(I'm going to make this a reocurring thread since the flip flops are so common)
THEN: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R), SC, loving it up with Mohammar Ghadaffi in August 2009:
NOW:
Today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who accompanied McCain on that August 2009 trip to Libya, flashed a similar bit of amnesia. Like McCain, he invoked Gadhafi's support for terrorism in the 1980s -- including the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed dozens of Americans -- as a reason the U.S. should now "drop a bomb on him."
This was during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Secretary of Defense Bob Gates was testifying. Here's the exchange (see the video here, starting around the 98:30 mark):
GRAHAM: Is Gadhafi the legitimate leader of the Libyan people in your eyes, legally? And if he's not, would it be unlawful for a nation including ours to drop a bomb on him, to end this thing?
GATES: Well, President Reagan tried that.
GRAHAM: Well that doesn't mean we shouldn't try again. I'm asking this in all seriousness. I don't believe this man is the legitimate leader of the Libyan people. I believe he's an international terrorist, unlawful enemy combatant, then we're within our bounds as a nation -- and our coalition partners -- to take the fight to him and his cadre of supporters. Is that on the table or not?
Then there's Sen. John McCain, (R), LaLaLand, who accompanied Graham on the trip to Libya:
Speaking on CBS' "The Early Show" today, McCain twice cited the fact that Moammar Gadhafi has "American blood on his hands" as a reason the U.S. should try to oust the dictator. McCain specifically referred to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which was indeed carried out by a Libyan agent.
What McCain is apparently forgetting is that, apart from the past few weeks, the last decade has been a period of rapprochement between the United States and Libya. It started with President Bush announcing in 2003 that Gadhafi had agreed to give up his "weapons of mass destruction" programs. In 2006 Bush removed Libya from the official list of state sponsors of terrorism. In September 2008 Condoleezza Rice traveled to Libya to have talks with Gadhafi. And just a few days before the 2008 presidential election, Bush signed a settlement under which Libya compensated families of victims of Lockerbie and other '80s-era attacks.