The UN and NATO's goal of disabling Gaddafi's ability to use military violence against the Libyan people deserves merit. Any tyrant who uses military forces to subdue and repress the indigenous population cannot be allowed to continue such despotic methods.

By David Swanson
It's a simple point, but an important one, and one that gets overlooked. Whether or not you think a particular war is moral and good, the fact remains that war is illegal. Actual defense by a country when attacked is legal, but that only occurs once another country has actually attacked, and it must not be used as a loophole to excuse wider war that is not employed in actual defense.

By David Swanson
Wouldn't it be kind and generous of us to send the US or NATO or a UN-approved military into Libya to bloodlessly prevent the vicious slaughter of masses of people by a truly evil lunatic? Would it?

By Thierry Meyssan
Tripoli, Libya, Aug. 22, 2011, 1 AM CET
NATO carrying out imperial ambitions of France, UK and US
On Saturday evening, at 8pm, when the hour of Iftar marked the breaking of the Ramadan fast, the NATO command launched its “Operation Siren” against Libya.

By David Swanson
On Wednesday in federal court, 10 members of the U.S. Congress sued President Obama in an attempt to end U.S. involvement in a war in Libya.

By David Swanson
If the U.S. Constitution says one thing, a treaty ratified by the United States says another, a law passed by Congress yet another, and another law passed by Congress another thing still, while a signing statement radically changes that last law but itself differs with an executive order, all of which statements of law conflict with a number of memos drafted by the Office of Legal Council (some secret and some leaked), but a President has announced that the law is something completely different from all of this, and in practice the government defies all of the above including the presidential announcement . . . in such a case, the obvious but possibly pointless question arises: what's legal?

By BiteBack Publishing
Hindsight can be a troublesome thing. I distinctly remember ranting on this very blog about Gaddafi’s barbaric treatment of his own people. I never went so far as to suggest that we should send in the gunboats, so to speak, but rest assured, I thought it. When I read David Cameron’s words to the Kuwaiti Parliament and then again in the UK Parliament, I felt reasurred that we should back the uprising on humanitarian grounds. A popular uprising against four decades of Gaddafi rule being violently quashed by a bloke who, to be frank, I never really liked.