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Buzz Cut: Libya debacle casts shadow on Obama war plan Cruz forward: 2016 GOP Power Index Power Play: Goodlatte lays out House immigration plan The campaign without a candidate rolls on Hey, its been very cold lately

LIBYA DEBACLE CASTS SHADOW ON OBAMA WAR PLAN President Obama had better leave some blank spaces in the next draft of his proposal to Congress for a right-sized war to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Key U.S. ally Egypt has now bombed ISIS targets in Libya, which is some 700 miles away from what we were are told is theater of war a distance about the same as that between Pittsburgh and Savannah. (So at least now you know who not to ask for directions.) In the spirit of baseball spring training, maybe the updated version can just say Iraq, Syria, Libya and nations to be named later But before we get to the issue of Egypt bombing an ISIS affiliate in Libya in reprisal for the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians, we might do well to consider how we ended up with an ISIS affiliate in Libya anyway.

[The president is asking for less authority than he has today under previous authorizations. And I dont believe what the president sent here gives him the flexibility, or the authority, to take on this enemy and to win. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Watch here.]

What a difference - Four years ago today, the chatter was also all about Egypt and Libya, but the news was very different. In Egypt, the country was in turmoil in the wake of President Hosni Mubaraks resignation five days earlier under intense pressure from Obama. But the big news was in Libya, where the rebellion against dictator Muammar Qaddafi had just gotten underway the night before in the city of Benghazi. Within 10 days, both Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would call for regime change in Libya. The U.S. would join the civil war on the side of the rebels about a month later. Eighteen months after that, Islamist militants would attack and destroy a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, the city where the rebellion began. Each passing month would bring worse news from Libya as the Islamists who fought in the rebellion took more control over and eventually suffocated the fledgling Western-backed government.

[The presidents outlined a very precise use of our force White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough in an interview with CBS News.]

Bad call - Things looked to be going in the same direction for a time in Egypt. The moderate Islamists who took control after Mubaraks ouster proved to be not-so-moderate after all. As the largest Arab nation was careening toward disaster, U.S. allies in the region successfully pressured the Obama administration to back a restoration last year of the same kind of government Obama had helped unseat four years ago. Libya today is a nightmare state and Egypt is back under the control of the military. It may sound like madness, but dont forget how deeply (and as it would turn out, wrongly) the world swooned at the idea of what was then known as the Arab Spring. The Obama administration took an aggressive stance on the unfolding revolutionary movement that has left the region in even deeper chaos. How real are the chances that the president will again be part of a coalition to strike Libya, but this time against some of the same factions he previously supported? Well, the U.S. is now coordinating with the regime in Syria it once threatened to attack, so never say never.

WITH YOURSECOND CUP OF COFFEE...None of our 44 presidents was born on this day. But in deference to ease of scheduling and partly a desire to avoid political offense, todays federal holiday has been widely known as Presidents Day since 1971. It is still technically recorded as George Washingtons Birthday (which is actually Feb. 22), but the popular understanding is that todays holiday honors all presidents. Any event that celebrates Franklin Peirce and Woodrow Wilson equally to Washington and Abraham Lincoln can truly be said to celebrate nothing. So whats the point? Why, a day off, of course. And for decades, Americans have used the extra day to go car shopping. Auto sales surgeby about 25 percent every Presidents Day weekend. But before it was cars, it was bicycles. The Atlantic examines the largely lost, Gilded Age history of how bicycles helped make the holiday into a mercantile moment for the nation.

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POLL CHECK Real Clear Politics Averages Obama Job Approval: Approve 45.2 percent//Disapprove 50.2 percent Direction of Country: Right Direction 35.1 percent//Wrong Track 56.8 percent

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Libya debacle casts shadow on Obama war plan

AL QUBBA , Libya, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- At least 41 people died Friday after car bombs, believed to be placed by Islamic State militants, exploded at a gas station in the city of Al Qubba, Libya.

A spokesman for Libya's Health Ministry, who announced the death toll and added many more were injured, characterized the incident as a reprisal for Egyptian airstrikes on IS targets in Libya, earlier this week. The airstrikes were a reaction to the beheadings of 20 Egyptian Christians and one Ghanaian Christian by IS.

"We don't know the identity of the attackers yet, but we assume that they are Islamic State from Derna and they are responding to the Egyptian airstrike from Derna several days ago," said Dr. Rida Alokilly of the Health Ministry of the internationally-recognized government in Tobruk, one of two governments claiming to lead the country.

Derna was a site of Egyptian airstrikes, and about 25 miles east of Al Qubba, a seaside city of 25,000.

Three separate explosions occurred at the gas station, as well as blasts at the local security headquarters and at the home of Agila Saleh, leader of the Tobruk government's House of Representatives, Saleh said.

IS has recently made inroads in Libya, a country lacking a functioning government and other reliable institutions since the 2011 fall of the Ghadafi regime. Egypt, Libya's eastern neighbor, has called for international intervention to subdue militant gangs controlling sections of Libya.

