Barack Obama is secretly pro-Gadaffi - or he's a *****.

[Wezil]

Moussa Koussa has resigned.

I'm going to miss hearing that name.

[C0ckney]

yeah was just reading about that, he's defected in london.

[Cort Haus]

This is better than any of Speer's vids imo.

[MOBIUS]

mobius, arrian is right on the money here. you're just making yourself look silly.

Oh, so apparently it's silly to advocate preventing a bloodbath, rather than letting it happen...?

So how's he on the money then? Kindly elucidate.

At the moment, the main front is ebbing and flowing in the sparsely inhabited desert, which is fine by me.

In my opinion, once both sides realise that this is heading for a stalemate, a border will become apparent, say between Ajdabiya and Brega, and hopefully hostilities will cease. It's the only solution that really makes sense now, I think.

I think there is now only an outside chance that Gaddafi will be toppled very soon, and, if so, it will come from within. I also don't think that Gaddafi will be allowed to move on to Benghazi or Tobruk (probably even Ajdabiya) without suffering further airstrikes.

The only blot on all this is that I expect Misurata to fall to Gaddafi eventually, despite the coalition's best efforts.

I certainly don't see this all as an intractable quagmire though and would suggest that we are already winding down to the end game.

[Arrian]

O RYL?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/rebels_continue_retreat_in_eastern_libya/2011/03/30/AFaO1K3B_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage

The headlong retreat demonstrated the limits of the rebels’ fighting abilities in the face of superior firepower and military organization on the loyalist side. It also underscored how dependent the anti-Gaddafi forces have become on airstrikes and missile attacks launched against the loyalist army by a Western-led coalition that was formed less than two weeks ago to enforce a no-fly zone and to protect Libyan civilians.

After airstrikes decimated government forces in Ajdabiya last week, the rebels recaptured the city Saturday and quickly took back Brega, Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawwad in a westward push that they vowed would soon overrun Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace and stronghold on the Gulf of Sidra. But a loyalist counterattack rapidly drove the rebels back the way they had come, leaving them pleading for more Western airstrikes.

“We are going to Ajdabiya,” one rebel said as he pulled out of Brega, Reuters news agency reported. “We will gather there and, God willing, we will head back to Brega today.”

A rebel spokesman, Col. Ahmad Bani, said later that fighting was underway on the eastern and western sides of Brega, although many rebels had pulled back to Ajdabiya.

Bani called on NATO to intervene, saying that since Gaddafi’s forces had entered the civilian towns of Ras Lanuf and Brega, “they should be taken out.” NATO is taking command of the U.S.-led coalition that began launching airstrikes and missile attacks against government forces on March 19.

Bani acknowledged that rebel troops are woefully outmanned and underequipped after pro-Gaddafi forces sent them fleeing Wednesday, and he gave a more somber assessment of Gaddafi’s military power than in past statements, saying that his reinforcements “probably” stretched far beyond his home town of Sirte. At the same time, he tried to quell fears that Benghazi, the rebels’ de facto capital, was in imminent danger of falling into Gaddafi’s hands.

“Our volunteer forces in the front have only got light weapons and are facing a very large military might,” Bani said as evening fell.

In Gaddafi-controlled western Libya, government officials took journalists to meet the relatives of a boy who appeared to be the first confirmed civilian death in the 12-day old air war, in a village on the edge of Gharyan, a town about 60 miles south of Tripoli.

According to family members, a coalition warplane struck an ammunition depot about three miles away on Tuesday, igniting a blaze that triggered a rocket that crashed into the home of 18-month-old Serajadin al-Suwaissi. The rocket only partially exploded, but a piece of burning shrapnel struck the boy’s head as he slept on the couch, and he died in a hospital about 12 hours later, the relatives said.

“I am feeling angry about the airstrikes. This isn’t civilian protection at all,” said the boy’s uncle, Abdel Hakim al-Suwaissi, as somber women gathered in the home to pay condolences.

The Libyan government has repeatedly claimed that the strikes have caused multiple casualties, but it has offered little evidence to support those assertions.

The French Defense Ministry said Wednesday that its planes carried out a strike Monday night against “a munitions depot in the region of Gharyan.”

There were reports earlier Wednesday that Western warplanes carried out airstrikes near Ras Lanuf, the site of a major oil refinery, petrochemical plant and oil pipelines. But there was no immediate confirmation.

