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Fact check

Is it true: Gaddafi/Libya NATO intervention regime-change scope creep (Mar-Oct 2011)?

Partially True4% confidence

Partly — it's more complicated than the claim suggests.

UNSCR 1973 authorised civilian protection and a no-fly zone, not regime change. Russia and China formally protested that NATO's Operation Unified Protector exceeded the mandate. The 2016 UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry found the intervention lacked a coherent post-Gaddafi strategy and produced political collapse. Clinton's "we came, we saw, he died" remark and her emails document regime-change framing. The scope-creep claim is substantially supported; the claim that assassination was secretly planned from the outset is not established.

The claim

UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (March 2011) authorised all necessary measures to protect Libyan civilians and established a no-fly zone. NATO's Operation Unified Protector was subsequently critic

Key evidence

UNSCR 1973 did not authorise regime change — Russia and China protested

No document establishes pre-planned assassination from before UNSCR 1973

Read the full evidence file

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