From Libya to Syria

There was a bit in the last debate between Clinton and Sanders where she tired to stick him with having voted for "regime change" in Libya. But, according to this post from Marcy Wheeler, he didn't vote to take Qaddafi out. (Not to mention, she voted for the same thing.)

[The resolution Sanders endorsed] certainly called for Qaddafi to resign and transfer power to a democratic government. It even endorsed the “outreach” — which ultimately involved barely covert support for rebels — as a means to “transition to a legitimate democratic government.” And it called for the UNSC to take further action, which it did weeks later in calling for a no-fly zone. Famously, Russia and China only permitted that resolution to pass because Susan Rice had led them to believe it did not entail regime change (which is why Russia refused to play along with multilateral efforts to do something about Bashar Assad’s massacres).

  Emptywheel

I hadn't seen that bit of information before. Why is it that our government continues to bait and switch, and flat out mislead people it claims to be negotiating with? It has consequences. But of course, in public, in American press, they can claim that the other side - Russia in this (and other) cases - is the bad guy. Oh, didn't we mention that we lied to them on that last deal?