Obama: Gaddafi death is warning to iron-fist rulers2
Washington has demanded that Assad halt his crackdown on democracy protests in Syria and step down, and is pressing Yemen’s longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to leave office in the face of political upheaval.
Obama has also condemned Iran’s human rights record and is seeking further sanctions against Tehran over an alleged foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
“For the region,Longchamp Outlet today’s events prove once more that the rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end,” Obama said.
Obama said the United States would be a partner to Libya’s interim government and urged a swift transition to democracy but made no specific promises of aid.
Relatives of American victims of the flight blown up over Lockerbie by Libyan agents 23 years ago said justice was served with Gaddafi’s death as he fled his hometown and final bastion.
“I hope he’s in hell with Hitler,” said Kathy Tedeschi, whose first husband, Bill Daniels, was among the 270 people killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Politicians across the spectrum also welcomed Gaddafi’s death, which could help Obama undercut Republican efforts to question his national security credentials in his 2012 re-election bid.
Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, who once called Obama’s Libya strategy “muddled,” said, “The world is a better place with Gaddafi gone.”
“The death of Muammar Gaddafi marks an end to the first phase of the Libyan revolution,” said Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee and 2008 Republican presidential candidate.
Senator Carl Levin, a senior Democrat, said, “The success of the Libyan people in rising up to overthrow a tyrant is a blow against dictatorship everywhere.”
Obama had faced criticism for an initially slow response to the Libyan uprising and then set strict limits on the U.S. role in the NATO air assault, which was sanctioned by the United Nations as a means of stopping the massacre of civilians.
But the White House felt its approach bore fruit when rebel forces took Tripoli, and it used Gaddafi’s death to reinforce that argument.
Republicans were not expected to ease their accusations that Obama undermined U.S. global prestige with a “leading from behind” approach to “Arab Spring” popular revolts that have engulfed friends and foes alike.
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, Tabassum Zakaria, John Whitesides, Michelle Nichols; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Peter Cooney)
Processing your request, Please wait....
