Libya Conflict Quotes

President Chavez has always been a loyal friend of Gaddafi, assassinated in the crudest way possible. Europe should think about the bombings and the destruction of Libya that filled the country with terrorists. Who's truly ruling Libya's military and sending thousands of armed men to fight in Syria? It's Al Qaeda.

The September 11th, 2012, attacks on the State Department compound in Benghazi, Libya, is important and should be studied because in the big picture, it represents a failed foreign policy that spans across both Bush and Obama Presidencies.

The fact of the matter is that if we were going to do anything about Gaddafi, it should have been at the beginning. And by fooling around like this as long as we have, we have wasted an opportunity that would have gotten rid of him.

The international community unfortunately did take sides in Libya, and we would never allow the Security Council to authorise anything similar to what happened in Libya.

Speaker John Boehner complained that Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military into combat in Libya without clearly defining the mission to the American people and Congress. See, apparently, you're only allowed to do that when invading Iraq.

House Speaker John Boehner says President Obama should have clearly outlined his exact plans before bombing Libya. Apparently it's only Iraq where you don't have to do that.

Libyans are deeply unsettled by Gaddafi and his regime's careless contempt for human life. The dictatorship is willing to employ any methods necessary to remain in power.

Recall that Hillary Clinton was all for toppling [Moammar] Gadhafi then didn't listen to her own people on the ground. And then of course, when she lied about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, she invited more terrorist attacks.

Look at what Hillary Clinton did in Libya with Gadhafi. Gadhafi's out. It's a mess. And, by the way, ISIS has a good chunk of their oil. I'm sure you probably have heard that. It was a disaster.

China gets their oil from Libya. Why isn't China involved? They're going out spending billions of dollars a day on trying to take over the world economically. And we're spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on policing the world. Why isn't China involved with Libya? That - we don't get oil from Libya, China does.

A nuclear program has arguably worked as a deterrent for North Korea and other states - would Moammar Gadhafi have been deposed and summarily killed if Libya had had nuclear weapons? Iranians might not think so.

[John] Bolton was an advocate for regime change in Libya, so was Hillary Clinton actually. And Donald Trump said it was a mistake. I agree it was a mistake to do regime change in Libya. We became more endangered and actually worse people took over afterwards.

The United States is sending its most powerful drone to Libya. That’s a long trip for Joe Biden.

We also need to look at precedent before making these decisions. Instead of listening to Muammar Qaddafi's rhetoric, we should look at how he's behaved. The fact is he's been making concessions recently. He gave up his nuclear weapons. He allowed hundreds of Americans to evacuate Tripoli. Did he crack down on his people who revolted? Yes, but that's not so unusual. For me, it's always a failure of diplomacy. Our willingness to immediately turn to a military solution is disturbing.

The hour of the liberal interventionists like Hillary Clinton in Libya, like the neocons' hour of power in the GOP, is over.

Both China and Russia felt duped by the U.N. 'no-fly' zone resolution regarding Libya in 2011 that eventually led to the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. China and Russia had abstained from the Libyan resolution, and neither country plans to make what they regard as a similar mistake again.

We're not getting involved in terms of sending ground forces into Libya. Let's be clear about that. And indeed the UN Resolution forbids that. It says no foreign occupation of any part of Libya.

The question was never whether the United States, E.U., NATO, Arab League, U.N. Security Council, and African Union could together using economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and military attacks to bring Qaddafi down. The question was always how much time, how much blood, and what damage to NATO.

I wish we had been doing diplomatic security in Benghazi. I can tell you that Benghazi would not have happened if Blackwater were on the job there.

Clinton considers the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya to be one of her finest hours as secretary of state. President Obama considers it one of his worst failures.

I think we ought to use the same formula that we used when we took out Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. We have unique resources that no other country has, especially in the air. Intelligence and the ability to find where things are. I think the governments need to get together, because this is getting very serious.

I was opposed to the U.S. involvement in Libya from the very start. President Obama has never made a compelling national security case on Libya.

Time is not on Gaddafi's side. People ask about the exit strategy. It's Colonel Gaddafi who needs an exit strategy because this pressure will only mount and it will be intensified over the coming days and weeks.

We are making progress militarily, there is no doubt about that. You've seen the reports from Misrata, although reports of the Gaddafi forces completely pulling out of Misrata seem to be exaggerated.

Of course, there is no question that Libya - and the world - will be better off with Gaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.