Opposition spokesman Mustafa Gheriani played down the rebel retreat, voicing optimism that the losses would soon be recouped. “Whether we advance 50 kilometers or retreat 50 kilometers . . . it’s a big country,” he told reporters in Benghazi. “They will go back the next day.”

Meanwhile, Gaddafi has sent more troops to the besieged cities of Misurata and Zintan, Gheriani said. Misurata, Libya’s third-largest city, is about 130 miles east of Tripoli, and Zintan is 100 miles southwest of the capital.

Misurata was relatively quiet for much of the day Wednesday, and a ship docked carrying food, medicine and 11 European journalists, who spent the day with rebels in the city, according to a doctor at Misurata’s hospital. But shortly after the ship left at nightfall, government forces that have been laying siege to the city for the past five weeks resumed shelling the port area.

The lull enabled ambulances to reach four victims who had apparently been injured in fighting the previous day but had been unable to reach the hospital because of snipers on the streets, the doctor said. Two were Nigerians who had bled to death, and two were Libyans killed by shrapnel, he said.

The continued rebel pull-back in eastern Libya came a day after world leaders convening in London insisted that Gaddafi step down but offered no new suggestions for how to dislodge him from power.

Although the 40 world leaders pledged humanitarian aid and continued airstrikes to protect civilians, they indicated that it would be up to the Libyans themselves to force Gaddafi out, leaving it unclear how they were supposed to do so.

The question of whether to arm the rebels was not publicly discussed, nor was the question of how to release frozen Libyan assets to help fund them. But the leaders attending the conference made it clear that the military campaign in Libya would not end until Gaddafi had gone.

In an interview with NBC News that aired Tuesday evening, President Obama said direct foreign assistance to the rebels initially would be humanitarian and other non-lethal supplies such as communications equipment, transportation and medical supplies. Asked about supplying arms to the rebels, Obama said, “I’m not ruling it out. But I’m also not ruling it in. We’re still making an assessment.” He added, “Operations to protect civilians continue to take out Gaddafi’s forces, his tanks, his artillery on the ground. And that will continue for some time.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday that his country also does not rule out supplying arms to the rebels but has not yet decided whether to do so. He told Parliament that a U.N. arms embargo applies to all of Libya although arms deliveries could be justified under a March 17 U.N. Security Council resolution that authorized a no-fly zone over Libya and “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.

But China and Russia are stepping up complaints about the Western-led military intervention in Libya. In Beijing, Chinese President Hu Jintao publicly rebuked visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday, saying that force will not resolve the conflict in Libya, news agencies reported. Russia and China abstained in voting on the U.N. Security Council resolution, which was approved 10-0.

“If the military action brings disaster to innocent civilians, resulting in an even greater humanitarian crisis, then that is contrary to the original intention of the Security Council resolution,” Hu told Sarkozy, according to Chinese state media.

In London, the British government announced it has ordered five pro-Gaddafi Libyan diplomats, including the Libyan military attache, to leave the country within a week. Britain said it took the action “to underline our grave concern at the regime’s behavior” and because the five “could pose a threat to our security” if they remained in Britain.

As the West applied pressure for Gaddafi to end his 41-year rule, Uganda said it would consider an asylum application if it received one from the Libyan strongman.

In Benghazi, the mood Wednesday evening was grimmer than in recent days, when jubilant rebels quickly regained three key towns in the wake of coalition airstrikes.

Now, the city’s inhabitants joke grimly about the possibility of an imminent attack by Gaddafi’s forces.

“We won’t have to worry about finding a car to go find the front line because Gaddafi will make it easy for us and bring the front line here,” said Tarek Mustafa Kashbur, a Benghazi resident.

Asked if Benghazi would fall absent a NATO strike in the next 24 hours, Bani, the rebel military spokesman, said, “NATO has already indicated that they will follow U.N. Resolution 1973 to the T, to protect the civilian population, and we believe the right people will be here on time.”

He denied an assertion by Adm. James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe and head of the U.S. European Command, that there were “flickers” of al-Qaeda among the rebel fighters.

“We don’t have this type of fundamentalist thinking or attitude, so it’s not on our part to be organizing any al-Qaeda cells within our ranks. If – and with a stress on if – if there are Libyans who were previously associated with al-Qaeda around the world and they have now come back, they are Libyans fighting for the freedom of Libya.”

