Did Obama avert a bloodbath in Libya?

The following article appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

April 3, 2011
The Chicago Tribune

Did Obama avert a bloodbath in Libya [

Panicking over a dubious threat

By Steve Chapman

Remember when a crusading president, acting on dubious intelligence,
insufficient information and exaggerated fears, took the nation into a
Middle Eastern war of choice? That was George W. Bush in 2003, invading
Iraq. But it’s also Barack Obama in 2011, attacking Libya.

For weeks, President Obama had been wary of military action. What obviously
changed his mind was the fear that Moammar Gadhafi was bent on mass
slaughter ‹ which stemmed from Gadhafi’s March 17 speech vowing “no mercy”
for his enemies.

In his March 26 radio address, Obama said the United States acted because
Gadhafi threatened “a bloodbath.” Two days later, he asserted, “We knew that
if we waited one more day, Benghazi ( a city nearly the size of Charlotte
(N.C.) ) could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the
region and stained the conscience of the world.”

Really? Obama implied that, absent our intervention, Gadhafi might have
killed nearly 700,000 people, putting it in a class with the 1994 genocide
in Rwanda. White House adviser Dennis Ross was only slightly less alarmist
when he reportedly cited “the real or imminent possibility that up to a
100,000 people could be massacred.”

But these are outlandish scenarios that go beyond any reasonable
interpretation of Gadhafi’s words. He said, “We will have no mercy on them”
‹ but by “them,” he plainly was referring to armed rebels (“traitors”) who
stand and fight, not all the city’s inhabitants.

“We have left the way open to them,” he said. “Escape. Let those who escape
go forever.” He pledged that “whoever hands over his weapons, stays at home
without any weapons, whatever he did previously, he will be pardoned,
protected.” . . .