Benghazi, Libya (CNN) -- Libyan against leaders received a important morale thrust Friday while 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 oust strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
The visit from Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, came a day afterward the United States said it was deploying predator drones to Libya.
McCain said the drones would increase NATO's capacity in the war-torn North African country, but insufficient to make up a shortfall in assets needed to destroy a "significant degree of stalemate."
He said he was against U.S. troops on the ground -- reverberating Obama ministry policy -- but debated that Western powers need to do more to "facilitate" the allocation of weapons and training for the rebels.
"We have prevented the worst result in Libya," McCain told journalists. "Now we absence to addition our support so that the Libyan human tin accomplish the merely satisfactory sequel to this hunk protest as universal rights -- the end of Gadhafi's rule and the starting of a peaceable and inclusive conversion to democracy that will behalf all Libyans."
McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a sometime presidential nominee and decorated Navy practiced. The five-term senator is considered a senior congressional lecturer on military and diplomatic policy materials.
McCain is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Libya since the clash erupted in February. During his visit, he dared critics of NATO's intervention to excursion Benghazi and penetrate a "powerful and hopeful sample of what a free Libya can be."
The senator was welcomed at a cloud of roughly 100 Libyans waving American flags.
"Thank you John McCain! Thank you Obama," people psalmed. "Thank you America! We need liberty! Gadhafi go away!"
McCain visited Benghazi's Freedom Square, accompanied by, amid others, Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, agent leader of the opposition Transitional National Council. He paused at a courthouse walls covered with a heap of pictures of people allegedly killed by Gadhafi's forces and others who have gone lacking since uprisings began.
"The American people support you very strongly, and we understand it's required to help as many as we can," McCain told a woman who thanked him for U.S. support.
As McCain met with the rebels, miles away in western Libya, a ferocious battle proceeded to exasperation for control of Misrata, the country's third-largest city. Misrata has been below beset for seven weeks by Gadhafi loyalists.
"Let's face it. This is not a just fight," McCain asserted. "Maybe we should be act anything we can to help these people and possibly 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 trip would increase the pressure aboard President Barack Obama to build up U.S. involvement.
McCain "brings extra limelight to the rebels," said Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. "His visit forces some American officials to reconsider their assessment of the rebels."
"The fact that McCain was able to behave this meeting shows a modicum of organization (among the rebels) and also raises the question: if McCain can meet the people for whom we are fighting,
dr dre headphones, why not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Why not Vice President Joe Biden?"
If McCain returns to Capitol Hill and claims formal admission of the rebel government as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people, it is definite to shift the argue on U.S. diplomatic posture, Rubin said.
If all competitors of the intervention "have done is sit back comfortably in Washington, it will be harder for them to drum up moral administration 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 skillful to set up a administration by themselves, with the assistance primarily of the Europeans but also the United States of USA."
"Libya is many closer to Europe, and Europeans have greater ties to Libya and greater interests," McCain noted.
The United Nations has approved military behavior 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 manner one of three things," McCain said. "He joins Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or he goes to International Criminal Court, which is my favorite, alternatively he joins Hitler and Stalin."
The senator noted that rebel leaders have insisted Gadhafi step down from power, significantly reducing the chances for a political settlement.
When Gadhafi's forces were outdoor Benghazi, the emperor said he "was going to go house to house and kill each person that he could," McCain joined. "There namely not mistrust what Col. Gadhafi will do to his own people if he has the chance. ... That's not a accommodation. That's a massacre."
McCain safeguarded the trail disc of predator drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, arguing that their use has only resulted in civilian deaths when targets have been misidentified.
Contacted by CNN, McCain's bureau 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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