MORGAN: Libya may be the greatest test that's been facing President Obama's administration. And one senior Republican believes that he's already failed it. And that Republican is former U.S. senator Rick Santorum who's a potential future presidential candidate himself. And he joins me now.
Senator, why do you think President Obama has failed this test?
SANTORUM: Well, he's missed -- he missed the opportunity, I think, very early on when the rebels were in a lean-forward mode. They were moving across the country. It looked like they had Gadhafi on the run. His military was -- you know was quite confused, weren't sure that they were going to continue to support him.
It looked like that was the opportunity for us to sort of engage and to support the rebels, recognize them, provide them some arms, maybe even air support with a -- with a no-fly zone.
And it would have been a tipping point that would have taken Gadhafi out. Instead, the president hesitated -- not even hesitated, he did nothing. He sort of sat back, made no comment. And then had his DNI, the director of National Intelligence come out and say, no, we think Gadhafi is going to win this thing.
So he really missed an opportunity to be a positive force. Hopefully had the opportunity in that interim period of time to work with the rebels, find out who they are, find out what kind of support they need. And find out what their -- what the regime would look like if we did support them.
And it seemed to be he was very disengaged and didn't participate in any of that to move the ball in the right direction.
MORGAN: Can you really blame President Obama for being at the very least extremely cautious here to avoid plunged America into a third battleground following Iraq and Afghanistan, given the mess that has been caused over there?
SANTORUM: I would say that this is nothing like Iraq and Afghanistan. Here you have a revolution that is taking place. You have an insurgency that is moving across the country, taking out the military, the Gadhafi military, as it's going along. And you could have been at a point here just to help.
I mean, just to add that tipping point moment that could have -- could have toppled a regime that was anything but friendly to the United States over the past 30 years. So to me, this was a -- a low- risk type of venture with a very high probability of success, and -- I don't know about how much better regime will get, but again, if we were working with them and coordinating with them, and making -- and getting assurances from them, then you know we might have had some sway into who the regime would be following up on Gadhafi. MORGAN: Senator, now we're in this, what do you think the endgame is? How do we know when we've won?
SANTORUM: Well, that's the real tough question. I mean the president sort of -- as everyone else was sort of jumping on the bandwagon of the rebels, eventually the president came along and said, well, you know, I'm for them, too. The problem is he said, I'm for them, too, and then did nothing to support them.
And watched silently as the gains that were made by the rebels were succeeded -- ceded back to Gadhafi and waited again to the French to get involved, the Portuguese, others to get involved, and to try help and push then the United Nations. And then the United States, seemingly in response to the United Nations, their humanitarian effort to stop a slaughter at this point, not to topple the country but simply to stop a slaughter of humanitarian, you know, of epic proportions potentially for Libya the president gets involved.
That doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me. It doesn't sound like someone who wants to follow through with what he originally said he was going to do, which is to try to depose Gadhafi. This sounds more like a very different mission. And what we have here is mission confusion. We have no idea how -- what the real commitment is of our military and why they're there.
MORGAN: Senator Santorum, thank you very much indeed.
SANTORUM: Thank you.