Bani also denied that any foreign fighters had joined the rebels’ ranks, and he said it was impossible to assess the number of dead and injured among the rebel fighters.

Representatives of the Tabo tribe, which lives in the Libyan desert, pledged Wednesday they would protect oil fields for the rebels.

Even more "interesting":

On a normal day, residents of Bin Jawad say, there is nothing remarkable about their sunny seaside town. Spread over desert hills sloping toward an azure Mediterranean Sea, Bin Jawad has a mostly apolitical Bedouin population. "It's a quiet town," says Salah, an engineer who lives in the town, which is barely a mile long from east to west. "Most of the people work in the oil companies nearby."

But for the second time in less than a month, it's also the town where the ambitions of Libya's rebels run smack against the merciless reality of war. At the beginning of the week, the rebels — emboldened by allied air strikes and a war that seemed to be shifting suddenly in their favor — had pushed west into Bin Jawad. About 90 miles (140 km) from Sert, the hometown and regime stronghold of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, rebel fighters and commanders boasted that it was only a matter of time before that city was theirs too. "There is a 90% possibility that we'll enter Sert today," one fighter, Abdallah Bayou, said on Monday, even as the rebels pulled back under a barrage of missile fire. "They have no gasoline, no supplies," he said of the government forces up ahead. Another group of fighters had tied a live ram next to their truck-mounted machine gun as they barreled toward the front line; they said they planned to slaughter and eat it in celebration upon arrival in Gaddafi's stronghold.

The sheep will live to see at least several more days. Perhaps it will have a long life. By Tuesday afternoon, it was the rebels' turn to flee again — in a tangled, panicked traffic jam of gun trucks and civilian cars — as Gaddafi's forces pounded them once again with a barrage of missile fire and sniper shots. It was a familiar scene, and Bin Jawad may yet become a most familiar front line. "They hit us with a Grad missile," says Ali Adel Sherif, 19, whose friend was carried into the emergency room in the nearby town of Ras Lanuf on a stretcher, his face and arms bloodied by shrapnel. "It came from behind us in the hills and we could hear sniper fire."

There was another factor. While there were reports of allied air strikes, TIME saw no sign of fighter-jet support as incoming shells from Gaddafi's loyalists rained down on the rebels. "Sarkozy betrayed us," shouted one man on Tuesday afternoon, referring to the French President whose aircraft saved Benghazi from almost certain reconquest by Gaddafi last week. "There are no airplanes," screamed another.

It had been a see-saw battle to hold Bin Jawad — one the rebels would eventually lose. After a brief initial retreat eastward at midday, the rebels pushed back with their own barrage of missiles and machine-gun fire, and fought their way into Bin Jawad once again — only to come under a heavy bombardment from the road ahead, and simultaneous sniper fire from the hills to the south and the town to the north. As a missile exploded next to the western gate to the town, and bullets rained onto the sandbanks next to the road, fighters threw themselves into cars and trucks, nearly running each other over as they fled. "We were just talking and we saw someone fall," says Osama al-Gubayli, a fighter from Benghazi, who was standing near the western gate of Bin Jawad moments before the onslaught. When he approached the fallen man, he saw that he had been shot in the chest. "We don't know who shot him — if it was from inside the city or in front of us." Others say they were attacked from the sea as well.

The attack from multiple fronts left many feeling stunned. Bin Jawad, however innocuous it may seem in the sunshine, is not a town that Gaddafi intends to lose. And indeed, it may prove to be a trickier battle zone than the previous towns the rebels have conquered. The reasons may run deeper than Gaddafi's heavy weapons. "Bin Jawad didn't want to support us from the beginning," says Fayez Mohamed Zwei, a fighter from Ajdabiyah. "The whole east was with us except Bin Jawad."

Indeed, Bin Jawad may be the first town in the rebels' westward push where many of the townspeople are not on their side. Treason is a word the fighters use liberally in describing the town. And conspicuously, there are no local fighters among them. "No one is from Bin Jawad," says Khaled Mohamed, a policeman from Ajdabiyah, of the men gathered around him. Like many of the other fighters, he believes the locals receive money from Gaddafi (in fact, residents say that Gaddafi's military trucked in food aid from Sert in recent weeks). "There is treason in Bin Jawad."

