BREAKING: NATO To (Sort Of) Take Over Libyan Kinetic Military Action"Time-Limited, Scope-Limited Military Action"

Seriously, that's been the progression today, the latter came from White House spokesman Jay Carney in his off camera briefing (the DoD did an on camera briefing but not the White House).

Now it looks like we finally managed to hand this flaming sack of crap off to NATO. Or at least part of it.

Mr Hague proposed a two-tiered structure giving "Nato assets" command and control of military operations, the "arms embargo, no-fly zone and civilian protection", which was approved by the US, Turkey and France.

The second structure, modelled on Nato's International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan, will bring together Nato and non-Alliance countries, including the Arab League and African Union, to "steer" strategy.

According to FNC's Pentagon reporter Jennifer Griffin this is a worthless agreement. NATO takes the No Fly Zone (which is nothing since there's no Libyan Air Force to fight or deter) but the US will still command through Africa Command the attacks on ground troops that are engaging civilians and/or rebels.

(Added) Looks like she is right: Anders Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General:

NATO will fly no-fly zone, but not agreed to do ground attacks. The alliance is still debating as to what it'll do.

The US will still be front and center in the worthless No Fly Zone. The NATO commander is Admiral James Stavridis.

President, er, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will brief shortly. It's really shameless how Obama has hidden from this mess. He's not addressed the nation as Presidents do when they send troops into battle. He's spokesman won't do an on-camera briefing and for the most part the military and not political officials are the face of this.

President Clinton Addresses The Nation From The Oval Office*

The war has support but is the lowest polling military action at the start that Gallup has ever polled. It's like political leadership matters or something.

However they split the baby (basically to keep Turkey happy), this is a mess Obama is simply trying to get out from underneath this. Hell of a way to run a war.

And if you don't think this is a war, please explain what it is when you bomb a country and enforce a naval embargo against it.

Added: General Ham, head of Africa Command which is heading this thing up basically says, "Jane! Get me off this crazy thing!"

My preference would be to hand over to a NATO command - Carter Ham

I really feel bad for the commanders who have been handed a bag of shit and told by the Commander in Chief, "Hey, make this work. I'm going golfing".

(*Clinton image via Slu)

posted by DrewM. at 06:38 PM

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