"We have to realize that
there is no military solution"
there is no military solution"
After weeks of making statements that closely resemble Obama's hollow platitudes and wishful thinking on Libya (i.e. Gaddafi "increasingly isolated", "walls closing in", "optimistic" that he'll "eventually" go, etc) but at the same time doing little effective to bring any of that about, the line emanating today from NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen is that the military alliance should not be expected to defeat Muammar Gaddafi on the battlefield, ever...
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has warned it will be necessary to find a political solution to the conflict in Libya.
As heavy fighting raged around the city of Misrata on Sunday, Rasmussen said he was very optimistic that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi would lose his grip on power.
"We have stopped Gadhafi in his tracks. His time is running out. He's more and more isolated," said Rasmussen.
However, speaking the news network CNN Rasmussen added that military power alone would not end the conflict.
"First of all, we have to realize that there is no military solution. We will need a political solution to break the stalemate," he said.
The Danish PM also noted that rebels are running out of supplies in their lone western outpost of Misrata... small wonder, with Gaddafi flying light aircraft right under NATO's noses on the way to-and-from their destruction of the city's lone fuel depot.
One might expect that a large port town like Misrata could be easily re-supplied by sea... and that certainly would have been the case had not Gaddafi already succeeded in mining the harbor while again violating the farcical No-Fly Zone with ease, this time employing low-flying helicopters in false-flag Red Cross and Red Crescent livery.
Of course, the NATO alliance has never been committed to victory in Libya. That -along with the fact nobody seems to know who the rebels are, exactly- is more than enough reason to have never gotten involved in the first place.
Western leaders purport to be primarily protecting Libyan civilians from the pro-Gaddafi forces' vengeful, savage ways, but they can't even seem to fulfill that level of tepid, politically-metered ambition: Yes, NATO has inflicted substantial material damage on the regime, but they also erroneously bombed rebel tanks and troops whilst failing utterly to prevent pro-Gaddafi guns, rockets, planes and helicopters from pounding Misrata right into dust.
And that's not all he's been getting away with while NATO snoozes: Amnesty International has already accused the hyper-brutal Gaddafi regime of war crimes up to and including the use of internationally-banned cluster bombs on civilian targets. Others report Tripoli regularly sending Viagra-fueled rape squads to the front when moving on urban areas.
Just when it sounds like things couldn't get any worse, there's at least 10 tons of mustard gas left sitting in a warehouse near the Gaddafi birthplace/hometown of Sirte...