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Libya car bomb blasts kill at least 41

UNITED NATIONS A new U.N. report says Libya's ability to prevent the flow of weapons into and out of the chaotic country is "almost nonexistent," and it calls for the tightening of an arms embargo that the government says must be loosened so it can defend itself.

The report by a panel of experts also recommends the creation of a maritime monitoring force to help Libya's government prevent both the flow of weapons and the illegal export of the country's oil. The country has Africa's largest proven reserves of crude.

The international community is alarmed by the recent emergence of Islamic State group-affiliated fighters in the north African country, which is divided by two rival governments and multiple militias. But the United States and others worry that any weapons provided to the fragile Western-backed government, which is competing with an Islamist-backed rival, would quickly fall into the wrong hands.

Libya this month asked the U.N. Security Council to lift the arms embargo on the country, shortly after fighters linked to the Islamic State group beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in the group's deadliest attack so far outside Iraq and Syria.

Most permanent members of the council say they would rather see a unified government in Libya first, although U.N. efforts toward that goal have had little progress so far.

Libya already can apply for weapons imports under an exemption in the arms embargo for the Libyan government, but the U.N. committee that considers such requests has been cautious about giving approval. U.N. diplomats point to an incident in 2013 when weapons that were approved for the government ended up in militia hands instead.

Now the panel of experts says the arms embargo should be tightened so that committee approval would be needed not only for weapons and ammunition but for "non-lethal military equipment and the provision of security-related training."

The panel also recommends that the Security Council create a maritime monitoring force "to assist the government of Libya in securing its territorial waters" to prevent the flow of arms that would violate the embargo.

The monitoring force also would prevent the "illegal export of crude oil and its derivatives, and other natural resources." The new report says Libya's government has lost control over most of its oil installations.

The panel of experts monitors U.N. sanctions put in place since 2011, shortly before longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown. Militia groups have filled a growing vacuum since then as the state fell apart.

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UN report calls for tightening of Libya arms embargo

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Libya asked the United Nations remove an arms embargo so it can combat Islamic State forces within its borders.

Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Dairi told the U.N. Security Council Wednesday the embargo, in place since the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Ghadafi in 2011 to protect civilians from pro-Ghadafi forces, would "help us build our national army's capacity, and this would come through a lifting of the embargo on weapons so our army can receive materiel and weapons so as to deal with this rampant terrorism. If we fail to have arms provided to us, this can only play into the hands of extremists."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Samah Shoukry declared his country's support of the Libyan request at the Security Council meeting. Egypt conducted airstrikes on IS militants in Libya earlier in the week in response to the deaths of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians.

Western diplomats remain concerned that arms shipments could be taken by militia groups in Libya, a country already overstocked with weapons. Libya has two competing governments, the one headquartered in Tobruk is the government currently recognized by the United Nations, and the country's three major cities -- Tripoli, Misrata and Benghazi -- are controlled by militias opposed to the Tobruk leadership.

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Libya seeks release from U.N. arms embargo

When Libya appeared on the edge of a humanitarian disaster during its 2011 civil war, President Obama and other Western leaders sent in the cavalry: NATO warplanes with orders to protect civilians from slaughter by the country's longtime leader, Moammar Kadafi.

But though worsening violence this week brought new calls for foreign intervention, world powers are unlikely to fly to the rescue again. In the view of U.S. officials and allies in Europe and the Middle East, an outside force would be costly, hard to organize and deploy, and could deepen Libya's divisions.

The chance of a new intervention "is pretty remote," said Frederic Wehrey, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

It's far more likely, say diplomats and analysts, that the United States and other world powers will continue their long, so far unsuccessful, search for a diplomatic solution to the country's post-Kadafi civil war, possibly backed by economic sanctions to enhance leverage.

U.S. officials are closely monitoring the growing influence of Islamic State in Libya and could decide to use counter-terrorism tools, such as drone strikes and special forces, as they have done in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

But "no decisions have been made to expand the fight against [Islamic State] beyond Iraq and Syria," Rear Adm. John Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said Wednesday.

Libya, Egypt, Italy and France all called for some kind of foreign intervention after Islamic State released a video Sunday that purports to show masked militants beheading 21 Egyptian Christians on a Libyan beach.

Advocates say an outside force is needed to halt Islamic State from expanding in Libya. Some also argue that foreign intervention can provide enough security to allow government institutions to take root amid the chaos.

Arab leaders on Wednesday called on the U.N. Security Council to lift weapons sanctions against Libya to help its army fight Islamic State and warned that the beheadings of the Egyptian Christians threatened to expand Libya's civil war into a regional military conflict.

After Kadafi was overthrown, control of the North African nation devolved to a patchwork of militias loosely organized into two coalitions, each affiliated with a rival government.

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Despite Libya's worsening violence, Western intervention unlikely