How to help the rebels

Rhoda Klapp

So, not just mission creep, but planned intentional mission creep. The dishonesty of this thing stinks. Unless it really is true that there has been no such plan, in which case the stink is coming from the incompetence.

TomTom

Is it true Daniel that some of these "rebels" have supplied munitions containing mustard gas and other munitions to Hamas and Hisbollah from Libyan stockpiles and that these are now being transported to Sudan ? At least 2000 mustard gas shells and 1200 containing nerve gas ?

Any confirmation yet from MI6 or CIA ?

yank

Khadaffi can't mass forces, not with the US overhead. It'll be a stalemate ultimately, as many of us well understood, even before the first Tomahawk loosed.

That's assuming Khadaffi doesn't scheme a way to take over the whole show... and that's still within the box, I'd say.

But stalemate means Dave and Sarko will be getting on their kneepads and "negotiating" Khadaffi.

I mean, afterall, it's only fair. Obama created his new country, but it's up to Dave and Sarko to get in there and fight for their own oil interests.

Maybe they can hand over this defector guy... to sweeten their offer. There is form here, I understand. I'm sure Khadaffi has a comfortable place for him, fully equipped with piano wire, and will gladly take him back.

John Montague

though the Council has detained a number of Al Qaeda associates

More details, please? The news about the regime changing to light vehicles, I doubt. There are still thirteen tanks outside Misrata. The regime has finally caught on to the idea of hiding them from the planes though.

Perhaps all Insurgency vehicles should display prominent ID markings stating 'Gadafi is a toerag' in Arabic? Or perhaps that could be the call-sign?

What really matters, as in a lot of conflicts, is the logistics. Without fuel and ammunition, Gadafi's soldiers will have to give in eventually. Will Algeria keep on resupplying the bastard indefinitely?

@Rhoda

Oh, come on, Rhoda. Mission creep? This was about regime change from the very start. Hague, Clinton, Sarko said as much. … Wake up and smell the coffee, it's much nicer than that other stuff you've been detecting.

normanc

Calls for hiring mercenaries now. This would be hilarious if it was a computer game and not real peoples life's that are being screwed up by this.

Hugo Chav

Daily Mash - 31/3/11:

Britain grants asylum to hilariously-named terrorist

BRITAIN last night offered safe haven to Colonel Gaddafi's charmingly-named terrorist sidekick.

Moussa Koussa arrived in the UK on a British military jet and immediately promised not to threaten to kill anyone this time.

He was Libya's ambassador in London in 1980 when he publicly announced that some people he didn't like should be murdered before returning to Libya where no-one makes a fuss about that sort of thing.

Experts said that while he was Libya's intelligence chief he acquired the hilarious nickname 'Gaddafi's fingernail puller'. He is also the suspected mastermind behind the Lockerbie bombing and is often mistaken for a cartoon elephant.

Tom Logan, senior research fellow at the Royal Institute for Fighting, said: "I'm not sure whether having your fingernails removed is more or less painful if the person who's doing it sounds like a character from The Lion King."

Foreign Office sources last night stressed that Moussa Koussa had not been immediately arrested and thrown in a pit because he may know whether or not Colonel Gaddafi has a secret volcano with a huge laser hidden inside it.

A senior official said: "We have to find out about the laser one way or another, while at all times retaining the option to put him up in a 16 room apartment in Belgravia.

"This will also send a message to other senior regime members that no matter how many people they killed with their bare hands, Britain will treat them like a Saudi."

But Moussa Koussa's defection last night provoked a renewed bout of introspection amongst Britain's university educated middle class.

Martin Bishop, from Hatfield, said: "If you can spend your entire working life killing and torturing people before betraying your former colleagues and hopping on a plane to freedom and champagne then I'm beginning to think that accountancy was a huge mistake."

Helen Archer, a personnel manager from Finsbury Park, added: "I would have been brilliant at not only torturing people and betraying people but also pretending to be sorry for it while living in Eaton Square.

"Bloody careers adviser can fuck right off."

Glenn Haldane

Hire some mercenaries? In Africa? Have you never heard of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Convention that removed any possibility of protection from such (but extended it to terrorists)?

Glenn Haldane

Hire some mercenaries? In Africa? Have you never heard of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Convention that removed any possibility of protection from such (but extended it to terrorists)?

Nick

My knowledge of modern warfare is strictly of the armchair variety but why, as it appears to be, aren't the Libyan forces sitting ducks for modern airborne weaponry if they are strung out along two coastal roads ?

Is that what Apache helicopters were designed to attack ?

John Montague

@TomTom

I wouldn't rely on a folk dancing site like Debka if I were you, TomTom. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

decafT

But as the loyalists advance again, where are the air strikes?

