Led into war by a president who can't be trusted

Just quit Obama.  The 25% of your kind in this Nation have failed and so have you.  Obama = War Monger.  Good job.

Americans will have a hard time supporting President Obama's war in Libya -- because the United States is already fighting two wars, because the president never publicly made the case for involvement, because Congress never authorized the war, and because there are no identifiable American interests.

But just as important, for those Americans paying close attention, is the growing realization that the president can't be trusted. His assurances that America's military role in Libya will be limited in scope and duration carry little weight after the lies and evasions of his top aides. Not even a week into our war on Libya, the White House has already peppered Americans with a handful of falsehoods, equivocations and misleading statements.

On Tuesday, for instance, Obama was asked by Spanish-language Univision about an "exit strategy" from Libya. "The exit strategy," Obama said, "will be executed this week -- in the sense that we will be pulling back from our much more active efforts to shape the environment. We will still be in a support role. We will be supplying jamming, intelligence and other assets unique to us."

It depends on what the meaning of "exit" is, I guess. ABC News White House reporter Jake Tapper responded to Obama's word games: "Planes in the air? Ships in the Mediterranean? Intelligence being provided? Doesn't sound like an exit strategy at all." But it was a typical Obama play of redefining words to mean something they have never meant before.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also falsely downplayed our role in this war. "We did not lead this," Clinton said of Operation Odyssey Dawn. But Vice Adm. Bill Gortney of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sure made it sound like we did: "In these early days, the operation will be under the operational command of Gen. Carter Ham. ... And the commander of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn ... is Adm. Sam Locklear."

Gortney had his own moment of prevarication, speaking Saturday of "over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from both U.S. and British ships and submarines. ..." Turns out the Brits had fired two of those missiles. That's like talking about the time the NBA's Michael Jordan (69 points) and John Paxson (two points) poured in 71.

It's understandable the administration would want to downplay the U.S. role -- Americans have little appetite for another war, and so this White House wants to pretend this isn't a war. But official deception just means people can't trust the administration when it says the U.S. is pulling back or drawing down.

One of the starkest instances of Obama administration deception on Libya came from an unnamed "senior administration official" regarding the clear clash between this unauthorized entry into an offensive war and an emphatic statement Obama made in 2007: "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

When the Wall Street Journal pressed the administration official on this, the official claimed that Obama's campaign trail comments referred to "an invasion like we saw in Iraq." But that wasn't the question. Very simply, President Obama's actions don't match candidate Obama's rhetoric, but the administration twists words and facts to try and hide any discrepancy.

In domestic policy, this game has been played plenty of times: Obama makes a promise, Obama breaks the promise, Obama plays Clintonian word games to pretend he kept his promise.

Remember this?: "If you make less than $250,000 a year, you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime." Obama raised tobacco taxes by April, and then under Obamacare he signed a tanning tax and authorized a fine -- which his lawyers say is really a tax -- on uninsured Americans, eliminated tax deductions for over-the-counter medications, and nibbled away at other tax deductions used by middle-class families. Yet still, Obama told Bill O'Reilly in February, "I haven't raised taxes once."

He pulled a similar stunt on lobbyists. "They won't work in my White House," he said. Then he hired more than 50 ex-lobbyists in top jobs, including Cabinet secretaries. Still, in his State of the Union, Obama said, "We have excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs." When I pressed on this, a White House spokesman said, "As the president said, we have turned away lobbyists for many, many positions."

This is a president who apparently does not mind twisting words and flatly misleading his people. On tax deductions and the revolving door, this sort of prevarication is offensive.

On matters of war, Obama's tenuous relationship with the truth is far more disturbing.

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