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Clinton: 'We didn't lose a single person' in Libya

Hillary Clinton on Monday defended the intervention in Libya that she championed as secretary of state, telling MSNBC's Chris Matthews that the United States "didn't lose a single person."

“Libya was a different kind of calculation. And we didn't lose a single person. We didn't have a problem in supporting our European and Arab allies in working with NATO,” the former secretary of state said during an MSNBC town hall on Monday night.

Clinton may have been referring strictly to the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, which indeed saw no loss of American lives and cost just around $1 billion. But her comments ignore the 2012 attacks at the U.S. mission and CIA outpost in Benghazi, which killed four people including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Ousting Qaddafi was worth it, Clinton said.

“Now, is Libya perfect? It isn't. But did they have two elections that were free and fair where they voted for moderates. Yes, they did. So you know, changing from a dictator who has hollowed out your country to something resembling a functioning state and even hopefully more of a democratic one doesn't happen overnight,” she said. “And we've got to continue to support the Libyan people, to give them a chance, because otherwise you see what has happened in Syria, with the consequences of millions of people flooding out of Syria, with more than 250,000 people killed, with terrorist groups like ISIS taking up almost -- huge blocks of territory, as big as some of the states in that area.”

Groups affiliated with the Islamic State have carved out large swathes of territory in Libya as well, forcing the United States to conduct airstrikes there in mid-February. U.S. officials estimate that ISIL boasts some 6,500 fighters across a 150-mile stretch of Libya's Mediterranean coastline, according to the New York Times.