Been off the blogosphere for a few days. In Alabama helping my Mom celebrate her 84th birthday. On my little net notebook and still haven’t figured out how to do spell check on it so sorry for any typos. Thursday was a particularly significant day for the Libya crisis. NATO announced it had taken over the mission, the pro-government forces retook a lot of the ground they had lost to the rebels over the last several days, and Secretary of Defense Gates and the Joint Chief of Staff head, Admiral Mullen testified before Congress.
Looking first at NATO, the operation will be called Unified Protector. The announcement on the 31st comes after several significant events. On 22 Mar, NATO launched an operation to enforce the arms embargo against Libya. On the 24th, NATO decided to enforce the No-Fly Zone and on the 27th they decided to take on the broader role of protecting civilians and population centers. The Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Italian Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola stated, “The focus of our mission is to protect the civilian population…not engaged in Libya to decide the future of the Libyan people. That is up to the Libyans themselves…we are helping enforce the will of the international community to protect them from attacks so that they can start shaping and deciding their future…”
The operation is approved for up to 3 months and could be extended if necessary. The operation commander will be Canadien Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard. It will be controlled from NATO’s operation center in Naples. The forces will be operating from bases in the Med to include Italy, France, Greece, and Turkey. 20 of the 28 NATO members and several Arab nations are participating in the effort. During testimony before Congress on 31 March Admiral Mullen said 25 warships to include the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gualle and the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi are currently involved. There are also 220 aircraft participating in the 24/7 enforcement of the no-fly zone. Admiral Mullen praised the effort so far saying he could not remember when so many nations mobilized for such a major operation so quickly. In an earlier blog I mentioned that generally speaking military types start contingency planning for potential operations as early as possible. It’s better to start planning for operations early rather than risk waiting until you’re officially tasked. It gives you more time to work on potential outcomes of various scenarios. If the situation changes and the military is not tasked at least you’ve gained valuable training and if it does you’re ready to go when tasked.
Admiral Mullen said so far NATO had conducted 204 air sorties and there had been 110 strikes against fixed and mobile targets. There were media reports quoting the Admiral that bad weather over the last 3 or 4 days had a negatve effect on the capability to identify more targets. Overall he indicated the coalition had degraded Colonel Qaddfi’s forces by 20% – 25% during Operation Odyssey Dawn.
I haven’t seen the final totals on Operation Odyssey Dawn but on 28 March Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there had been a total of 1,602 sorties. Of those, 983 were U.S. aircraft sorties. If I heard him correctly during his congressional testimony, Secretary Gates said the cost for our participation was $550 million. For Operation Unified Protector he estimated our monthly cost would be $40 million. When asked by Congress during todays’s testimony, how long the NATO operation would go on both Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates said that was impossible to predict. Secretary Gates stood firm on not putting “boots on the ground” while he was Secretary of Defense. He was also asked about reports of President Obama sending CIA agents into Libya. He replied he couldn’t comment on the intelligence operations.
The news of CIA involvement and the set back for the rebels has raised concerns of mission creep. There was one report in the Associated Press quoting some “unnamed U.S. official saying the poorly equipped opposition is incapable of prevailing without decisive western intervention. Stratfor reported, “arms transfers are believed to have been occurring unofficially, courtesy of Qatar and Egypt”. According to a report in the New York Times: “Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the CIA to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels…”. Other reports have been speculating that the intent is to have the CIA assess whether rebels could be reliable partners if the administration decides to begin funneling arms and money to to the rebels.” Also thrown in the mix is no one seems to know who the rebels leaders are and what are their political affliations. NATO’s military commander, Admiral James Stavridis, told Congress on Tuesday there were “flickers” in intelligence reports about the presence of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah in anti-Qadaffi forces. I remember seeing Colonel Qadaffi early in the crisis on TV screaming the rebels were composed of al-Qaeda and drugged young people. Don’t know about the druggie young people accusations but if the intelligence reports are true about al-Qaeda, it shows Qaddafi may be crazy but he’s not stupid. You don’t stay in power over 40 years by being stupid.
Last night on CNN, a retired CIA agent indicated that covert operations don’t work and it would take at least 6 months to train the rebels. Additionally when we do this type of operation we give them money weapon and training and then they go shoot whoever they want. It does seem to me we’re in danger of going down the slippery slope of mission creep. During his Congressional Testimony Secretary Gates stated: ” I am pre-occupied with avoiding mission creep and avoiding having an open ended, very large scale American commitment in this respect. We know about Afghanistan; we know about Iraq”.
The way I see it, the best scenario would be if Colonel Qaddafi’s support erodes and his own people stage a coup. There continue to be signs that his internal support may be falling. Yesterday his Foreign Minister, Moussa Koussa, defected to the United Kingdom. Ali Abdessalam Treki, chosen to replace the Libyan UN Envoy who also defected, said he would not take the job. The BBC’s John Simpson in Tripole said there is speculation about the whereabouts of a number of senior Libyan Minister. According to Al Jazeera, “Most high level Libyan officials are trying to defect but are under tight security and having difficulty leaving the country a top Libyan diplomat now suppporting the opposition said on Thursday.” Time will tell
Someone asked me why did we bomb Libya in the first place. Easy answer, if you’re going to institute a no-fly zone you have to get rid of anything that could hurt the aircraft enforcing it. Primary targets are the air defense radars, surface-to-air missiles, and anti-aircraft artillery. You also go after the air defense command and control headquarters. Since the no-fly zone is part of the over all effort to protect the Libyan civilians you go after anything that might be used to hurt them like tanks, artillery, etc. You also want to destroy the forces logistics support. If you run out of supplies, you can’t effectively operate. Hope that answers your question.
Well think I’ll end here. As always my thoughs are my own.
