Military Action

President Obama threatened today to use military action against the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi if he did not stop his advance on the rebels and permit humanitarian assistance to reach Libya. He said the United Nations Security Council resolution, which on Thursday authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians, permitted the use of force. "The resolution will be enforced through military action" if necessary, Obama said from the White House. But he also said that the United States would not deploy ground troops in the north African country.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Thursday ruled out unilateral U.S. military action in Syria even if proof emerges that Syrian forces have used lethal chemical weapons. "This is … an international problem," Obama said at a White House news conference with visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "It's not going to be something that the United States does by itself. And I don't think anybody in the region would think that U.S. unilateral actions … would bring about a better outcome.

President Obama on Tuesday ruled out a unilateral U.S. military campaign to support the beleaguered rebels in Syria, calling such an operation "much more complicated" than the NATO-led air war launched to help protect civilians during the civil war in Libya last year. At a White House news conference, Obama described the shelling and other attacks on civilians and rebel fighters by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad as "heartbreaking and outrageous. " But Obama made it clear that he is not prepared to send U.S. forces to try to stop the carnage in Syrian cities and towns, or to help overthrow Assad, as some Republicans in Congress have urged.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is sending about 200 troops to Jordan, the vanguard of a potential U.S. military force of 20,000 or more that could be deployed if the Obama administration decides to intervene in Syria to secure chemical weapons arsenals or to prevent the 2-year-old civil war from spilling into neighboring nations. Troops from the 1st Armored Division will establish a small headquarters near Jordan's border with Syria to help deliver humanitarian supplies for a growing flood of refugees and to plan for possible military operations, including a rapid buildup of American forces if the White House decides intervention is necessary, senior U.S. officials said.

Seeking to calm a nervous public, Taiwan on Sunday dismissed reports that China is preparing military action over comments by the island's president. The Taiwanese Defense Ministry said no unusual activity by Chinese forces has been seen since President Lee Teng-hui said earlier this month that relations between the two should be conducted on a "state-to-state" basis.

A majority of Americans favor military action against Iraq if international economic sanctions are not effective, and the level of support rises among those who are following the Persian Gulf crisis closely, according to survey results released Thursday.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Monday that Japan, which had expressed support for a U.S.-proposed March 17 deadline for Iraq to disarm or face war, will not help foot the bill for any military action. "We will not bear the burden of paying for war," Koizumi told reporters. However, he said Japan would cooperate in any reconstruction of Iraq, as it is doing in Afghanistan. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Japan contributed $11 billion to the war effort but did not send troops.

Bill Clinton stiffened his support for military action against the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina on Wednesday, suggesting air strikes on Serbian strongholds to end "mass, deliberate, systematic extermination" of civilians. The Democratic presidential nominee equated the situation to Nazi Germany's slaughter of the Jews during World War II and went beyond his previous statements on the use of military power in the region. He said he will seek to coordinate U.N. and U.S.

As the nation braces for a possible ground assault in the Persian Gulf, Orange County residents show overwhelming--and growing--support for both the military effort there and for President Bush's handling of it, a new poll shows. With little distinction between rich and poor, men and women, 87% of county residents taking part in this week's Times Orange County Poll said they approve of the military action now under way against Iraq.

Suppose that, sometime in 1990, U.S. intelligence agencies identify the North African training camp of a band of terrorists that had attacked an American embassy. The Pentagon reports that it can bomb the camp but warns that the raid could result in American casualties and probably would provoke a diplomatic uproar. Would President Bush give the go-ahead? Would President Dukakis?

Here's a prediction I don't think I'll have to apologize for at the end of the year: Some time in the coming months, probably this spring, there will be another crisis over Iran's nuclear program. It's become an annual event on the diplomatic calendar: The United States and its allies press Iran to stop enriching uranium, Iran says no, Israel warns that its patience is running out, and the United States persuades Israel to stay its hand. That's how the crisis has unfolded over the last two years.

GOMA, Congo - Rebels who seized the eastern city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo ignored a deadline set by regional leaders to leave and instead spelled out a long list of demands Tuesday. Officials immediately rejected the conditions set by the M23 rebels, which included the release of political prisoners. The Congolese army threatened military action to take back Goma. "They have refused to leave the city of Goma. This is a declaration of war and we intend to resume combat," military spokesman Olivier Hamuli was reported as saying.

A great power without a significant enemy? That's what the U.S. has become. Osama bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda is reportedly a shadow of its former self. The great regional threats of the moment, North Korea and Iran, are regimes held together by baling wire and the suffering of their populaces. The only incipient great power rival on the planet, China, has just launched its first aircraft carrier, a refurbished Ukrainian throwaway from the 1990s on whose deck the country has no planes capable of landing.

BEIRUT - Turkish officials declared their country does not want to enter a war with Syria, even as lawmakers authorized further military operations against the embattled nation and Turkish artillery struck Syrian positions for a second day. "We have no intention for a war," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told journalists in Ankara, reported the semiofficial Anatolian news agency. "We want only peace and security in our region. " Turkey's retaliatory artillery strikes on Syrian territory have ratcheted up fears that Syria's more-than-18-month civil conflict could trigger a regional war in the volatile Middle East.

Mitt Romney  expressed optimism Friday that Iran  will drop its quest for nuclear weapons without a military strike by the United States or Israel,  and suggested that he and President Obama are largely on the same page when it comes to Iran. Lest that sound like an unusually conciliatory view for a political challenger, Romney did qualify his remarks about Obama, saying that the president has changed his views until they were more in line with the Republican nominee's. Still, his comments represented a bit of a ratcheting down in tone after months of harsh words about the Iranian threat.

WASHINGTON - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu renewed his campaign on Sunday to get President Obama to take a harder line toward Iran over its nuclear program. Netanyahu, appearing on Sunday TV news shows in the midst of a heated presidential campaign, again urged President Obama to draw a "red line" before Tehran. "This is a matter of urgency," he said on CNN's "State of the Union," calling for the kind of action that he said President John F. Kennedy took with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis.

The United States has such a long and unhappy history of military intervention in the Caribbean that President Bush was wise to play it cool when asked whether this country might join an international military effort to restore Haiti's first democratically elected government, ousted Monday in an unwarranted military coup. But diplomatic nuance aside, the President's response didn't mean that some measure of international force to help resolve the Haitian crisis is out of the question.

To no one's surprise, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has used the totalitarian control he enjoys over state-owned television to defeat Milan Panic in the Serbian presidential election. But real support for Milosevic, and for the even more virulent fascism of Vojislav Seselj, is strong enough. And so Panic, returning to his figurehead post as Yugoslav prime minister, is now more superfluous than ever.

BEIRUT - Turkey hinted it would ask its NATO allies to consider Syria's downing of a Turkish jet to be an attack on the entire alliance, as it struggles to craft a response tough enough to satisfy outraged public opinion at home while trying to avoid a slide into war. On the eve of Tuesday's NATO meeting called by Turkey to discuss the incident, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said during a news conference in the Turkish capital that "this...

CORNWALL, Pa. - In hawkish remarks that drew cheers from an audience of religious conservatives, Mitt Romney accused President Obama on Saturday of being more afraid of Israel attacking Iran than of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. The Republican presidential candidate, who frequently attacks the administration for failing to back Israel's government more aggressively, escalated his criticism a notch. He responded with ridicule when asked what he would do, if elected, to strengthen U.S. relations with the Jewish state.