politico.com
Hillary Clinton sought to shift blame for the messes in Libya and Syria Thursday, suggesting the chaos in those two Arab Middle Eastern countries was President Barack Obama’s fault.
Criticized by Sanders for spearheading the push to overthrow Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, Clinton defended her actions and noted that it was Obama, not she, who ultimately made the call to intervene.
"The decision was the president's. Did I do the due diligence? Did I talk to everybody I could talk to? Did I visit every capitol and then report back to the president?" she said. "Yes, I did. That's what a secretary of state does. But at the end of the day, those are the decisions that are made by the president to in any way use American military power, and the president made that decision and, yes, we did try without success because of the Libyans' obstruction to our efforts, but we did try and we will continue to try to help the Libyan people."
Sanders acknowledged that he had voted in favor of the intervention, but then returned to his critique of Clinton's judgment.
"But that is very different from getting actively involved to overthrow and bring about regime change without fully understanding what the consequence of that regime change would be," he said. "Second of all, I know you keep referring to Barack Obama all night here, but you in Syria, you in Syria talked about a no-fly zone, which the president certainly does not support, nor do I support because, a) it will cost an enormous sum of money, [and] second of all, it risks getting us sucked into perpetual warfare in that region."
“Yes, when I was secretary of state, I did urge along with the Department of Defense and the CIA that we seek out, vet and train and arm Syrian opposition figures so that they could defend themselves against Assad,” Clinton responded. “The president said no. Now, that's how it works. People who work for the president make recommendations and then the president makes the decision.”
“So I think it's only fair to look at where we are in Syria today and, yes, I do still support a no-fly zone because I think we need to put in safe havens for those poor Syrians who are fleeing both Assad and ISIS and so they have some place they can be safe,” she continued.
In another seeming criticism of Obama, Clinton said earlier: "Nobody stood up to Assad and removed him, and we have had a far greater disaster in Syria than we are currently dealing with right now in Libya."
In an interview with Fox News that aired over the weekend, Obama was asked to name the "worst mistake" of his presidency.
"Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya," he answered.
