Benghazi, Libya (CNN) -- Libyan opposition leaders received a important spirit increase Friday when a top U.S. senator made a surprise visit to the rebel fort of Benghazi and urged greater American involvement in the sanguinary movement to evict strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
The visit from Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona,
monster beats, came a day afterward the United States said it was deploying predator drones to Libya.
McCain said the drones would increase NATO's capability in the war-torn North African nation, but insufficient to make up a shortfall in assets needed to damage a "significant degree of stalemate."
He said he was against U.S. troops on the ground -- reverberating Obama administration policy -- but argued that Western powers need to do more to "facilitate" the distribution of weapons and exercising for the rebels.
"We have prevented the worst outcome in Libya," McCain told correspondents. "Now we absence to addition our patronize so that the Libyan people can accomplish the only satisfactory outcome to this mass protest for universal rights -- the end of Gadhafi's rule and the beginning of a peaceful and inclusive transition to democracy that ambition benefit all Libyans."
McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a sometime presidential nominee and decorated Navy veteran. The five-term senator is considered a senior congressional spokesman on military and alien policy materials.
McCain is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Libya since the clash erupted in February. During his visit, he dared commentators of NATO's intervention to tour Benghazi and watch a "mighty and hopeful sample of what a free Libya can be."
The senator was welcomed by a cloud of roughly 100 Libyans waving American flags.
"Thank you John McCain! Thank you Obama," people chanted. "Thank you America! We need emancipation! Gadhafi go away!"
McCain visited Benghazi's Freedom Square, accompanied by, in others, Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, agent leader of the opposition Transitional National Council. He ceased by a courthouse walls covered with a cloud of pictures of human allegedly slew at Gadhafi's forces and others who have gone lacking since uprisings began.
"The American people support you quite strongly, and we understand it's required to help as many as we can," McCain told a female who thanked him for U.S. support.
As McCain met with the rebels, miles away in western Libya, a drastic war continued to tantrum for control of Misrata, the country's third-largest city. Misrata has been beneath encircle for seven weeks by Gadhafi loyalists.
"Let's face it. This is not a just fight," McCain asserted. "Maybe we ought be doing everything we can to help these people and maybe we're not, and they're dying."
While McCain insisted he would not have gone to Libya without the backing of the White House, a top Middle East analyst told CNN the senator's tumble would increase the oppression above President Barack Obama to more and more U.S. involvement.
McCain "brings more limelight to the rebels," said Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington calculate tank. "His visit forces some American officials to reconsider their appraisal of the rebels."
"The fact that McCain was able to behaviour this appointment shows a modicum of union (among the rebels) and also raises the question: whether McCain tin encounter the people for whom we are fighting, why not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Why not Vice President Joe Biden?"
If McCain returns to Capitol Hill and demands formal admission of the rebel government as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people, it is definite to shift the argue on U.S. foreign pose, Rubin said.
If all antagonists of the intervention "have done is sit behind comfortably in Washington, it will be harder for them to drum up moral authority to back their contentions," he noted.
Asked by CNN to define the U.S. end game in Libya, McCain said he envisions "a departure of Moammar Gadhafi and the Libyan people creature able to set up a government by themselves, with the alms especially of the Europeans yet also the United States of America."
"Libya is much closer to Europe, and Europeans have greater ties to Libya and greater interests," McCain noted.
The United Nations has sanctioned military deed only to protect civilians. Both American and European leaders, although, have repeatedly stated that their political goal is the ouster of Gadhafi.
What would the Gadhafi's departure mean?
"It method one of three things," McCain said. "He joins Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or he goes to International Criminal Court, which is my predilection, or he joins Hitler and Stalin."
The senator famous that riot leaders have insisted Gadhafi tread down from power, significantly reducing the accidents for a political settlement.
When Gadhafi's forces were outside Benghazi, the autocrat said he "was going to go house to house and kill each person that he could," McCain added. "There is no doubt what Col. Gadhafi will do to his own people if he has the opportunity. ... That's not a settlement. That's a massacre."
McCain protected the track disc of predator drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, arguing that their use has only resulted in civil deaths when targets have been misidentified.
Contacted by CNN, McCain's office declined to state how the senator's surprise trip was funded.
CNN's Moni Basu, Reza Sayah, and Alan Silverleib endowed to this report
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