The treason, they say, dates back to their first traumatic experience at Bin Jawad on March 6, which lasted for about 24 hours. At the time, Bin Jawad became the most distant front line in the rebels' then fast-paced westward advancement. But they say the town never came out to join them — instead fleeing to the hills, or raising white flags as a trick to lure them into gunfire. When the government struck back — aided, rebels say, by the townspeople — the ensuing bombardment resulted in a disastrous retreat over nearly 400 miles (640 km) that took the regime's forces right to the doorstep of the rebels' stronghold, Benghazi. Had it not been for the allied air strikes, most rebels say, their revolution might have been crushed entirely.

Three weeks later, Bin Jawad is largely empty. "Once the rebels got to Ajdabiyah, everyone left to the desert," says one resident who declined to give his name. "We thought Gaddafi's army would take position here, and there would be a battle like the last time." He adds, "People are afraid so they're staying indoors."

Salah, the engineer, says he sided with the rebels. "The people who stayed here during these events support the revolution," he says. But he believes less than a third of the residents have stayed put. "If you go past the hill, you will see them in tents," he says of the rest, pointing south into the hilly desert beyond the main road. Others continued to pour out on Tuesday, packed hastily into vans and trucks, speeding east toward Ras Lanuf and Ajdabiyah.

The rebels did not take chances with a town they could no longer trust. After pushing back into Bin Jawad on Tuesday afternoon, the rebels quickly set about searching the streets and homes of the town for hidden troops, mercenaries and traitors. "Alley to alley, house to house," shouted one man at the fighters as trucks veered down Bin Jawad's unpaved, bumpy side streets. He used Gaddafi's own words — an infamous threat from an earlier speech that is often repeated in the rebel-held east. It's meant to mock the Colonel; it's even graffitied on the walls. But as the rebels tread into unwelcome territory, they seem to mean it in much the way Gaddafi did — in a kind of unrelenting and paranoid door-to-door campaign to rout their enemies. "Search the houses," another man shouted, as fighters ran down Bin Jawad's alleys and took up position behind walls. Gunfire and the explosions of rocket-propelled grenades reverberated from within the town. At least one house was set on fire after rebels located a suspected Gaddafi loyalist there.

By evening, smoke rose from the town, as new homes and buildings became collateral damage in the ever shifting front line and a rapid exchange of missiles and artillery shells from both sides. By late Tuesday night, Gaddafi's forces had pushed the rebels back all the way to the town of Brega, retaking Bin Jawad and Ras Lanuf in between.

Even with the help of allied air strikes and gradually improving rebel coordination, local support may indeed become key to pushing the fight further west in what is shaping up to be another stalemate for the Libyan civil war. In the meantime, the desert highway stretching between strategic Ajdabiyah and the ever valuable Sert appears poised to become the scene of a long-term front line. "God knows" when Sert will finally fall, says Colonel Mohamed Samir, a rebel commander in Ras Lanuf, pointing to the sky. "We'll start with Bin Jawad. Sert is another level," he says. "The thing is we're trying not to hit the families. A few are in there. But they're leaving."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2062162,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular

Hurray for the noble protection of civilians via bombing!

-Arrian

[MOBIUS]

What are you trying to get at?

The fact that the coalition has probably killed civilians by overstepping their mandate? I have already condemned that, so I'm not sure what point you're making.

The fact that, shock, horror, loads of people actually support Gaddafi? That's why I think there is no other short term alternative than partition...

Sorry mate, but I know you can do better than a Dino Doc cut'n'paste hatchet job.

[SpencerH]

O RYL?

Hurray for the noble protection of civilians via bombing!

-Arrian

Are you suggesting that one tragic bizarre death of a young boy amid the hundreds of air and missle strikes will convince those who supported this action that they were wrong to do so?

[MOBIUS]

Well, he does have to find some way of justifying why he was happy to stand by and watch another Srebrenica/Rwanda/Killing Fields et al...

My condemnation, OTOH, is that blowing up an ammunition dump 60 miles south of Tripoli is overreaching the coalition's UN mandate - making it doubly tragic that it seems at least one civilian has been killed in this way.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

POTUS to Congress FU

Interesting developments back in DC

Clinton To Congress: Obama Would Ignore Your War Resolutions
Susan Crabtree | March 30, 2011, 4:44PM

Update: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), who asked Clinton about the War Powers Act during a classified briefing, said Clinton and the administration are sidestepping the measure's provisions giving Congress the ability to put a 60-day time limit on any military action.

