[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

When news about the NATO air strike killing Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi's youngest son and three grandchildren emerged on Saturday evening, US President Barack Obama was wining and dining at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner in the Washington Hilton Hotel.

He and NBC Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers were sharing jokes with hundreds of journalists and celebrities.

Obama offered his prayers to the people in Alabama who had just suffered a devastating tornado, but mentioned nothing about the NATO air strike in Tripoli, where Gadhafi's three grandchildren all under the age of 12 were killed.

Which is not surprising, after all, US leaders have never apologized for the children killed by US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rather than feeling outraged by the killings, Obama was having a good time on Saturday evening. He made fun of billionaire Donald Trump who was sitting among the audience and he laughed when Seth Meyers lampooned Trump.

While Trump, who has been questioning Obama's birth certificate for months, is indeed the biggest joke in US politics these days, Obama looked very much like a comedian that evening.

After the air strike, some US officials immediately tried to shirk responsibility by describing the bombing as a NATO operation. Yet anyone who knows how NATO functions knows it is impossible for the US to dodge responsibility in this way.