Craig Strachan

Daniel Korski: "(There also seems to be a significant Muslim Brotherhood/Islamist presence, though the Council has detained a number of Al Qaeda associates.)"

Should give serious pause for thought.

justathought

Mad Dog is an ancient paranoid delusional personality who will is without his 24 hr wet nurses and anti-psychotic medications. Everyone close to him is in mortal danger as the latest defection will have piled on the pressure. Meanwhile the idiot son will by now be exchanging 5* lodgings for living in a bunker and realizing he has nowhere to run to.

NATO has everything to play for as the noose tightens around the regime and already the Libyan army are melting away. Half of Gadaffis army is conscript and have disappeared and the remain 'volunteers' have little appetite to lay down their lives for Mad Dog & Co.

CIA reinforcements and additional supplies to the rebels will give them the edge on the battlefield.

Morocco and Jordan are on a tinder box and there is little likelihood of their leaders remaining in power no less engaging in conflict with their neighbors.

PM & team are doing us proud!

TomTom

"I wouldn't rely on a folk dancing site like Debka if I were you, TomTom."

I posed a question John Montague, nothing more. Perhaps you can answer it ?

Fatbloke on tour

DK

Your report borders on fantasy.

MG is not the force he once was or thought he was.

However the rebels are either Burtons commandos acting out "Call of duty" or they are LIFG mentalists doing a homer.

Stalemate is the best we can hope for.
Arming / advising the rebels will only lengthen the conflict, it will not win it. Boots on the ground will win it but the peace will be lost. File under what could have been and move on.

The idea that the great is the enemy of the good looms large in all of this. Play the long game, MG as an individual is toast, his family can lead the Libyan equivalent of the Gaulists in some sort of future plurality but a quick win is not on the cards.

lola

Where are the LRDG when you need them? Ou sants les sands d'antan, one might say.

yank

Doubt the WMD would have been forward-deployed in the hostile tribal zones, TomTom. Khadaffi is a bit loony tunes, but even he knows he's best off stockpiling those in secure Tripoli locations, and knew it long before the recent festivities.

Always a chance though.

Anon

There must be a long supply line between Sirte and the frontline which is just begging to be pounded by A-10s and AC-130s.

John Montague

@ Yank, TomTom

Right, Yank, last time I saw a map of where Gadafi has stockpiles of the nasty stuff it was somewhere SE of Tripoli. It's probably quite old too.

Jupiter

How's your gap year in north Africa going?

yank

Anon
March 31st, 2011 4:22pm

There must be a long supply line between Sirte and the frontline which is just begging to be pounded by A-10s and AC-130s.

.

You're assuming the US would even want to do this, and I wouldn't make that assumption.

We're still in Phase 2, remember. Obama created a new country in Phase 1, but we won't exit Phase 2 until both countries accept that status quo... a halving of Libya.

Looking at the maps, the rebels may control most eastern oil fields, and the (minor?) spur pipeline to Tobruk, but Khadaffi seems to hold Ras Lanuf, which seems the major terminal from those oil fields. So to get to full oil production, the 2 sides would have to cooperate, it would seem.

That may be what the US wants here... a forced point of negotiation between the 2 parties. They'd be forced to work together... all these tribalist bastards.

Just a guess on that, and I'd have to see the systems' basis of design and historical oil field production numbers, and flow and pumping capacities in the various pipelines, in order to confirm that guess. But the pipeline to Tobruk appears schematically to be a spur, and not the major show, so the rebels can't make much hay from it, even if they get to pumping. And Khadaffi retains the ability for them to make no hay, as he has the knowledge of where to disrupt those systems, as we surely know.

Ras Lanuf is the prize for Khadaffi and the rebels then, I'm guessing. It would give Khadaffi leverage on the outcome, and it would give the rebels greater autonomy, as they’d control most all of the network. Obama may be deciding that the rebels shall not have Ras Lanuf, to force them to a negotiated settlement.

Either way, both sides can make trouble for each other, all the way through, and for a long time. The stupid rebels and stupid Khadaffi are gonna have to disentangle, and get to the negotiating table. Let's get the UN dogpile underway... which would be Phase 3.

Because if this strings out, it gives the UN a cash cow, and that's the last thing ANY of us needs. In the Iraq sanctions era, the Oil-for-Crooks days, those thieving UN bastards were raking off $1/2B per year or so, plus the frogs and that one Scot crook out you all's way were stealing it blind.

Hell yes, the UN didn’t want that Iraq cash pipeline to end. They cried like babies. Kofi Annan and his family got fat, plus all their friends.

Get the UN out as quickly as possible. Get the UN dogpile started and ended as quickly as possible. That would move us into Phase 4… a peaceful, happy coexistence between neighboring Bedouin tribes.

Don’t laugh… that idiot Obama is a shiny eyed leftist… and is entirely capable of deluding himself that that’s gonna be the case.