Senator McCain: Arm Libyan rebels like the Afghans in the 1980s

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McCain: Arm the rebels

Perhaps it's for the best that Senator McCain blundered in the presidential race and chose Sarah Palin as his running mate torpedoing his chance to become President of the United States.

Bad enough that the western powers are involved in a civil war in Libya by providing them with an air force, but AFP is reporting the McCain,who has already sung high praise of the Libyan rebels, believes we should be arming them as well.

He told AFP: "There is a possibility, if not a probability of a stalemate, and that should be of deep concern to us. The United States needs to recognise the TNC [Transitional National Council] as France and Italy have done. They need to get supplies and equipment into the liberation forces and we need to get American air power back into the fight."

But it gets better as McCain, a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee continues: "I think we could do the same thing that we did in the Afghan struggle against the Russians. There are ways to get weapons in without direct US supplying."

McCain is referring to the U.S. arming Afghans, many of them Taliban, in the 1980s. With the luxury of hindsight, I would have guessed that Americans might look back at this as not having worked out so well for the western world. Arm the rebels, who then turn out to be the terrorists we fight. Maybe not such a great idea after all.

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