No, we also hadn’t heard of it.

We learn from this article by Terry Jeffrey that it was the anti-Gaddafi rebel force. Some of its savages, we reckon, including al-Qaeda members, murdered US Ambassador Stevens in Banghazi last month.

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they made it clear that the only time the president would have the authority to use military force without prior authorization from Congress was when, as James Madison recorded in his notes from the Constitutional Convention, it was necessary to “repel sudden attacks.”

It was thus fittingly symbolic that when Barack Obama announced he had ordered the U.S. military to intervene in Libya’s civil war, he did not do so from the Oval Office or the well of the U.S. House of Representatives, but from the capital city of Brazil.

In that speech, delivered March 19, 2011, Obama repeatedly used the first-person pronoun, I, in explaining who had decided America would intervene in Libya.

“Today I authorized the Armed Forces of the United States to begin a limited military action in Libya in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians,” Obama said. “I want the American people to know that the use of force is not our first choice, and it’s not a choice that I make lightly,” said Obama.

On what authority had I, Barack Obama, taken America into war?

“In this effort, the United States is acting with a broad coalition that is committed to enforcing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which calls for the protection of the Libyan people,” Obama said from Brazil. …

The U.N. Security Council’s permanent members include not only the United States, France and Great Britain, but also Russia and the People’s Republic of China, which, according to Obama’s State Department, is still governed by communists. In 2011, the Security Council also included Bosnia and Herzegovina, Columbia and Gabon, Nigeria and Lebanon, Portugal and South Africa, and the government of Brazil, which hosted Obama’s war announcement.

Obama’s case was plain: The governments of these nations – not the constitutionally elected representatives of the American people – had given him authority to decide whether America would go to war in Libya, and he had decided America would go to war in Libya. …

But what did Obama know about the revolutionary forces in Libya, the so-called “thuwar”, before he ordered the U.S. military to take up their cause? What sort of prudential analysis had he done about the potential aftermath of this intervention? What consideration had he given to who would restore order and security in Libya and how they would do it? Why did he believe a truly representative government in Libya was likely let alone possible? …

We now know that the revolutionary forces in Libya started committing war crimes even before Obama ordered the U.S. military to intervene on their behalf.

On March 2, the U.N. International Commission of Inquiry on Libya  published its report on human rights violations there. “The Commission received reports of executions by the thuwar  …  War crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by thuwar and that breaches of international human rights law continue to occur in a climate of impunity, … acts of extra-judicial executions, torture, enforced disappearance, indiscriminate attacks and pillage. [But] no investigations have been carried out into any violations committed by the thuwar.”

Had Obama followed the U.S. Constitution and sought congressional authorization for his use of force in Libya, the members of Congress who voted for such an authorization would have shared the responsibility for what that intervention helped bring about. As it is, the responsibility for exceeding his constitutional authority and intervening in a civil war he did not understand lies solely and deservedly with Obama himself.

At least insofar as he is answerable to the American people. But he could claim that the UN was the Big Chief who gave the orders. If he did, he would be confessing that he is a mere lackey of that appalling institution. He does not confess it. He does what he always does in a crisis: nothing. And he knows the mainstream media will protect his inaction by reporting almost nothing about the horrific events in Libya.

Here the thuwar introduces itself. No need to watch all of it. It’s just a loud unjustified boast. That lot would never have won the fight against Gaddafi without American and European intervention. Obama made their triumphalism possible. For which they have had their revenge on Obama’s ambassador.