Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi in Washington, D.C., Oct. 22, 2015. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
In comments that are sure to draw the ire of her Republican critics, Hillary Clinton sought to contrast the war in Iraq with the intervention in Libya during her stint as secretary of state.
“I’ve said Iraq was a mistake,” Clinton told Chris Matthews during an MSNBC town hall event on Monday night. “Libya was a different kind of calculation. And we didn’t lose a single person. We didn’t have a problem in supporting our European and Arab allies in working with NATO.”
As Politico noted, Clinton was probably referring to the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 and not the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, where four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed.
Matthews pressed Clinton on what he called the United States’ push for “regime change” in places like Iraq and Libya.
“Now, is Libya perfect? It isn’t,” the former secretary said. “But did they have two elections that were free and fair where they voted for moderates. Yes, they did. So you know, changing from a dictator who has hollowed out your country to something resembling a functioning state and even hopefully more of a democratic one doesn’t happen overnight. And we’ve got to continue to support the Libyan people, to give them a chance, because otherwise you see what has happened in Syria, with the consequences of millions of people flooding out of Syria, with more than 250,000 people killed, with terrorist groups like ISIS taking up almost — huge blocks of territory, as big as some of the states in that area.”
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