As allied forces enter their sixth day of strikes over Libya - so far failing to stop Moamar Gaddafi's tanks and ground forces from shelling rebel-held towns - questions are being asked about the future of the strategy.

Allied warplanes are now attacking regime forces in built-up areas in the rebel strongholds of Misrata and Ajdabiya, but fighting is continuing on the ground.

Some analysts believe the rebels do not have what it takes to defeat Mr Gaddafi by themselves, and warn that an allied ground invasion of Libya is almost a certainty.

But the US is hosing down any ideas of putting troops on the ground and fending off suggestions it is already at war with Libya.

In a briefing that stuck carefully to the official script, US Rear Admiral Gerard Hueber would not explain what the coalition would do next if Mr Gaddafi's forces could not be beaten from air.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/24/3172835.htm

Shady Dealings Helped Qaddafi Build Fortune and Regime

By ERIC LICHTBLAU, DAVID ROHDE and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — In 2009, top aides to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi called together 15 executives from global energy companies operating in Libya’s oil fields and issued an extraordinary demand: Shell out the money for his country’s $1.5 billion bill for its role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 and other terrorist attacks.

If the companies did not comply, the Libyan officials warned, there would be “serious consequences” for their oil leases, according to a State Department summary of the meeting.

Many of those businesses balked, saying that covering Libya’s legal settlement with victims’ families for acts of terrorism was unthinkable. But some companies, including several based in the United States, appeared willing to give in to Libya’s coercion and make what amounted to payoffs to keep doing business, according to industry executives, American officials and State Department documents.

The episode and others like it, the officials said, reflect a Libyan culture rife with corruption, kickbacks, strong-arm tactics and political patronage since the United States reopened trade with Colonel Qaddafi’s government in 2004. As American and international oil companies, telecommunications firms and contractors moved into the Libyan market, they discovered that Colonel Qaddafi or his loyalists often sought to extract millions of dollars in “signing bonuses” and “consultancy contracts” — or insisted that the strongman’s sons get a piece of the action through shotgun partnerships.

“Libya is a kleptocracy in which the regime — either the al-Qadhafi family itself or its close political allies — has a direct stake in anything worth buying, selling or owning,” a classified State Department cable said in 2009, using the department’s spelling of Qaddafi.

The wealth that Colonel Qaddafi’s family and his government accumulated with the help of international corporations in the years since the lifting of economic sanctions by the West helped fortify his hold on his country. While the outcome of the military intervention under way by the United States and allied countries is uncertain, Colonel Qaddafi’s resources — including a stash of tens of billions of dollars in cash that American officials believe he is using to pay soldiers, mercenaries and supporters — may help him avert, or at least delay, his removal from power.

The government not only exploited corporations eager to do business, but willing governments as well. Libya’s banks apparently collected lucrative fees by helping Iran launder huge sums of money in recent years in violation of international sanctions on Tehran, according to another cable from Tripoli included in a batch of classified documents obtained by WikiLeaks. In 2009, the cable said, American diplomats warned Libyan officials that its dealings with Iran were jeopardizing Libya’s enhanced world standing for the sake of “potential short-term business gains.”

In the first few years after trade restrictions were lifted — Colonel Qaddafi had given up his country’s nuclear capabilities and pledged to renounce terrorism — many American companies were hesitant to do business with Libya’s government, officials said. But with an agreement on a settlement over Libya’s role in the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, finally reached in 2008, officials at the United States Commerce Department began to serve as self-described matchmakers for American businesses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/africa/24qaddafi.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Gaddafi may have been right when he identified his opponents as al-Qaeda, says Alexander Cockburn

By Alexander Cockburn

The war on Libya now being waged by the US, Britain and France must surely rank as one of the stupidest martial enterprises, smaller in scale to be sure, since Napoleon  took it into his head to invade Russia in 1812.
Let's start with the fierce hand-to-hand combat between members of the coalition, arguing about the basic aims of the operation. How does "take all necessary measures" square with the ban on any "foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory". Can the coalition kill Gaddafi and recognise a provisional government in Benghazi? Who exactly are the revolutionaries and national liberators in eastern Libya?

In the United States, the offensive was instigated by liberal interventionists: notably three women, starting with Samantha Power, who runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights in Barack Obama's National Security Council. She's an Irish American, 41 years old, who made her name back in the Bush years with her book A Problem from Hell, a study of the US foreign-policy response to genocide, and the failure of the Clinton administration to react forcefully to the Rwandan massacres.

She had to resign from her advisory position on the Obama campaign in April of 2008, after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster" in an interview with the Scotsman, but was restored to good grace after Obama's election, and the monster in her sights is now Gaddafi.


Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/76789,news-comment,news-politics,alexander-cockburn-benghazi-rebels-reports-point-to-al-qaeda-links#ixzz1HVHpRlUz

The first event in an officer cadet's first day at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst (apart from boot polishing and being shouted at) is a lecture on The Principles of War.

In essence, they are a set of military Ten Commandments distilled from the great military thinkers of the past through the British Army's largely successful, and often glorious, fighting experience over 300 years. Sun Tzu, Napoleon and Clausewitz as interpreted by Tommy Atkins, Wellington and Montgomery.

The first principle, carrying the same overriding weight as the First Commandment and usually regarded as the master principle of war, is 'selection and maintenance of the aim'. Its message is timeless and austere - a single unambiguous aim is the keystone of successful military operations.

I can remember being given the lesson myself more than 30 years ago. Our platoon commander was an officer in a Scottish regiment of great renown ­ - think Alec Guinness in Tunes of Glory.

"Why is this the first and most important principle of war?" he barked at us, having written it up on the blackboard.

Brand new officer cadets rarely open their mouths except to say "Yes Sir".

So he gave us the answer himself - ­ I paraphrase without the army's favourite epithet. "Because if you can't get this right, nothing will go right. If you cannot work out what it is you want to do and then stick with it then you are unlikely to succeed. We also put it first because confusion about the aim of military operations is the most common mistake leaders make in war and it usually costs lives."

The first public utterance by the Chief of the Defence Staff on the first day of Operation Ellamy, the UK's codename for operations over Libya, fell straight into the trap.

Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/76858,news-comment,news-politics,what-is-david-cameron-aim-objective-in-libya-does-he-even-know-gaddafi#ixzz1HefxRsJZ
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Well I suppose that the aim is to get rid of Gaddafi but then what?...

Donald Rumsfeld says Western allies are confused over why they are fighting Gaddafi

By Tim Edwards

Donald Rumsfeld has stuck his head above the parapet, wading into the debate over Western military intervention in Libya, and saying the Obama administration is confused. The problem? The US has allowed its hapless allies to get involved in the decision-making process.
  The former US defence secretary and architect of the war in Iraq told Politico.com: "I've always believed that the mission should determine the coalition. You decide what it is you want to do and then you get other countries to assist you in doing that."

However, in Libya, "it looks like just the opposite was done: that the coalition is trying to determine the mission and it's confused.

"If peoples' lives are at risk and you're using military forces, you need to have a rather clear understanding as to who's in charge and who's making the decisions."


Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/76852,people,news,coalition-of-the-dithering-rumsfeld-slams-libya-war#ixzz1Heq2Nzj7