"They are not committed to following the important part of the War Powers Act," he told TPM in a phone interview. "She said they are certainly willing to send reports [to us] and if they issue a press release, they'll send that to us too."


The White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a classified briefing to House members Wednesday afternoon.

Clinton was responding to a question from Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) about the administration's response to any effort by Congress to exercise its war powers, according to a senior Republican lawmaker who attended the briefing.


The answer surprised many in the room because Clinton plainly admitted the administration would ignore any and all attempts by Congress to shackle President Obama's power as commander in chief to make military and wartime decisions. In doing so, he would follow a long line of Presidents who have ignored the act since its passage, deeming it an unconstitutional encroachment on executive power.

Other than that, the lawmaker said he learned nothing new during the classified briefing by Clinton, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A cross-section of Democrats and Republicans are opposed to President Obama's decision to authorize air strikes in Libya without seeking a resolution of approval or a declaration of war from Congress. Lawmakers ranging from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, have groused about not being consulted before Obama took military action.

The War Powers Act of 1973, passed in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, puts limits on the ability of the President to send American troops into combat areas without congressional approval. Under the act, the President can only send combat troops into battle or into areas where ''imminent'' hostilities are likely, for 60 days without either a declaration of war by Congress or a specific congressional mandate.

The President can extend the time the troops are in the combat area for 30 extra days, without Congressional approval, for a total of 90 days. After that, is unchartered territory. The act does not specifically say what Congress could do if the President turns a blind eye to Congress and refuses to have his role as commander-in-chief constrained, as Presidents have routinely done.

The only options Congress would have at that point is to cut off funding for future military operations and override what would likely be a presidential veto of any such measure.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has asked his caucus to postpone any Libya resolutions until after they receive a classified briefing Wednesday evening. Afterward, Reid said, all bets are off and Democrats can offer any type of war powers resolution they want.

"I've told my caucus, 'Come loaded with all your questions; ask questions in this classified setting. And then if in fact you want to do more legislatively, you're entitled to do it,'" Reid told reporters Tuesday. "The War Powers Act we believe is valid, is very clear, setting forth timelines."

Reid said he read sections of the War Powers Act to his caucus at a lunchtime policy meeting Tuesday.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Hurray for the noble protection of civilians via bombing!

-Arrian

Bomb them all and let God sort it out. Or in translation, How does one tell a civilian from a rebel?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/wo...pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON — Members of the NATO alliance have sternly warned the rebels in Libya not to attack civilians as they push against the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, according to senior military and government officials.

As NATO takes over control of airstrikes in Libya and the Obama administration considers new steps to tip the balance of power there, the coalition has told the rebels that the fog of war will not shield them from possible bombardment by NATO planes and missiles, just as the regime’s forces have been punished.

“We’ve been conveying a message to the rebels that we will be compelled to defend civilians, whether pro-Qaddafi or pro-opposition,” said a senior Obama administration official. “We are working very hard behind the scenes with the rebels so we don’t confront a situation where we face a decision to strike the rebels to defend civilians.”

The warnings, and intense consultations within the NATO-led coalition over its rules for attacking anyone who endangers innocent civilians, come at a time when the civil war in Libya is becoming ever more chaotic, and the battle lines ever less distinct. They raise a fundamental question that the military is now grappling with: Who in Libya is a civilian?

In the early days of the campaign, the civilian population needing protection was hunkered down in cities like Benghazi, behind a thin line of rebel defenders who were easily distinguishable from the attacking government forces.

That is no longer always the case. Armed rebels — some in fairly well-organized militias, others merely young men who have picked up rifles to fight alongside them — have moved out of Benghazi in an effort to take control of other population centers along the way, they hope, to seizing Tripoli.

Meanwhile, fresh intelligence this week showed that Libyan government forces were supplying assault rifles to civilians in the town of Surt, which is populated largely by Qaddafi loyalists. These civilian Qaddafi sympathizers were seenchasing rebel forces in nonmilitary vehicles like sedans and trucks, accompanied by Libyan troops, according to American military officers.

The increasing murkiness of the battlefield, as the freewheeling rebels advance and retreat and as fighters from both sides mingle among civilians, has prompted NATO members to issue new “rules of engagement” spelling out when the coalition may attack units on the ground in the name of protecting civilians.

