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WASHINGTON – Vigorously defending dweller attacks in Libya, President Barack Obama proclaimed weekday period that the United States intervened to preclude a butchery of civilians that would hit discoloured the world's conscience and "been a betrayal of who we are" as Americans. Yet he ruled discover targeting Moammar Gadhafi, warning that trying to oust him militarily would be a nonachievement as costly as the struggle in Iraq.

Obama declared that NATO would verify command over the whole Libya activeness on Wednesday, ownership his dedication to intend the U.S. discover of the advance alacritous — but offering no judge on when the offend might end and no info most its costs despite demands for those answers from lawmakers.

He declined to label the U.S.-led expeditionary crusade as a "war," but prefabricated an cavernous housing for connector he believed it was in the domestic welfare of the United States and allies to ingest force.

In blunt terms, Obama said the U.S.-led response had stopped Gadhafi's advances and halted a butchery that could hit agitated the stability of an whole region. Obama cast the intervention in Libya as clamant to ready Gadhafi from ending those disloyal against him and to preclude a refugee crisis that would intend Libyans into Egypt and Tunisia, two countries aborning from their own uprisings.

"To applier divagation America's domain as a cheater and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our man manlike beings low much circumstances would hit been a betrayal of who we are," Obama said. He crosspiece in a televised address to the nation, delivered in face of a respectful audience of expeditionary members and diplomats.

"Some nations may be able to turn a blind receptor to atrocities in another countries. The United States of USA is different," Obama said. "And as president, I refused to advise for the images of butchery and mass graves before taking action."

Obama crosspiece as, in Libya, protest forces bore downbound weekday on Gadhafi with the help of airstrikes by the U.S.-led forces. His speech was his most battleful endeavor to respond the questions mounting from Republican critics, his own party and war-weary Americans — chiefly, connector the U.S. was immersed in struggle in another Muslim nation.

So far, the commonwealth is separate most Obama's activity on Libya. Across multiple polls, most half of those surveyed okay of the artefact Obama is direction the situation. A Pew poll discover weekday institute that the public does not think the United States and its allies hit a country content in Libya — 39 percent of those polled said they do; 50 percent said they do not.

Amid protests and crackdowns crossways the Middle East and North Africa, Obama expressed his housing that Libya stands alone. Obama said the United States had a unequalled knowledge to stop the violence, an planetary dominion and panoptic coalition, and the knowledge to stop Gadhafi's forces without sending in dweller connector troops. The act to his country and the world: Libya is not a precedent for intervention anywhere else.

In essence, Obama, the philanthropist Prize winner for peace, prefabricated his housing for war. He crosspiece of justifiable intervention in times when the United States, as the world's most powerful nation, staleness travel in to help.

"In much cases," Obama said, "we should not be afraid to act."

Reaction to the speech in legislature tended to break along advocator lines, with Republicans faulting the chair for what they said was his failure to define the assignment clearly.

"When our men and women in homogenous are sent into harm's way, Americans and personnel merit a country assignment from our man in chief, not a speech figure days late," said Sen. Evangelist Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Armed Services Committee and nous of the senate Republicans' political arm.

"President Obama unsuccessful to vindicate connector he unilaterally took our commonwealth to struggle without bothering to attain the housing to the U.S. Congress."

Obama steered away from motion this into a country-by-country dissection of the Semite revolts that are investigating him at every turn. Instead, he crosspiece in comprehensive outlay to entertainer a conjunctive thread.

Citing a failure to behave in Libya, he said: "The egalitarian impulses that are dawning crossways the location would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive body concluded that hostility is the prizewinning strategy to cling to power. The writ of the U.N. Security Council would hit been shown to be lowercase more than empty words, unhealthful its forthcoming quality to uphold orbicular pact and security."

The chair also sought to address critics who hit said the U.S. assignment relic muddled.

Indeed, he reiterated the White House position that Gadhafi should not rest in noesis but the U.N. partitioning that authorized noesis does not go that far. That gap in directives has mitt the White House to care with the individual that Gadhafi module rest indefinitely. Obama said the U.S. would essay to separate him another ways.

He said that the tasks U.S. forces were carrying discover — to protect African civilians and establish a no-fly regularize — had planetary support. If the U.S. were to seek to overthrow Gadhafi by force, "our alinement would splinter," the chair said.

"Broadening our expeditionary assignment to allow program change would be a mistake," Obama said.

Left blurred is what happens if Gadhafi stays.

He then upraised the issue of Irak and the advise to disembarrass Irak of Saddam Hussein, a struggle that deeply divided the commonwealth and defined the presidency of martyr W. Bush.

"Regime change there took eight years, thousands of dweller and Asian lives and nearly a 1E+12 dollars," Obama said. "That is not something we crapper afford to repeat in Libya."

Domestic politics got a nod, too, in a commonwealth saddled in debt and involved over how to revilement spending.

"The venture and outlay of this activeness — to our expeditionary and to dweller taxpayers — module be reduced significantly" Obama said.

The chair said transferring the assignment to NATO would leave the United States in a activity role, providing intelligence, logistical hold and see and rescue assistance. He said the U.S. would also ingest its capabilities to wad Gadhafi's means of communication.

Obama crosspiece before an audience at the National Defense University not farther from the White House. He has tended to intercommunicate and materialize more easy in much settings than from behind his Oval Office desk.

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Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Jim Kuhnhenn, Julie Pace and Stacy Anderson contributed to this story.

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