analysis" may sound nifty, but it means nothing in the real world. Should we act WITHOUT analysis? That would be supremely stupid.
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Kindly point out an impeachment of a Republican President by Democrats. Republicans impeached Clinton but lost in the Senate. Republicans are so rabidly anti-Democratic -- and antidemocratic -- that they will do extremely irrational and universally destructive things in opposition.
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Kindly stop making up quotes for the President. Cite a reputable news source for "quotes". Since Obama never told Republicans to "sit in the back seat", you CANNOT find a reputable source.
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NO, Bush attacked Iraq on the pretense that it was a danger to US, because it had Weapons of Mass Destruction and was working on nuclear weapons and means to deliver them to U.S. territory. Pls do not revise, after the fact, the claims made to justify the Iraq invasion.
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Kindly stop the rabid anti-Arab propaganda. Arabs want to abolish the STATE of Israel, and merge "Israel" back into a secular, unified Palestine. The assertion that Arabs (only about 230M not 500M) want to kill all the Jews is SLANDEROUS nonsense. The Soviet Union was "wiped off the map" but that did not kill ANYONE.
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So you think the U.S. should steal from the people of Libya, do you? What a contemptible thing for you to say.
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Absolutely false. The UN is probably far more honest than just about any government on Earth. It has so many critics that it is watched like a hawk.
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Iran does NOT have nuclear weapons, but it DOES have an absolute RIGHT to send ships thru the Suez Canal.
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Reagan made ONE attack against Qaddafi, that killed a little adopted dauter, not Muammar himself. Then Reagan left Qaddafi in place, which is why we have this problem today. Reagan also ran out of Lebanon with his tail between his legs.
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Obama was born to a Christian mother and atheist father. He did not convert. As for converting Qaddafi, Obama is a political officeholder. He is not a preacher.
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The world would be a lot safer a place if every time the U.S. was tempted to invade this place, that place, or another, we warned people in advance that if we take over, we are NEVER lea[v]ing, but will indeed make each such country a territory of our Union and prep it for statehood.
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Don't think that the electon of Obama DIDN'T have an impact on people's perceptions of the possible in that part of the world.
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How much do you think can and should be done in little more than a week, when you have hundreds of Americans who could be seized as human shields? If a YEAR from now, the Obama Administration has done nothing and Qaddafi is still in power, then you will be entitled to complain.
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Sanctions brought down apartheid in South Africa and moderated the behavior of other regimes. The embargo on Cuba was by ONE country, the United States. Europe and Canada, not just the Soviet Bloc, subsidized Castro's Cuba. And you really must not speak of "a free society" and China in the same comment.
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U.S. influence in training and working with the Egyptian military played a MAJOR role in the defection of that military from the Mubarak regime. Unfortunately, as you point out, we had no such decades-long influence on Libya's military.
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Most U.S. imported oil is from the Western Hemisphere. If Canada and Mexico were part of the United States, we would be "energy independent" even before we develop nonrenewable energy extensively. [Oops! That plainly should have been "renewable", not "nonrenewable". I just washed my hands, and can't do a thing with them.]
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The UN "police action" rolled back the North Korean invasion of South Korea. Why has everyone forgotten that?
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Obama is NOT a Moslem, and saying, a million times, that he is won't make it true. All it does is discredit everyone who says it.
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Nonsense. The Administration has been in active discussions with all kinds of people seeking advice and ascertaining what the international community should, can, and is will[ing] as a practical matter, to do. How long do you think it takes to rally international organizations and assemble a coalition? 4.2 minutes?
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If he [Obama] were hunched over, you'd crit[ic]ize. If he made eye contact with everyone, you'd say he's working the crowd. You fool no one. You hate him for no reason, so we know what's behind your slanders. He became President because almost 10 million more Americans voted for him than for John McCain.
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Not so long ago, the bulk of Latin America was controlled by dictators, and one revolution led to another dictator, which led to another dictator, which led to another revolution. The people of that region were incapable of sustaining a democracy. Now the bulk of this hemisphere, with almost no exceptions except Cuba, is democratic. People can learn, esp. when helped by the world's oldest and strongest democracy.
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It's been very little more than a week since this revolt in the streets erupted. It is very, very premature to predict inaction, esp. in lite of the President's consultations with allies and the UN, and his statements that are tantamount to saying Qaddafi must step down.
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Do you have ANY hard information about the educational level or anything else about the people of Libya?
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Tell that [that the UN is useless] to the people of South Korea, who were saved from Communis[m] by a UN "police action" led by but not fought only by, the United States.
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Countries have embassies as listening posts and ways to communicate with people, to avoid unwise decisions based on ignorance. We had a very large embassy in Moscow during the Soviet era.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,439 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM