White House

White House Announces Punishment For Libya, Muammar Gaddafi

By Michael Scherer | @michaelscherer | February 25, 2011 | +

At the top of the White House briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney announced a number of steps the U.S. is taking against Muammar Gaddafi. These include:

–Suspending embassy operations in Tripoli. (A charter plane with U.S. personnel has departed for Istanbul.) “It has been shuttered,” says Carney. [UPDATE: Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management at the State Department, clarified in a later briefing Friday afternoon that the U.S. flag still flies over the diplomatic compound in Tripoli. "The embassy is not closed," he said. "Operations are suspended." He said the U.S. was continuing diplomatic relations with the Libyan regime "by other means," including Libyan employees who continue to work at the Embassy. "We did not break diplomatic relations," he said.]

–Suspending the limited military cooperation with Libya.

–Moving forward with unilateral (though still unannounced) sanctions against the Libyan regime, as well as unannounced multilateral sanctions.

–Instructing U.S. and international banks to pay particular attention to inappropriate movements of money by regime elements.

–Pursue the removal of Libya from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

–Use the full resources of the U.S. Intelligence community to track the behavior of the Gaddafi regime to make sure evidence is collected of atrocities.

“It is clear that Col. Gaddafi has lost the confidence of his people,” Carney said, going far beyond previous statements. “His legitimacy has been reduced to zero in the eyes of his people.”

More announcements are expected soon about the specific sanctions.

Related Topics: arab spring, White House

  • Latest on Swampland

    Pete Souza / The White House via Getty Images
    Closeup May 25, 2012

    Political Picures of the Week, May 18-25

    TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures of the past week from the Beltway and beyond.

    From our Partners

    Obama Administration Blocks Global Health Fund To Fight Disease In Developing NationsHuffPost Politics

    From left: AP; ABACAUSA
    2012 Election May 25, 2012

    The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy

    More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.

  • afguy

    Ten years or more too late A day late, a dollar short…
    .
    What happens when you think with your “oil pipeline” instead of a set of principles…
    .
    There’s an awful lot there that he shouldn’t have party to in teh first place.

  • acameronw

    Here’s a question for Mr. Carney:

    “What the f*** is Libya doing on the United Nations Human Right Council in the first place?”

  • afguy

    He was a pariah once but we let him “slide” back into polite society because he had lots of that “black gooey stuff” (name of it is on the tip off my tongue).

  • afguy

    If I recall, this was something called “constructive engagement”… give him a seat at the table with the “nice folks” and he’ll start to behave more “civilized”.
    .
    At least THAT’s the theory…

  • http://patricksartor.wordpress.com patricksartor

    I understand the concept, but, to me it would be like putting Timothy McVeigh in an advisory post at the ATF or, maybe, putting Freakinpa onto a commission on how to have civil political dialog.

  • nflfoghorn

    Libya’s government, if it ever was, is no longer legit. Why are we treating it as if it is?

  • nflfoghorn

    PS, I think Textee would be a better analogy. He likes to beat up on non-Flox media.

  • afguy

    We did the same thing with mainland China.
    .
    Before Nixon’s trip, they were on our no-trade list. Someone came up with the bright idea that we could kill two birds with one stone.
    .
    (1) We teach them about capitalism by trading with them and they see a free market at work and change. This was always the MAIN talking point about opening up trade with them.
    .
    Item 2, that we could make money hand-over-fist in the process, was brought up as a side benefit. It was considered gauche to bring that up as the main rationale.
    .
    Of course, today, we don’t even try to pretend that (1) is our main and more noble goal. It’s ALL about the money to be made.
    .
    Push on our foreign policy very hard in ANY case and it will always ooze “green” (or “black”).

  • afguy

    “Moral equivalancy” in our foreign policy went out the window at about the same time (maybe a little later).

  • afguy

    Once you’re able to divorce the actions of your friends fromthose you demand of your enemies, it’s a really small step to separate your own actions from those of your enemy.
    .
    And your own actions from your speech. At this point, full-blown hypocrisy on your part is acceptable.
    .
    Sound familiar?

