NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US Troop Deployment in Cameroon Partially a Consequence of Libya War.

The U.S. intervention in Libya got a brief mention at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate. Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner, defended the decision of the Obama administration, while she was secretary of state, to launch a military campaign in Libya, calling it a humanitarian intervention done at the behest of European and Arab power and an example of “smart power at its best.”

Responding to criticism about the intervention from Jim Webb, another Democratic presidential candidate, Clinton said Obama “made the right decision” on Libya because it brought democracy to the country, which, she noted, held its first free election since 1951. The elections last year were marked by low turnout and clashes between government forces and militants in Benghazi.

A United Nations report released last year, meanwhile, warned of a “considerably deteriorated” security situation in Libya, with the unsecured arms of the former Qaddafi regime (“we came, we saw, he died,” Clinton joked in 2011 even as the Obama administration insisted regime change wasn’t a goal of the intervention) making their way across the region, from Nigeria to Syria, exacerbating conflicts in the region.

Libya: Hillary’s war of choice, waged without Congressional authorization, that destabilized a country, flooded Europe with refugees, and created a haven for Islamists.