Hillary Clinton supports US special forces in Libya

Hillary Clinton said she supports the Obama Administration's use of U.S. special forces to defeat the Islamic State in Libya.

Clinton's remarks give further confirmation of reports that U.S. special forces are already operating in Libya. UK and French special forces are also reported to be in Libya. Clinton said on Fox News:

“We already are, as you know from the headlines and the stories, using special forces, using air strikes to go after ISIS leaders, We ought to be supporting [Libyans], not only with special forces and air strikes against terrorists, but helping them secure their borders and deal with some of the internal challenges they face.”Clinton has already faced a barrage of criticism for the earlier intervention by the U.S. in Libya that helped overthrow Gadaffi, and her reaction to the attack on the U.S. consular office in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador.

The U.S. special forces are said to be there in an advisory role. Clinton did not make it clear whether in a Clinton administration they could have a combat role. She said she opposes the use of ground troops in Libya. As with the Obama administration, if Clinton becomes president, the special forces will not be issued boots so that there will be no boots on the ground in Libya.

Clinton also defended her support for the overthrow of Gadaffi, claiming there is less strife and fewer casualties than Syria, where Assad remains in power. Though Bernie Sanders actually voted in favor of a resolution calling for an end to the Gadaffi regime, he criticized Clinton on Twitter, saying the U.S. intervention had made the U.S. less safe. As the appended video shows, Hillary admits she was wrong on Iraq.

While Clinton admitted that the Islamic State is now a presence in Libya, she claimed the situation would be much worse it the U.S. had not intervened if the U.S. had not intervened while she was Secretary of State:The current situation is "deeply regrettable," Clinton said at a Fox News televised town hall, with instability created by "squabbling" among Libyan leaders and "forces from the outside." Even so, she pointed out, "the Libyan people have voted twice in free and fair elections for moderate leaders."The turnout for the second election in June of 2014 was 18 per cent according to Wikipedia. In November the Libyan Supreme Constitutional Court declared the elections unconstitutional and the House of Representatives (HoR), the internationally recognized government, invalid. The international community and the HoR dismissed the ruling as having been forced upon the court. There is no mention of Haftar's attempted coup.

Clinton claimed that if it had not been for the U.S. intervention, Libya would be like Syria:"When I look at this, an absence of action by NATO, by Arab League members, would have probably turned Libya into Syria, which I think would have been an even more dangerous situation. I think maybe 1,500 people were killed last year [in Libya] compared to probably 150,000 in Syria."She also noted the UN was leading an effort to create a "unity government" in Libya "enabling the people of Libya to get what they voted for." She does not point out that they will not get to vote on the UN-brokered Government of National Accord (GNA) or that the the government they did vote for the HoR has failed several times to vote confidence in the GNA.