It was unclear how the rules are changing — especially on the critical questions surrounding NATO’s mandate and whether it extends to protecting rebels who are no longer simply defending civilian populated areas like Benghazi, but are instead are themselves on the offensive.

“This is a challenge,” said a senior alliance military officer. “The problem of discriminating between combatant and civilian is never easy, and it is compounded when you have Libyan regime forces fighting irregular forces, like the rebel militias, in urban areas populated by civilians.”

Oana Lungescu, the senior NATO spokeswoman, emphasized that NATO was taking action because Qaddafi’s forces were attacking Libyan civilians, including shelling cities with artillery. She said that if the rebels do likewise, the organization will move to stop them, too, because the United Nations Security Council resolution “applies to both sides.”

“Our goal, as mandated by the U.N., is to protect civilians against attacks or threats of attack, so those who target civilians will also be targets for our forces, because that resolution will be applied across the board,” she said.

But it is no simple matter to follow that logic.

“Qaddafi is trying to take advantage of this mixing of combatants and noncombatants to deter NATO from striking,” said one Obama administration official who was briefed on the intelligence reports.

Even though rebel forces were in retreat on Wednesday, the civil war has seen repeated advances and retreats by both sides, and that is expected to continue. The highest concern is not how to deal with fighters who are loyal to the regime, but how NATO would respond to rebels firing on a town of Qaddafi sympathizers, like Surt.

Calls by some NATO members to provide heavier weapons to the rebels suggest that these worries will only intensify.

The deliberations about where to draw the line, going on at the highest levels of allied nations and among senior officials across the Obama administration, show how an intervention to stop a potential massacre is evolving into a much more complex, and perhaps open-ended, role in policing the Libyan chaos.

The situation is as complicated legally as it is militarily. The United Nations Security Council resolution that authorized a no-flight zone and other steps in Libya makes no distinction between pro-rebel and pro-Qaddafi civilians.

Senior legal advisers to the military campaign say that unarmed civilians, whether living in towns or fleeing the fighting, are clearly meant to be protected by the United Nations resolution, while opposition forces taking an active part in combat away from cities are currently seen as falling outside of its protection. But one such official acknowledged that there are other situations that are much less clear.

Noncombatants and the various shades of opposition, resistance and rebellion “are so intermixed that it is not feasible to discern where the boundary between the civilians and opposition forces lie,” the official said. “There are also those civilians entitled to protection that may be armed in order to protect their families, homes, businesses, and communities. Other civilians may join the rebels at certain stages, becoming armed combatants, and then decide to return home for whatever reason, thus transitioning back to civilian non-combatants.”

At times when the rebels are gaining ground, the allies fear that the rebels will inevitably try to take loyalist cities by force, and could end up endangering or even killing civilians there. That is what prompted the coalition’s warnings to the rebels, administration officials said.

The specifics of the warnings — like when they were conveyed, who delivered them, and to which rebel leaders — remained unclear.

The traditional laws of war distinguish between combatants, who may be lawfully attacked, and civilians, who generally must be protected. Civilians who pick up weapons and join in fighting can be lawfully attacked as long as they are directly participating in hostilities.

But the laws of war are vague about how to categorize internal rebels, rather than external enemies. And the recognized government of a country — even an internationally despised one like the Qaddafi regime — is generally seen to have a right to use force to put down an armed insurrection, said David Glazier, a professor of national-security law at Loyola Law School-Los Angeles.

“I don’t know that we have distinguished between civilians who are truly nonparticipants in the conflict and who no one has any right to attack, and those civilians who have taken up arms in revolt against the government and so are legitimate targets,” Mr. Glazier saided. “This is all poorly defined. It really is all about politics, and not at all about law.”

On March 21, in a briefing with reporters, Tom Donilon, the national security advisor to President Obama, appeared not to distinguish between armed rebels and other citizens of Libya who opposed the Qaddafi government.

“They are citizens of Libya, and they are civilians,” he said, referring to the rebels. “They’re not military forces under the direction and control of Qaddafi.”

But that same day, General Carter Ham, the head of United States Africa Command, said that opposition forces with heavier weaponry would not qualify for protection the way civilians would, and he acknowledged that “it’s not a clear distinction, because we’re not talking about a regular military force — it’s a very problematic situation.”

