Wasn't Libya a Success?

As both sides joust over blame about Benghazi one thing has been largely ignored--Libya itself.   The president intervened to stop a possible massacre in Benghazi; our representative was murdered in that very same city in a massacre.   Just a few weeks ago at the DNC John Kerry said the following:

He refused to accept the false choice between force without diplomacy and diplomacy without force. When a brutal dictator promised to hunt down and kill his own people like rats, President Obama enlisted our allies, built the coalition, shared the burden so that today, without a single American casualty, Muammar Gadhafi is gone and the people of Libya are free.

Would Kerry have used that same paragraph had the attack been carried out on the 4th of July?

If Obama were a Republican wouldn't the New York Times be running a daily headline about our "failed North African policy"?   Wouldn't Obama be seen as a reckless cowboy who engaged in an illegal pre-eemptive war based on "lies" (the freedom fighters weren't actually Thomas Jeffersons but more Osama bin Ladens) to secure oil fields?  Wouldn't the TPM blog be aghast at the temerity of a Commander-in-Chief who would use a You Tube clip to hide his shortcomings?  Wouldn't the Daily Kos say "screw em" to the departed souls because they were meddling in a country we overthrew with an illegal war?   You know the answer.  


As the debate unfolds tonight it will be interesting to see what kinds of questions Ms Crowley chooses for Obama pertaining to this subject, and how the president answers them.

AFTERMATH 10/16/12

Romney held his own, but on a couple of issues he lost this debate.  One, Libya.  He completely botched the response by getting himself into the weeds on whether Obama used the word 'terror' on the day after the attack. He did.

Now, everyone knows O was parsing.  His administration went on to blame the movie for three weeks thereafter.   And of course, after saying "no acts of terror" he jetting off to Vegas for a fundraiser, where he generically bashed Romney as if nothing had happened.  Romney did point out that O went to Vegas the next day but got confused on tying it to a terror attack, and it looked bad for the moderator to correct him.  The other thing was not hammering O enough for acting like a candidate instead of a sitting president.  He did a lot of hammering but not enough.  

"ON RECORD"  10/17/12

Rush was all over Romney's comment about getting "on the record" Obama's claim that he called Libya 'terror' on 9/12.  On second thought it might have been crafty, assuming Romney will be allowed to effectively make the case with Schieffer (and assuming SEAL team thirty doesn't spring into action in a few days and bring some movie haters to justice).