Not surprisingly, the New York Times lead editorial today praised President Obama’s speech Monday night on Libya. The editorial claimed he made a “strong case” for America’s military intervention.

For the reasons I describe in more detail in my Front Page article today, Obama’s speech did little to dispel the fog surrounding his objectives and endgame. But I want to focus here on two themes the Times emphasized in its laudatory review of Obama’s speech.

First, the Times bought Obama’s argument that if we had not intervened in Libya other dictators would conclude that

violence is the best strategy to cling to power

Iran has long since reached that conclusion, bolstered by the Obama administration’s passivity while dissenters were being killed or beaten in the streets of Tehran and other cities. Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad, whom the Obama administration has tried to court as a potential ‘reformer,’ has drawn the same lesson from Obama’s passivity in the face of the Syrian regime’s slaughter of its own people.

Some dictators have also concluded from Qaddafi’s experience, in giving up his nuclear weapons program and finding himself under attack by the West, that they need nuclear weapons to deter such an attack against their own regimes. Perhaps the Times‘ editors should have more carefully considered this report about North Korea’s reaction to the Libyan intervention appearing in the Times on March 24th:

A North Korean statement that Libya’s dismantling of its nuclear weapons program had made it vulnerable to military intervention by the West is being seen by analysts as an ominous reinforcement of the North’s refusal to end its own nuclear program.

Second, the Times bought Obama’s argument that, while handing over command responsibility to NATO and allowing the war to be “run internationally,” the United States must continue to remain involved in the fight against Qaddafi.

The Times editors, like Obama himself last night, say that the looming humanitarian catastrophe in Benghazi we went into Libya to prevent has been successfully averted:

Mr. Obama could report encouraging early progress on the military and diplomatic fronts. Washington and its allies have crippled or destroyed Colonel Qaddafi’s anti-aircraft defenses, peeled his troops back from the city of Benghazi — saving potentially thousands of lives — and allowed rebel forces to retake the offensive.

Why, then, can’t we simply declare victory and withdraw?

The Times‘ answer:

To hold their ground and protect endangered civilians, let alone advance, the rebels will likely need air support for quite some time. Mr. Obama was right not to promise a swift end to the air campaign.

In other words, the New York Times accepts the unstated premise of the ‘Obama War’ – that the rebels’ fight against Qaddafi is our fight. Without actually coming out and saying so, the Obama administration is choosing sides in a civil war, which may go on for some time without toppling Qaddafi. Moreover, we are helping an opposition reportedly made up of troops who had fought against our own soldiers in Iraq and are aligned with al Qaeda.

When Barack Obama won the presidential election, the Times editors crowed that Obama’s victory represented

a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies

Now the Times defends Obama’s war of choice in Libya, which has a shifting mission, no clear endgame and puts us into bed with an opposition that had send its forces to kill American soldiers not too long ago. The Times will do virtually anything to prop up their deliverer.

Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

The president’s health care speech last night consisted of discredited canards bookended by emotional manipulation. Between his distortions, token gestures for opponents, and lengthy bouts of tongue-lashing, Barack Obama signaled he will continue pushing forward toward socialized medicine. However, it seems likely he will move incrementally through a final bill that will nationalize health care a year after the next presidential election.

“You Lie!” Let Me Count the Ways

The bulk of his speech consisted of recycled falsehoods long since dismissed. To note the highlights, one can begin with the moment that caught everyone’s attention: Obama’s denial that “our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants,” which provoked Rep. Joe Wilson’s response, “You lie!” (This Joe should not be confused with Ambassador Joe Wilson, an accomplished liar in his own right.)

Obama did lie. The Congressional Research Service found, “Under H.R. 3200, a ‘Health Insurance Exchange’ would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on non-citizens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange.” The Democrats’ plan contains no requirement that patients verify citizenship, just as the National Council of La Raza requested this summer. (Since Obama has yet to deliver on amnesty, he has to offer something.)

More egregious is his promise that nationalized health care would not result in, well, nationalized health care. ”Let me be clear,” the phrase he characteristically utters while muddying the waters. “It [the “not-for-profit public option”] would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance.” A seismic change in the insurance landscape will affect everyone with insurance, and everyone who pays taxes. The Congressional Budget Office found at least 3 million Americans will move from employer-provided insurance to the public “option” by 2016, because their employers will drop their coverage.