“These are situations that brief much better at a headquarters than they do in the cockpit of an aircraft,” General Ham said, adding that “if it’s a situation where it’s unclear that it is civilians who may be being attacked, then those air crews are under instruction to be very cautious and not apply military force, again, unless they are convinced that doing so would be consistent with their mission to protect civilians.”

[MOBIUS]

^^ Another reason why this whole thing is likely to grind to a halt in stalemate. ^^

I was waiting for someone to bring up the idea that the rebels themselves would risk being bombed if they resorted to similar tactics as the regime.

Also, it is interesting to note that Gaddafi's men have left their big toys at home and are driving in the same pickups as the rebels - so they all look the same from above...

[MOBIUS]

Just to expand on my last comment:

Regime adopts guerrilla tactics to defy air strikes

In Ajdabiya, Kim Sengupta sees Gaddafi troops abandon tanks and form small ambush groups to wrongfoot rebels and coalition

The ambush was well co-ordinated and precise, rockets and mortar fire erupting out of the sand dunes on to the rebel convoy, destroying the main target, a truck carrying a multiple rocket launcher, and setting three other vehicles on fire. Muammar Gaddafi's soldiers had disappeared by the time Western warplanes appeared in the sky. Half a dozen charred bodies lay beside the smouldering wreckage.

Guerrilla warfare has come to Libya, not being waged, as may have been expected, by the revolutionary cadres, but by the regime, which is adapting its strategies in answer to air strikes by the international coalition. Small units have begun to traverse through the desert, far more difficult to hit than the ponderous tanks and artillery decimated in the previous 11 days.

The attack, on the road to Brega from Ajdabiya, appeared to have the desired effect. A cautious probe forward stalled amid fear of being outflanked. The rebels, the Shabaab, whose standard practice had been to charge forward on the main road west then get beaten back, were at a loss as to what to do next.

The small numbers of US and British intelligence officials and special forces believed to be in Libya may have to be augmented and their roles extended if a potent insurgency does spread through the country. Air superiority in such conflicts, as Iraq and Afghanistan had shown, would be of limited use.

The SAS has been involved in training Libyan forces before the revolution, after an agreement in 2009. Courses were conducted in counter-terrorism and surveillance at a time when Tripoli was viewed as an ally against violent Islamist militancy. Relations between the regime and the West had thawed after Gaddafi dismantled his WMD programme and extradited two suspects for trial over the Lockerbie bombing.

The only overt evidence of UK undercover forces on the ground so far came with the embarrassing arrests of troopers of the SBS who had escorted diplomats to Benghazi. Since then, British and American operatives have been calling down air strikes, trying to spot the regime's surface-to-air missiles, and liaising with officials of the provisional government in Benghazi. They are also said to be collecting information on the Islamist elements within the Shabaab and leaders such as Abdul Hakim Al-Hasidi, the head of the militia in the city of Darnah, who had spent five years in Afghanistan where he allegedly met Osama bin Laden.

Barack Obama had signed authorisation for the CIA to provide arms and other support to the rebels although the issue of supplying arms is said to be causing heated debate within the US administration. Jay Carney, the White House press spokesman, has declined to comment "on intelligence matters".

The rebel lack of counter-insurgency skills was apparent again yesterday with contradictory instructions being issued and altercations among the fighters. Ali Mohammed Bakr, a Shabaab commander, said: "We were not expecting that they would be using these tactics. We were caught by surprise. I tried to get some of our men to go in behind but the Gaddafi group spotted them and got away very fast. We do not have the vehicles or the weapons for this kind of war. But we think some foreign countries have been supplying special arms to Gaddafi, and that is the reason his soldiers can hit us without us seeing them."

An insurgency campaign can succeed, it is generally accepted, only with the help of elements of the local population. While it is true that most people in the east of the country appear to fervently back the revolution, the regime too enjoys support among communities and tribes. Local men have fought alongside the loyalist soldiers against rebels several times, and again in the town of Bin Jawad.

Gaddafi's armed forces are showing commendable resilience and determination for a side that seems on the brink of collapse - so the West would have us believe...

This is a logical development, under the circumstances.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

False pretense for war in Libya?
By Alan J. Kuperman
April 14, 2011

EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.

But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.

Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.

