Crowley Talking Libya News Today

Are critical, especially for the europeans. >> if you were to look at the middle east in general, is it fair to say that the conflict lens we should look through is energy interests first, and then after we do that weo at the balance of power between iran and saudi arabia and look at those two variables really along with the balance of power with israel to determine which countries we will intervene on behalf of the dictator, which countries we intervene on behalf of the rebels, basically whethe...

Multi-year nation-building exercising as it did in iraq and afghanistan and this was purely a humanitarian military intervention. what happens if you start to see similar crackdowns taking ple inyr,hi h atrg ecen fxtme rcul crackdowns against its sunni population. you dont have energy interests in that country. the united states isnt really in it for the energy in libya but that creates a contradiction in u.s. policy moving forward. i think the u.s. is most concerned about the situation in the p...

Diert. and as president, i refuse to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action. >> all right. president obama, of course, your president and mine, just last night describing his rationale for the mission in libya, a speech that drew swift and harsh responses from opponents for the 2012 presidential election, but they are running for president, what do you think theyre going to say. almost as soon as the president finished, lead republicans were criticizing the speech ...

World that can see some hypocrisy, not just in americas relationship with the middle east, but middle eastern countries see that same hypocrisy. and its clear -- we can navigate it and say, well, you know, bahrain is in our strategic interests. libya is not and theres bad guys and this is just the nature of foreign policy, balance of power, arab/israeli, sunni/shia, this is how its done. but will the people of the middle east accept that hypocrisy where we intervene with one country and dont pro...

Unveiled his obama doctrine last night, just talked about humanitarian coupled with nato and u.n., i mean that leaves a very wide range of possibilities for the future that i personally think the congress needs to get involved with now as we have historically in our country in the past. >> do you think that if there were not energy interests in western europe relative to libya that we would be militarily active in that country today? >> i seriously doubt it. look at some of the countries that we...

That youre saying were going to take a back seat role to nato. we really lead nato so thats kind of disingenuous. these are the things that needed to be debated in congress as they always have in our country. were the branch thats closest to the people and were the ones, as the president said in 2007, should weigh whether or not this threat by libya or what interests we have in libya justifies whether or not we send our men and women into harms way. >> do you feel that the congress understands t...

With the participation of qatar and the uae. now, its certainly not the coalition that we had in the gulf war in 1991, but certainly we are taking action in a critical part of the world and doing so with support of the region and the world. thats important. >> you have come out aggressively in defense of your comments regarding the u.s. militarys treatment of bradley manning subsequent to your resignation. youve been writing about this, talking about this. why so vocal? >> i think actually those...

We act consistent with our interest and our values. we become stronger and we attract partners. when we act inconsistent with our values, our credibility is undermined. >> how do you reconcile, i think, a fairly admirable philosophy that you just articulated with the inherent hypocrisy, for instance, of our policies in the middle east where were pro bebl rebel in a country like libya but were pro dictator in countries like saudi arabia. >> i dont think theyre inconsistent at all. what were pushi...

It was a classified secret. should we not hunt this person down and put them naked next to bradley manning for their breach of classified information in order to reveal this to the associated press? >> well, i dont know about that particular situation. it depends on who the official is and what that person -- >> well, you understand my point. weve got classified information being leaked by one individual and it is viewed -- the accusation is viewed as worthwhile of treating this person as a thir...

We had a debate for a year before we gave the bush administration the authorization. this is the time when people make up their mind whether or not they understand whats really behind whether we go into libya or whether or not we want to send our sons and daughters to go fight for those interests. this is why we need to have the debate. the u.n. authorization is not the kind of authorization that our founding fathers intended for us to go into armed conflict or whatever the administration is cal...