Obama vowed, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future.” The Lewin Group reported the House health bill would run a $39 billion deficit in its first decade, rising to more than $1.1 trillion in its second. This plan, according to the CBO, will necessitate “an average increase in premiums” for Part D consumers of 20 percent in ten years.

Not to worry: “Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan,” Obama assures us. This recalls the old liberal smear that Ronald Reagan thought there was a budget line item labeled “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Finally, Obama insisted, “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” FactCheck.org rightly noted, “House and Senate legislation would allow a new ‘public’ insurance plan to cover abortions, despite language added to the House bill that technically forbids using public funds to pay for them.” If this is not rectified, pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak vows to kill the bill – with the help of a bipartisan bloc of 39 other Congressmen.

Playing with Blocs

Stupak’s principled coalition is one of three that has vowed to kill various proposed incarnations of the health care bill. The Drudge Report noted last night the Democratic whip counts two notable factions opposed to the current bill: Blue Dog Democrats worried about socialized medicine and leftists desirous of it. The article counts 57 leftists, including members of the House Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, who have refused to vote for any bill not containing public health care.

Some in Big Labor, too, have spoken out forcefully for socialized medicine. The next president of the 11-million-member AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, said last week, “we won’t support the bill if it doesn’t have the public option in it.” This is no small threat, as labor spent $400 million electing Barack Obama last year. Trumka has vowed to take on Democrats who vote against a public option. However, Teamsters President James Hoffa and SEIU President Andrew Stern, both of the George Soros-financed labor coalition Change to Win, have proven more flexible. (CTW has more than half as many members as the AFL-CIO.) Hoffa asked for something “doable,” and on the eve of Obama’s speech, Stern appeared on MSNBC’s The Ed Show to announce his non-negotiable demands for the final bill; a robust public option was not among them. Still, any union threat to work against an already unpopular Democratic Congress during the midterm elections may prove enough to kill any bill that does not cater to their demands.

…All of which suggests a possible solution.

The Trigger Man

Although he offered a vigorous defense of the public option, Barack Obama backpedalled last night, calling it “only one part of my plan,” “only a means to [an] end, and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal.” Among these, he singled out one: “some have suggested that the public option go into effect only in those markets where insurance companies are not providing affordable policies.”

Maine Republican Olympia Snowe crafted the plan to have the government move forward with the “80 percent” of Obama’s plan “everyone” agrees on. If, after imposing hobbling restrictions on the insurance industry, “affordable” coverage does not materialize, Sen. Snowe says she can “support a public plan which is available from day one – in any state where private plans fail to ensure guaranteed affordable coverage.” Of course, the public option, however it comes about, will produce the results noted above – nationalization of health care, ultimately leading to health care rationing – but they will not be seen for years.

The trigger option is to the health care debate what Rep. Howard Berman’s plan was to Iraq withdrawal proposals: a thoughtful policy with which conservatives disagree that is at least predicated upon measurable criteria. Thus, a centrist Democrat such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska, an opponent of the current public option, backs the idea.

On the other extreme, Rep. James Clyburn, D-SC, also promoted a triggered public option, to begin in 2013, on MSNBC last night. In the meantime, he supports establishing “pilot programs” of public insurance around the country. Clyburn’s support is significant: it means all factions of the Democratic Party can endorse this as a compromise that will result in government health insurance, moving the nation closer to Obama’s goal of Canadian-style, single-payer socialized medicine.

Although MoveOn.org has already filmed an ad against the trigger option, it seems the inevitable final destination of this “reform.”

With the current intraparty split, Obama must watch his highest legislative goal to date die a slow and public death, see that Congress sneak the government option into the final bill during reconciliation (provoking massive backlash in the 2010 elections), or pull the trigger. Of these, the third assures him maximum political coverage: government health care that begins distorting the insurance market after the 2012 election, proposed by a Republican and which enjoys “bipartisan” support.

This looks very much like our future: the slow road to socialized medicine.