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On "This Week," ABC News' Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Gates, "Do you think Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States?"
"No, no," Gates said in a joint appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, their first since the Libya operation began. "It was not -- it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about. The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake."
The problem was that any intervention which helped the rebels mean't that we were committed to regime change but with no real knowledge of what we were replacing it with. For the Europeans I can see how it is a potential vital interest given the proximity to Europe. But we should have left it to them and kept out of it.
Funny that the Europeans kept out of the revolution in Tunisia,and didn't intervene in Egypt...only in Libya.
Oddly enough,Libya is where a lot of France's oil comes from.
I expect most european nations think it is their business to interfere in other nations internal affairs,as long as it isn't their OWN internal matters.
The US needs to mind it's own business. Let the Arab League handle their own problems their own way. Enough countries are pissed at us now and we have lost far too many young men and women between Iraq and Afghanistan.
Whaaaaaat? You mean every action that happens in any remote region of the world isn't a direct national security threat to America? When did that happen?
Still trying to make excuses I see. Face it Sport, Obama pulled a Bush and you guys simply cannot come to grips with reality.
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