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Obama: Gaddafi must leave Libya now
[Al Jazeera] US President Barack B.O. Obama has said that Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffy has lost his legitimacy to rule and urged him to step down from power immediately.
Can we convince B.O. to do the same???
Obama's call came in a call to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday, sharpening US rhetoric after days of deadly violence and criticism that Washington was slow to respond.

"When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now," the White House said in a statement, summarizing Obama's telephone conversation with Merkel.
Qadaffy wasn't a legitimate ruler since at least 1973.
"The president and the chancellor shared deep concerns about the Libyan government's continued violation of human rights
... which are not the same thing as individual rights, mind you...
 and brutalization of its people."

Previously the White House has stopped short of calling for Qadaffy to leave, saying -- just as in other countries affected by a wave of regional unrest -- only Libya's citizens had a say in choosing their rulers.
Which doesn't mean we can't help them.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another John Jay ...
 echoing Obama's tougher stance, said Libyans had made their preferences on that issue clear.

"We have always said that the (Qadaffy) government's future is a matter for the Libyan people to decide, and they have made themselves clear," Clinton said in a statement.
That shouldn't stop us from helping the Libyan people express themselves, Hilde...
"(Muammar Qadaffy) has lost the confidence of his people and he should go without further bloodshed and violence."

The B.O. regime had been criticised for its relatively restrained response so far to Qadaffy's bloody crackdown on an uprising against his four-decade rule.

But White House officials said fears for the safety of Americans in the country had tempered Washington's response to the turmoil.
That's what they're saying now.
Washington announced a series of sanctions against Libya on Friday after a chartered ferry and a plane carrying Americans and other evacuees left Libya.

Clinton said she signed an order directing the State Department to revoke US visas held by senior Qadaffy government officials, their family members and others responsible for human rights violations in Libya.

"As a matter of policy, new visa applications will be denied," she said.
Posted by: Fred 2011-02-27
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=316974