Kadafi death: Joe Biden says ‘NATO got it right’ in Libya

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday developments in Libya show the U.S. approach to dealing with Moammar Kadafi was the right one.

“Whether he’s alive or dead, he’s gone. The people of Libya have gotten rid of a dictator,” Biden said at an event in New Hampshire, seeming to want to avoid a definitive statement on Kadafi.President Obama is due to address his death at 2 p.m. EDT from the White House.

Biden also seemed to compare the regime change unfolding in Libya with the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq.
PHOTOS: Moammar Kadafi | 1942 - 2011

“NATO got it right,” he said. “In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn’t lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past.”

Biden’s comments came as he spoke at Plymouth State University about the Obama administration’s jobs plan. He is traveling later to Concord to file paperwork to place him and Obama’s name on the state’s primary election ballot.

A Republican presidential hopeful, former Sen. Rick Santorum, countered that Obama mishandled the Libya crisis and showed to be a “confused and almost disinterested leader.”

“While it’s great that Col. Kadafi is dead, we have a path to getting there that was as tortured a path from the standpoint of our foreign policy that any president could have possibly constructed,” he said in a brief interview after he met with voters at the landmark Red Arrow Diner in Manchester.

“It would be a good thing if we had a consistent foreign policy in this country, that other nations around the world would know and respect that when America says something, America will follow through,” he said.