US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says Washington wants to see the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi captured or killed. Professor Paul Sheldon Foote says that the Obama administration believes this killing would be a justified one.
The statement came during her surprise visit to Libya at a meeting with senior members of the country's National Transitional Council.She has also pledged millions of dollars in new aid, including medical care for wounded fighters and additional assistance to secure weaponry, which many fear could fall into the hands of extremists.Most of the new aid money will go toward finding and destroying thousands of Gaddafi-era shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles that are unaccounted for since the fighting began. "The United States was proud to stand for you in your fight for freedom and we will continue to stand with you as you continue this journey," Clinton proclaimed during talks with National Transitional Council Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril and interim leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil.Addressing leaders of the interim body, Clinton noted that the fighting wasn't over yet but vowed that NATO would continue to protect civilians as long as the threat continues.Clinton is the most senior American official to visit Libya since the uprising against Gaddafi began in February and only the second secretary of state to visit in the past 50 years. Speaking of the legitimacy of killing Colonel Gaddafi, Professor Paul Sheldon Foote from California State University says that if it is okay for Americans to kill current leaders, they will not have any problems with killing former ones.“Warmongers in the Obama administration will argue that he [Gaddafi] is a former leader and therefore he’s fair game,” he declared. “Don’t forget who Hilary Clinton is. In 2008 as a candidate for president she threatened to kill every man, woman and child and turn Iran into a waste basket.”Foote believes that behind this unannounced visit there is the desire of the Obama administration to put some American ‘fingerprints’ on the success.“In addition to saying that they’ve killed Bin Laden, they want to say next year in Obama’s campaign for re-election that they’ve brought a great victory in Libya,” he said.
Keith Harmon Snow, a war correspondent and independent investigator, believes that killing Gaddafi would be an illegal targeted assassination and that there is obviously a hidden agenda behind Hilary Clinton’s apparently spontaneous visit.“There is a lot of fighting in Libya at present and almost everything we’ve been told, everything we’ve seen, is false. We are getting just a complete propaganda story of what’s going on in Libya,” he said. “Why is she there? Clearly to make it look to the American public like we are in absolute control of Libya. Cover up the atrocities, put a white, clean, shiny, happy, lovely face on the death and destruction.”
Watch full interview with Keith Harmon Snow