Secondly, no, I did not agree with Qadhafi killing his citizens. Absolutely not.

See, this is why we need a bold, decisive man like Herman Cain as our next president. If you ask most of the candidates the question "Do you agree that a half-crazy, terrorist-supporting, tin-pot dictator killing own citizens is bad?" most of the current crop of candidates would dance around the issue and give a highly-nuanced, wish-washy, "politically correct," equivocal response. Not Herman Cain. He's not afraid to make the bold statement that he does not agree with this sort of thing! Good for him!

Wow.

"I would have done a better job of determining who the opposition is and I'm sure that our intelligence people have some of that information."

How does he know that the President didn't determine who the opposition was? Obviously, the President has intelligence people... just... I don't even.

The joke isn't funny anymore.

performance art at its finest.

Honestly, this doesn't sound all that crazy. He flubs it a bit but in essence he makes two points - one, that we didn't know enough about the opposition group that was to supplant Kaddhafi, and two, while it was important to take measures to stop him from killing his citizens, we can argue about the proper way to have done that.

This is the most rational thing the man has ever said.

Have we reached the limits of Poe's law yet?

I think the more telling aspect of the whole thing is that very clear Cain was trying to remember where he was in his script.

"I do not agree with the way he handled it, for the following reasons - No, that's a different one. (Pauses) I gotta go back, see. (Pauses) Got all this stuff twirling around in my head."

His handlers had told him what his script was, what he was supposed to say, and he forgot it. Happens to a lot of amateur actors.

"I do not agree with the way he handled it, for the following reasons - No, that's a different one. (Pauses) I gotta go back, see. (Pauses) Got all this stuff twirling around in my head. Specifically, what are you asking me, did I agree or not disagree (sic) with Obama?"

I figure at the next GOP debate, Ashton will come out from behind the stage with his trucker cap on and a few cameramen following him.

Quasar: one, that we didn't know enough about the opposition group that was to supplant Kaddhafi

How does he, or you for that matter, know how much "we" knew about the opposition?

no, that's a different one. I gotta go back to ... Got all this stuff twirling around in my head.
[...]
I would have done a better job of determining [...]

I BELIEVE YOU.

How much didn't Hermann know, and when didn't he know it?

Philip Francis Queeg: I'm sure that Newt can explain both sides of the debate about intervening in Libya to him.

lol'd

timujin: Quasar: one, that we didn't know enough about the opposition group that was to supplant Kaddhafi

How does he, or you for that matter, know how much "we" knew about the opposition?

Well, the giveaway might have been the opening weeks of our intervention when nobody knew much about them other than the fact that they were against Qadafi. Historically, these kinds of interventions bite us in the ass.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty liberal guy, I think Cain is a disastrous nightmare of an individual, but I also feel that flubbed lines and stammering aside I don't see anything nutty about what he said. I've said from the get go that leaping into Libya like we did was a mistake, just a smaller scale version of our Iraq debacle. I'd like to think that maybe this is the one time a Middle Eastern leadership overthrow will go our way and in a positive direction for the people of that country, but I find that unlikely.

Until the GOP stops defending idiots like this, and starts elevating the intelligent leaders in their party (and there are still a few), this country is farked.

Instead of being a worthy adversary keeping the Dems in check, the GOP is nothing more than an anchor around our necks. Their solution to almost every problem is to either pretend it doesn't exist, or to take the exact opposite stance as the Dems, even if that means contradicting long-held Republican positions.

LiberalWeenie: What do you expect from the CEO of a pizza company?

Not just any pizza company - the 8th best pizza chain in the USA!

rnld: Quasar: I've said from the get go that leaping into Libya like we did was a mistake, just a smaller scale version of our Iraq debacle.

Yet the GOP claim that Obama waited to long to act.

Gingrich's flip flop was absolutely hysterical. I think it was what, a week or a month between "Obama is a pussy if I were in charge I'd knock over their capitol building with my erect, flag-draped penis" and "getting involved in Libya is a costly miscalculation".

Knara: /the idea that major intelligence agencies weren't keeping tabs on the major players in Libya is laughable on its face

So let's assume for the moment that the administration knew all they needed to know about the otherwise fractured group of rebels swirling around that power vacuum. We (the American people), however, didn't. So what you're saying is you're totally fine with us launching millions of dollars worth of missiles in support of a shadowy group of people we knew absolutely nothing about, deposing a man who despite being a motherfarker for decades we were about ready to sell military equipment to a few months back?

I'm not saying he wasn't a total douche that deserved a SCUD up his ass, but Saddam was as well and that wasn't a good enough reason to get involved in that boondoggle.

PanicMan: There were two sides: the side with tanks and artillery and the side getting blown the f*ck up. Guess which one the international community sided with? Hint: it was the one that wasn't committing war crimes.

The international community doesn't really care about groups committing war crimes unless it's convenient to do so. Otherwise there are a few other uprisings going on with civilian casualties and war crimes that we aren't really giving a shiat about right now. We got involved in Libya because France wanted at their oil. It was convenient to intervene under the guise of the whole "we're just protecting the citizens" initiative. Remember how long that lasted? I think we kept to it for a good week or so before we started launching airstrikes at tank columns a hundred miles away from major cities.

"...about the enemies and the other with the Libyas! Who am I and why am I here?"