Obama insisted that prospects were grim without intervention. “If we waited one more day, Benghazi . . . could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.’’ Thus, the president concluded, “preventing genocide’’ justified US military action.

But intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents.

The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially — including Zawiya, Misurata, and Ajdabiya, which together have a population greater than Benghazi.

Libyan forces did kill hundreds as they regained control of cities. Collateral damage is inevitable in counter-insurgency. And strict laws of war may have been exceeded.

But Khadafy’s acts were a far cry from Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Bosnia, and other killing fields. Libya’s air force, prior to imposition of a UN-authorized no-fly zone, targeted rebel positions, not civilian concentrations. Despite ubiquitous cellphones equipped with cameras and video, there is no graphic evidence of deliberate massacre. Images abound of victims killed or wounded in crossfire — each one a tragedy — but that is urban warfare, not genocide.

Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.’’

If bloodbath was unlikely, how did this notion propel US intervention? The actual prospect in Benghazi was the final defeat of the rebels. To avoid this fate, they desperately concocted an impending genocide to rally international support for “humanitarian’’ intervention that would save their rebellion.

On March 15, Reuters quoted a Libyan opposition leader in Geneva claiming that if Khadafy attacked Benghazi, there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda.’’ Four days later, US military aircraft started bombing. By the time Obama claimed that intervention had prevented a bloodbath, The New York Times already had reported that “the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda’’ against Khadafy and were “making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.’’

It is hard to know whether the White House was duped by the rebels or conspired with them to pursue regime-change on bogus humanitarian grounds. In either case, intervention quickly exceeded the UN mandate of civilian protection by bombing Libyan forces in retreat or based in bastions of Khadafy support, such as Sirte, where they threatened no civilians.

The net result is uncertain. Intervention stopped Khadafy’s forces from capturing Benghazi, saving some lives. But it intensified his crackdown in western Libya to consolidate territory quickly. It also emboldened the rebels to resume their attacks, briefly recapturing cities along the eastern and central coast, such as Ajdabiya, Brega, and Ras Lanuf, until they outran supply lines and retreated.

Each time those cities change hands, they are shelled by both sides — killing, wounding, and displacing innocents. On March 31, NATO formally warned the rebels to stop attacking civilians. It is poignant to recall that if not for intervention, the war almost surely would have ended last month.

In his speech explaining the military action in Libya, Obama embraced the noble principle of the responsibility to protect — which some quickly dubbed the Obama Doctrine — calling for intervention when possible to prevent genocide. Libya reveals how this approach, implemented reflexively, may backfire by encouraging rebels to provoke and exaggerate atrocities, to entice intervention that ultimately perpetuates civil war and humanitarian suffering.

Alan J. Kuperman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas, is author of “The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention’’ and co-editor of “Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention.’’

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ed..._war_in_libya/

In other words Obama lied even more Libyans died.

[ur32212451]

Interesting developments back in DC


"Reid said he read sections of the War Powers Act to his caucus at a lunchtime policy meeting Tuesday."

A very informative post Oglethorpe. Until now, I never knew that Reid could read.

[ur32212451]

They had the opportunity to finish the job in 1991. But they didn't.

The only people that thought he had WMDs were the people that wanted to invade in 2003.

Of course Iraq did have WMD's. They were being stockpiled in certain Weapon Storage Bunkers. These were the Bunkers that US inspectators were blocked repeatedly from inspection during the Bill Clinton Administration. This proved to be an ongoing embarrassment to Bill Clinton, Clinton's failure to get these Bunkers inspected was constantly in the news. Bill Clinton took decisive action to remedy this problem plaguing his administration by pulling our weapon inspectors out of Iraq. No weapon inspectors = no more inspection failures being reported by the press. This Policy was the Status Quo of the Clinton Administration, Image over Substance.

As for those WMD's in Iraq, while the UN and many of our US Democrats were stalling the Bush Administration from entering into war with Iraq over the WMD's, Satellite photos clearly revealed Syrian Trucks were pulling up to certain Weapon Bunkers, the very ones that Saddam Hussein blocked the US Inspectors from inspecting under the Clinton Administration. I myself have observed the Satellite pictures that document these truck movements from these Bunkers and into Syria and into the Bekaa Valley. Israeli Intelligence keeps a constant watch on these WMD locations in the Bekaa Valley and are prepared to strike them should they be mobilized if readied for use.