NATO Discusses Ground Operation, Libya Promises Hell

RussiaToday ^ | May 4, 2011

[Elsie]

An entangling one...

[Elsie]

The country mass killing its people is a good ways east.

The USA???

We manage to KILL about 1,000,000 of OUR own potential citizens every year!

[TxDas]

“They need to do a better job of identifying the enemy before their airstrikes.”

Seems like you could carpet bomb the whole place and not hit any wrong targets.

[gleeaikin]

Where in earth did you get the idea that Qadaffi is going easy on the rebels. He has no motive for dragging this war out. It is Qadaffi’s troops who use civilian population areas as shields. How would NATO troops outside the cities be destroyed when we have air superiority? Where do you get your misinformation?

[af_vet_rr]

The Brits and French also have their reasons for wanting to muck around in Libya. While a lot of people think about the Pan Am bombing over Scotland, a lot of British think about Gaddafi helping supply the Irish Republican Army in its terrorist attacks against the Brits and British troops. The British don't forget that kind of stuff.

Gaddafi sent the IRA heavy and medium machine guns, rifles, pistols, RPGs, lots of Semtex, and even some SAMs to boot. They've probably been waiting to pay back Gaddafi for decades. That's partly why I think they'll kill him if they can. Gaddafi helped the IRA kill hundreds of British soldiers, and there are probably plenty still in the British military that had friends killed during that time.

[Eleutheria5]

“Rebels” using civilians as human shields? Why am I not surprised? Now ground troops. Great. This’ll be another Vietnam, except it won’t rain as much. Funny how the Dems keep stepping in the same dog poop and learning nothing.

[cranked]

Someone re-ask the AnnointedIdiot about his alleged humanitarian operation and that it would be over “in days” in Libya..... =.=

[cranked]

Despite your claim that there is a need for NATO: radical Islam, NATO was a creation of the Cold War and was created to counter the Soviet Union. Even so, NATO is about as useful as the defunct, corrupt, and worthless UN....both of which have long outlived their purposes...hell, with out us, they cannot even beat themselves out of a wet paper bag ...remember, they could not even muster enough fighter bombers to bomb Libya...now they want to invade Libya? LOL! What a frakin’ joke. One could only hope that Qaddafi turned Libya into another Vietnam. We have NO BUSINESS being there or involved, period! =.=

[wendy1946]

This thing is about Soros wanting to control that $5T which Libya represents

George Soros and Bork Obunga are trying to perpetrate a bank robbery in broad daylight and using American military assets to do it.

[nikos1121]

Who in the world would agree to be part of this Army? Imean Money Talks, but a bunch of mercinaries?

I don’t even think Obama would ever approve ground troops. No way, no how.

This will be a quagmire...a slow and painful death for the rebels.

By July, Libya will have the complete control of the country. I expect too, that Libya will get lucky and hit a plane or two, and capture a pilot or two...

[CharlesWayneCT]

Either you can’t win a war with a few thousand troops and air superiority, or you can. If you CAN, then why did we send 200,000+ troops into Iraq? Why not just go in with a few thousand troops since we had air superiority?

You did catch me though. I think I meant that they would be destroyed IN the cities. Outside the cities, they are simply worthless, as there is nothing to attack or defend out there. The fights are in the cities, and you can’t defeat the home military in the cities with a few thousand troops and air superiority.

Unless you can, and we were just stupid sending all those troops into Iraq, I guess.

[Brad from Tennessee]

Had Obama chosen to stay out of this Chinese fire drill Qaddafi would have prevailed. It wouldn't be pretty but it would be over. This is a sectional civil war being interpreted as something more noble.

[Kenny Bunk]

Perhaps the NATO members do not want to control all of Libya, just Cyrenaica and Tripolitania and those oilfields to the immediate south. Even that cannot be done on the cheap.

Apparently, Qadaffi had the foresight to hire, arm, and even somewhat train a very large force of mercenaries from Chad, Mali, Niger, and even some very bad Balkan and COMBLOC types from Eastern Europe. Chasing them through the desert could take decades!

He is also able to to do aerial surveillance, is flying helicopter sorties, and wiped out Misurata's fuel reserves by using armed crop dusters. NATO had one chance to take out Qadaffi, and when Obama dithered and waffled, that chance evaporated.

[Kenny Bunk]

The Italians swept into Libya in 1911, and although it cost them far more than they had originally thought, they pacified the littoral rather quickly, colonized it, and got it into agricultural production. (They never found the oil!)

.......if insurgency were to develop ...

For the next 25 years, an insurgency developed, somewhat supported by other Euro-powers, that was never quite subdued, so the whole adventure was a net loss. except for leaving some beautiful coastal suburbs, nice buildings and a good road and rail network in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.