  • freeinpa

    So, in affect, Libya is on double secret probation.
    .
    We won’t need to worry about anyone taking out Gaddafi, he will die laughing.

  • liberalmeltdown

    And make him sit in a corner with a pointy hat on.
    .
    How about we hunt him down and put him on trial for terrorism, since we know that he committed terrorism?
    .
    And Obama still avoids direct criticism of Gaddafi veiled in terms of Libya’s government.

  • liberalmeltdown

    They put Libya on the Human Rights Council, because that’s the kind of stupidity that makes up the UN. That’s why Obama has faith in the “international community.” He knows that they won’t do anything to protect the rights of Americans or people around the world. Obama prefers Kings, Princes, Czars, Ayatollahs…

  • afguy

    Careful, meltdown.
    .
    There’s a awful lot of pics of GWB walking hand-in-hand with members of the Saudi royal family.
    .
    As most of the hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi, shouldn’t THAT be the recipient of a little bit of your vitriol?
    .
    After all, we’ve never taken any action against them.

  • michaelfury

    “Instructing U.S. and international banks to pay particular attention to inappropriate movements of money by regime elements”

    Good luck with that.

    http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/ghosts-in-the-machine/

  • Ivy_B

    For all those who wanted some pronouncement before this, we just got all of the Americans out this morning. Heard some of the diplomats at the UN say they were not representing the government, they were representing the people and were supporting sanctions.

  • fhmadvocat

    Why are we going after Gaddafi? Don’t you guys know that this whole uprising is being lead by Al-Queda? What we really need to do is come to his aid because he is trying to prevent Libya from becoming another Afghanistan!

  • http://tisias.wordpress.com tisias

    Well the state department is probably up to its neck in figuring out how it is going to redefine its inter-governmental relations. In the extreme case of Libya, i think we must establish relations with the opposition government, no matter how fragile or insubstantial it may be.

  • apr2563

    http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/libyas-lobbyists.html
    .
    Randa Fahmy Hudome, one of the first American lobbyists to represent Qaddafi:
    .

    She readily acknowledges the stigma associated with her lobbying past. “It’s a legitimate question—being a highly paid lobbyist working for a terrorist government, isn’t that icky, icky?” she says. But she stresses that she worked for Qaddafi “with the political and legal approval of the Bush administration…[which] encouraged me to help Libya transition from their position as a rogue nation to entering back into the international community.
    .
    … When Qaddafi agreed to give up Libya’s weapons of mass destruction in 2003—so long as the US promised not to push for regime change—the Bush administration “was elated,” Fahmy Hudome says. “Compare that to Iraq, where there were no WMDs. It was in the national security interest of the US to take WMDs out of the hands of a dictator.”
    .
    “The US thinks about itself and its population and its people first. When we sometimes do that, other people are going to have to suffer.”<blockquote

  • outsider2011

    Inflammatory bs? heaven forbid the people of the country actually want to stand up for themselves. Probably the same situation in Egypt, right fhmadvocat? And Tunisia

  • apr2563

    Whoops, I seem to have highlighted everyone’s comments after mine. The power!

  • Ivy_B

    apr, I was quite impressed.
    .
    Trying to think what else would happen if a tag wasn’t closed at the end of a comment.

  • Exiled_At_Home (formerly Neo)

    Sarcasm. It’s not that difficult to spot, outsider. Easy.

  • http://phd9.blogspot.com Paul Dirks

    The end

  • http://phd9.blogspot.com Paul Dirks

    test

  • http://patricksartor.wordpress.com patricksartor

    Apr has the power!
    .
    Now, if you only could find out what key to hit which would banish paid trolls, we’d be doing great.
    .
    Try and see if it works.

  • afguy

    Here’s a test.

  • http://patricksartor.wordpress.com patricksartor

    Try lesser than sign “” and see if that will remove the wingnut trolls.
    . :D

blog comments powered by Disqus